Oh Christmas Tree....

Since it's Gavin's first Christmas and Ryan is really into the holiday this year, we wanted to make the Christmas tree buying experience really memorable.  So, we decided to go to a local choose-and-cut-your-own Christmas tree farm.  We had visions of our family walking up and down aisles of evergreens in search of the perfect tree; Daddy and Ryan sawing it down together and hauling it back to the car.  Unfortunately, our plans were foiled by indecision, muddy fields, and a bathroom emergency. 

We bundled up and started out on our adventure with boundless enthusiasm.  Armed with a saw, a tree cart, and a camera to document the memories, we hiked for a quarter mile to the far reaches of the tree farm, where the trees were less picked over.  The fields were horribly muddy from the recent rain and melting snow.   After slogging through the mud for nearly a half an hour, we were disappointed to find that the trees were small, misshapen, and the needles were sparse.  Undeterred, we spread out to cover more ground in our search for "the" tree.  At one point, after Mike had gone off to investigate another area of the tree farm, Ryan informed me that he had gone potty in his diaper.  Naturally, I had no diaper changing supplies with me and he insisted on being changed right then.  He refused to walk back to the car and we couldn't carry him since we had our hands full with Gavin, the saw, and pulling the tree cart.  So, Mike removed Ryan's dirty diaper, discreetly emptied the contents in the field, and carefully put it back on Ryan until we could get him back to the car to finish cleaning him up.  Oh, the poor unsuspecting soul who stumbles across that "discovery" as they are looking for their perfect tree...Hopefully they will mistake it for deer droppings!     

At that point, we decided to forego the tree cutting experience and instead opt for a pre-cut tree again this year!  I bet we were the only ones to return to the check-out stand empty-handed.  We quickly high-tailed it out of there and returned to the Christmas tree farm we've gone to for the past 4 years and bought the perfect tree.  It's just over 8' tall and is (err...was) beautifully shaped.  While the men strapped the tree onto the roof of the Explorer, Daddy and Ryan visited the petting zoo, where Ryan got an unexpected lesson about the birds and the bees since two goats were doing the "wild monkey dance."

By the time we got home, our enthusiasm had waned considerably and we were short on Christmas spirit.  So, Daddy and Ryan put the tree in the stand, uprighted it, watered it and positioned it in the corner of the family room.  Then we all agreed to wait another day or two to tackle decorating it, especially since we faced a lot of cleanup!  Luckily, the next day, brought renewed energy and enthusiasm, so Daddy strung the lights and Mommy and Ryan decorated it.  Gavin, who was oblivious to most of the drama of the previous day, was entertained by the bustling activity going on all around him and mesmorized by the twinkling lights.  Guinness, of course, slept through the entire production!

The next day, Ryan and I were eating lunch when we heard a creaking, groaning sound.  We looked over to the family room just in time to see the tree fall over.  For some reason, it never falls backward toward the corner.  Nope, it falls forward into the center of the room on top of all of the ornaments.  Ryan immediately started bawling.  And, while I wanted to join him, with a few expletives thrown in, I had to plaster a fake smile on my face, laugh and say, "Oh yea!  We had so much fun decorating the tree all day yesterday; now we get to do it all over again today!"  In case any of you were wondering, shatterproof ornaments can withstand 3-year-old boys as well a catastrophic tree collapse!

Here are a few before and after photos of our tree: