Tis the Season . . . Continued

Last week I told you that we got our measly two strands of Christmas lights up on the house without any issues. No near death experiences, no skipping, cursing toddler, nothing went wrong at all. Clearly at that point we started to get overly confident in ourselves.

Yesterday we decided to put up our Christmas tree and decorate it. I'm not ashamed that Jason and I bought a pre-lit fake tree about three years ago. We often work 15 hour days and we regularly have long stretches where we work these types of hours 7 days per week (and we're in one now). Thus, a pre-lit Christmas tree saves a lot of aggravation and time when you literally have no extra time in your life.  I wasn't really in the mood to put the tree up as I had made the mistake of sitting down and was instantly half asleep on the couch. But Jason had already dragged the tree down from the attic and Carter was excited. 

We encountered problems immediately. About half the strands on our pre-lit tree were dark. No amount of fiddling, cursing, and re-arranging things made any difference. Jason opened up one of the fuse boxes to see what size fuses were needed and went to purchase some. After a trip to the store and changing out the fuses Jason still had a mostly dark tree. We finally just hung a few strands of lights in the dark areas and took the easiest way out we could find. 

Things seemed to get better after that. We had fun putting the ornaments on the tree with Carter and there were no mishaps, only smiles and laughter.  We finished decorating the tree, took a couple of pictures of Carter in his Rudolph pajamas in front of the tree, and then put Carter to bed. 

About three minutes after we put Carter in bed, Jason and I were briefly sitting down on the couch to discuss a few horses before we both went back to work. Then one of our cats, Jingle, made a running, ninja-like leap from the top of the entertainment center into the tree. Before we had a chance to realize what was happening the tree came crashing towards us.

As the tree came crashing down Jason leaped off the couch in his own impressive ninja-like move while simultaneously screaming a word that rhymes with truck. Luckily no one was impaled by the Christmas tree. The tree was broken, the tree stand broke in half and the floor was littered with shattered ornaments.  

It all started off innocently enough. That's Jingle batting around an ornament and Joy sleeping under the tree.

In his state of shock Jason continued to scream words that rhyme with truck for another couple of minutes. Jingle ran like a missile to parts unknown in the house, terrified of what had just happened. Our other cat, Joy, who had been sleeping peacefully under the tree, thankfully emerged unscathed from under the fallen tree and also took off like a missile to a far away area of the house. Ewen ran into the mudroom to hide.

I went in to Carter's room and told him with a straight face that "Jingle broke a few of the ornaments." Jason and I then spent an hour salvaging any intact ornaments from the tree and the floor, and sweeping up all of the shards of glass and plastic that were literally everywhere. I'm convinced we will be finding tiny ornament pieces for eternity.

The tree was wrecked, the tree stand was wrecked, and many of the ornaments were wrecked. Every year my mom gives each of us an ornament, Waterford crystal, Wedgewood and Belleek china . . . very breakable ornaments. They broke. My words from last week came back to haunt me. I had told Jason that if we could get our pathetic two strands of lights up on the porch, put up a few wreaths and get the tree up with minimal drama I would consider it a total victory. Even by our standards I don't think we can call this minimal drama. 

Thankfully all of our friends saw the humor in our situation and they shared lots of pictures with us today.

Today Jason and I purchased another pre-lit Christmas tree.  Jason also bought some eye hooks, got out the stud finder, and placed the hooks in the wall. Our new pre-lit tree is now wired to the wall in two different locations. Jason also purchased several steel pipes and a flat sheet of steel. He has asked one of our farriers, who will be here on Thursday, to bring all of the welding tools he has with him. Jason intends to make his own tree stand that will apparently weigh about 100 pounds and be more comparable to a boat anchor than your typical tree stand.

The best part of this (typed with sarcasm) is that Jingle tends to get gas whenever he gets upset or scared. Jingle has been walking around in a cloud of gas since last night. He doesn't understand why he is constantly being pushed off of laps and keyboards, and of course that only makes his gas worse. It is kind of a vicious circle.

So, the outside lights went up without a hitch. The inside tree, not so much. So far we have accomplished:

- one demolished pre-lit tree

- one broken tree stand

- no one knows how many busted Waterford, Wedgewood, Belleek and other glass and china ornaments

- one farting cat

At this point I'm terrified of trying to hang up the wreaths. 

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In other news it has rained a lot over the last three days. The rain total as of Monday morning.

Rain total as of Tuesday morning. I haven't checked since this morning so I don't know where the total is right now but I would guess between 3.5 and 4 inches.

Wasabi and Happy; Excuse the terrible pictures in this post. When all it does is rain, it's hard to get pictures at all.

Alex, Sam and Blu

Walden, Fabrizzio, Merlin and Duesy

Calimba and Maisie

Bruno, Duesy and Merlin

George

Donneur and Gibson

Silver, Lofty and Cocomo

Cino and Lucky

Lightning