The tree from h...

What a day it has been for me!! This tree near about made me cry many times today. I'll explain later. Yesterday, we got home late from our trip to Louisiana and the kids were begging to get our Christmas decorations out. I thought it wouldn't hurt to get down a few items and have Michael go ahead and help me get the Christmas tree out of the attic. I planned on working on the tree first thing the next morning. Well, after dropping the kids off at school, I put on Christmas music and off I went sorting through all our stuff. I started putting the branches on the tree and thought I would put the lights on as I went. Needless to say, I got half way through and the lights quit working. I spent an hour undoing each branch once again and finding the lights that would not work. Luckily, I found the strand and off I went on round #2. The second time at it was going well and then I get to the top and my top half of the tree wouldn't fit into my stand. I couldn't figure out what I had done wrong. Finally, I went back up into the attic only to find that I had been using the wrong tree stand for this tree. I have a pencil tree and a big wide tree that I'm currently using. By now, I'm so close to tears that I have to pop open a diet dr. pepper and think about how I was going to attack this mess. I took everything off once again and had about eleven strands of lights all in a ball because of the way I had to pull them off. When I went to untangle this mess, I almost cried once again because this was a MESS!! I wanted to through this big pile of lights in the trash because it was making me life crazy!! I finally decided not to let this get the best of me. I finally stuck with it and untangled the mess. I started once again trying to put this tree together only to get almost done and I realize I need more lights to add to the tree. I take a shower, and I'm off to Walmart to purchase more lights. I bought a box of 400 mini light thinking this would be more than enough. Well, I get home and start back at it only to find that three hundred of them work and one hundred of my brand new lights didn't work. I made the executive decision to use the lights that worked and hide the lights that didn't. Okay, so its time to put the star on the tree. I know realize that I can't hook this star up to anything because the lights that were up there by the star were not working. I decided that we would use something other than a star. I added some picks and called it good. I was slowly making progress I could see light at the end of this tunnel. But, it was almost 5pm and Michael was pulling in from work. I had spent all day on this dumb tree.

In the process of the tree mess, I started cooking chili. It has been cold today and chili sounded great and EASY!! Would you believe that somehow I burned the chili!! My focus was on the tree and not the chili and it showed. After eating burnt chili, I sat down to look at my tree only to notice that the lights on the top portion were the only ones working. I told the kids to enjoy this tree because it was not going to have lights this year. I had had enough of this drama. Finally, Michael got in there (he felt sorry for me) and found the problem. The tree was working once again. I will be extra nervous turning the lights on tomorrow. I will probably close my eyes and pray before I take a look at the tree.

I hope and pray that next year I don't have this same problem. I wonder if a pre-lit tree would be a great gift for the family. I will be checking to see if any good trees go on clearance so maybe we can enjoy the decorating process of putting up a tree. I am signing off, I'm so tired and I want to put my feet up.