For years we had an artificial Christmas tree, and I was fine with that, except that it shed more than a real one, and was a pain in the tuckus to put together each year. When it finally bit the dust a few years back, we decided to buy real ones from then on. It is a tradition in my family to pick it up the Sunday after Thanksgiving. Every year though, we end up with a tree that is wayyyy too big for our house. Last year's giant, unfolded not unlike the Christmas tree from the National Lampoons Christmas movie, knocking things over, and spreading it's limbs like Virginia creeper into the crevices in my piano. The giant killer trees come with their own set of challenges, like falling over if you look at them wrong, and breaking nearly all of the ornaments we own when they do fall over. In the last 3 years we have lost over half of our ornaments.We bought a huge base last year in hopes of keeping it upright (after our tree had already fallen over twice).
This year we decided that a smaller tree would be best (along with origami ornaments). We wanted something less than 7 feet tall, and less than 8 feet in diameter. We checked our local home improvement store first, but their trees were a little sad looking, and reminded me of Charlie Brown's pathetic little tree. So we went to our traditional lot, run by our local Lions club. I like balsam firs, my husband likes anything under $30, which means they are usually pretty ugly. Since I am the one who has to decorate it, my choice won. We found one that was just about 6 1/2 feet tall, and maybe 4 feet in diameter, all in all a pretty great tree.
Usually we have to haul the tree to the car by ourselves, but we had just come from our annual family portrait sitting, so we were dressed up. We got the royal treatment, they wouldn't even let us handle it for fear of us getting sap on our fancy duds. The young men working the lot, trimmed the trunk, clipped off the bottom branches so I could use them to decorate with, and rigged our tree to the top of our van. We were on our merry little way before you could say Jack Frost.
We live about 7 minutes from the Christmas tree lot, and since my husband was driving I decided to check the messages on my phone. I had gotten a text informing me of the birth of my newest nephew. It came with a picture, so of course I had to text back and congratulate the proud parents. I was very excited, and had just announced to the kids that they had a new cousin when we pulled into our driveway. My husband opened the garage, and started to pull in when we heard a loud "THWAK CRUNCH". We looked at each other puzzled, then realized at the exact same moment that it was the tree crunching into the garage! In the excitement of learning of our newest little relation, we had completely forgotten about the tree.
We jumped out to assess the damage, the top of the car was a little scratched up but nothing major, there were some dents and gouges just above the garage door, easily fixed by some wood putty, our beloved tree? About 18 inches shorter than when we bought it. Nothing that couldn't be salvaged, I was just hoping for one that would be taller than me. the upside is that I don't need a step stool to decorate it . The downside is that I have an excess of lights now. Good thing we wanted a small tree right?
