Here it is Jan. 4 and it has been a long time since I've posted anything. That's because we have had a Christmas that almost didn't happen! In other words, this should be titled "Why I didn't get my Christmas cards done in a timely manner."
It all began at Thanksgiving when my grandsons from Edmond came to see us. They needed some Christmas money, so in order to accommodate them (that's what Grandma's are for, right?), I made a list of things they could do around the house. One was "put up the Christmas lights outside." Of course that took supervision from Uncle Allen (the engineering major, soon to graduate from college, yeah!). Allen forgot to check the lights to make sure they worked, so a week later, when I went to turn them on, we realized that half didn't work. Sooooo, I went to our local handy dandy Wal Mart and purchased three strands to replace the burned out lights. Little did I realize until I tried to replace them the next day, that the lights were a bit different, blue white instead of yellow light. I knew that Ralph wouldn't like them, so I stopped in mid porch until he came home and confirmed what I already knew, that he didn't like them. So I said "go get the rest of the lights and I will replace all of them." So he did and the fourth day, I restrung the lights. Now we are talking about a thirty minute job here( to start with). I have now invested $$$$ for three grandkids and my son to put the lights up that didn't work, take them down and replace half, take down the other half and replace those and finally they are up only to have them blown off the house in a major wind storm the next day. Not being one to be defeated, I went back AGAIN and put the lights up. Seven days now invested in the lights.
In the mean time the Christmas tree made it's way from South Carolina with it's very own stand designed to be able to just drop the tree in and have it ready. Think again. Only a 30 minute (or less task). On Tuesday we dropped the pre drilled tree into the stand only to discover the hole in the tree was drilled too big, the tree listed and so we (Ralph & I) spent three days trying to figure out how to make this tree stand stright. Once we figured it out -on Saturday, (Ralph drilled the hole a bit deeper) we unwound the tree and I put the lights on. Ralph said it was still leaning so we adjusted the feet under the tree with some wood blocks. We are going on 5 days now trying to get this tree up. So Sunday, I put more decorations on (as I had time) and on Monday evening I finished decorating. Then Ralph tells me the tree is leaning a little bit, so we made one more adjustment with another set of wood blocks.
Much to my surprise, when I got up on Tuesday morning (we are now closing in on Christmas Day- 7 days and counting) there is my Christmas tree laying in the middle of the living room floor. Ralph is gone and I call him- "did you know the tree was on the floor?" Yes, he said, it fell over while I was eating breakfast and I knew it would take two of us to get it back up. "
Tuesday night we made another trip to our local handy dandy Wal Mart to buy a new Christmas tree stand that could screw into the trunk of the tree. I now had two Christmas trees stands valued at $60, broken ornaments and a sopping wet carpet (the tree was well watered and was standing in 2 gallons of water that now was watering my carpet.) We got the tree up on Tuesday night but had to move the tree out into the middle of the living room floor so the carpet under the stand could dry out. And four days before we could put presents under it because the carpet was so wet for several days. I wanted to just throw the presents on the tree while it was on the floor and call it good but I know Santa Clause might think I was acting like Scrooge if I did.
And here is a picture of my tree:
That is my story and I am sticking to it. Needless to say, these are the ONLY pictures I took in all of December.
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