I love Christmas. I love everything about it. The baking, the card making and sending, the decorating, the gift buying, the gift wrapping, the concerts, the tacky sweaters, the light up earrings, seriously , everything. Except for this one tradition we have that I wish would go away but just won't.
We do everything we can think of to prevent it, and every year we think we have finally been successful. But eventually, like gum on your shoe, there it is again. What is this horrible tradition that we hate and can't seem to stop? The tradition of the fallen over Christmas tree. Yes, we have gone through 4 different types of tree stands, cut the bottom of the tree several different ways, and yet, every year, the same thing happens. The time varies, as does the degree of damage, but we inevitably hear the sickening whonk-thud-crash of the whole, decorated tree tipping over. Sometimes it's in the middle of the night, sometimes it while we are eating, this year it was in the afternoon while Noah was standing really close trying to get a better look at the star on top. To his credit, I do not believe that he pushed on the tree all that hard. It's just that it was already on it's way over, and his slight nudge was all it took. Why do I believe this? Because 10 minutes after Nick and I got the tree back up and nestled snug in its stand, it fell over again. And this time, Noah wasn't anywhere near the thing.
We decided to just leave it on the ground until Chris got home, because we didn't know of any other way to try and secure it, and neither Nick or I is strong enough/tall enough to lift the entire tree straight up out of the stand and reposition it directly in the center. When I told Chris of our plan to leave it on the ground, he got a bit concerned that the branches would get all bent out of shape. So we rotated the tree throughout the afternoon, so that all sides got a little smooshed rather than just one. At least it still looked uniform that way. haha.
We finally got the tree back up and everything looked great. For about 15 hours. Then I noticed that the tree was starting to lean yet again. This time I fixed it before it fell down with our old stand by remedy. I tied some twine around the trunk of the tree and hooked it on the nail we have in the wooden siding of our ceiling for just such an occasion. Yes, every year we are hopeful that we won't have to use the twine and nail method to keep our tree up. But every year we end up relying on it to keep our tree in a vertical position. Oh well, maybe next year will be the end of this tradition.
(I did get a picture of the tree fallen over, but for some reason the host site won't let me upload it. Grrr!)