Tree Troubles

Saturday started out as a beautiful day at the Christmas Parade.Then we headed up to the Wintergreen tree farm where we go every year to cut our tree.We found a majestic 11-foot tree that Aidan & Darren chopped down. We headed home with tree on top of the car with no problems.It was when we got home the problems started. First the tree stand we always use cracked while we were carrying it inside. Not a huge problem. We went to Home Depot and grabbed another one. With the tree up inside the house, we hurried out to get to Darren's Christmas party.

We got home from the party around 11:00pm and Darren had to water the tree before bed. He started pouring it in and ...TIMBER!! The tree (thankfully still undecorated) crashed down on the floor. Since it was so late we just carried it back outside and went to bed.

Early Sunday morning, Darren went out and trimmed off some more trunk and tried to get it balanced better. We discovered the new stand was missing a spike designed to stabilize tree. After church, Darren went back to Home Depot to get a new stand. With that the tree was finally stable and in the house. We decided it was safe to decorate it. We claimed victory over the tree and exchanged some high fives.About 7:00pm Sunday night, Darren walked into the dining room. He was all the way on the other side of the room when...TIMBER!! It happened again. We were left with a tipped over tree and broken ornaments everywhere (served me right for complaining hours earlier about having too many ornaments for the tree). Here is the aftermath.Now the tree is safely (we hope) tethered to the wall in case it tries to move again.

I figured I better take at least one picture of the finished product because if this thing goes down again it is headed to the wood chipper!