Our Christmas Decorating Story

The reality of our Christmas Decorating Day turned out far different than what we imagined.

We imagined a pristine day (which it was). We imagined Starbucks coffee (which we had). We imagined a cutie kiddo in his stroller as we strolled through the rows of Christmas trees at the local Christmas tree farm (we did stroll and he is a cute kid). We imagined hot chocolate while we decorated our tree (and the hot chocolate was yummy, check out the recipe!).

However, it is as this point our imaginations never imagined what happened next. It all started when Ben asked me if I thought the tree was leaning. I glanced up for a moment. "No, the tree is not leaning." I went back to what I was doing and he went back to what he was doing. 15 minutes later, "Bethany, the tree is definitely leaning." He examined it at the base and decided the bottom limbs needed a little trimming. He asked me to hold the tree. With a baby in one hand, and a tree in another, I held the tree. 20 minutes after he finished trimming, we sat the tree upright and stood back.

This did not fix the tree. I placed the baby in the mama-roo and proceeded to hold the tree upright for the next hour. By this time it is 1am in morning. I'm tired. Ben is tired. It finally looks like it is fixed. So I go to bed. About 30 minutes later, Ben comes to bed, "I took all the ornaments off the tree. It is still going to fall over."

After examining it, Ben determined that the tree is just crooked - naturally. No amount of trimming or adjusting would fix our tree. So, three days after we decorated the tree, undecorated it, tried trimming it and finally just stared at it hoping it would straighten up....we propped it up against the window, stuck some books under the tree stand and declared, "MERRY CHRISTMAS!".