a bad case of the grinchies

in years past i have always dreaded getting the Christmas decorations out. it's usually well into december by the time i get the tree up, only to leave it up for couple weeks before putting it away again. so this year i decided i was going to do it early. i got everything out on saturday, november 30th. yes, i said november! i was so proud of myself!

well i figured out the reason that i dread the Christmas tree is because i hate the lights. for the past 4 years i have battled, and the tree has usually won. i put on the lights. i take them all off. i put them on again, still don't like it, so i take them all off. then i put them on again and run out of lights at the top. oh, if only i could get another strand of 15 lights for the top... last year was the worst. i ended up tearing the lights off of the tree, threw them on the floor, then went to my room to pout. yes, i was a 25 year old acting like a 2 year old! finally i got the tree decorated and ben said we were going to get a prelit tree on clearance after Christmas. AHHHHH......... all my Christmas decorating problems would be solved!

wrong.

ben went to home depot and bought be a beautiful prelit tree after Christmas just as he said he would. he brought it home and set it up in the middle of our living room to see what it looked like. it was a big tree. real big. but we both decided that we'd deal with it next Christmas.

so next Christmas came. last sunday i got out the new prelit tree and all the decorations and started to set it up. well remember how i said the tree was big?! it was 7.5 feet tall and 48 inches in diameter. for the few of you that have seen our living room, that tree was waaaayyyyyy too big. there are 2 places in our living room that we could put a tree and each spot was too small. ben suggested we could rearrange, but that was out of the question seeing that we have a 75 gallon fishtank. a full unmovable unless you take all the fish and water out fishtank. so that was out of the question.

and did i mention that we got rid of our old tree and lights after Christmas last year?! we couldn't even resort to that awful $16 walmart tree and lights that would probably put me in a mental institution.

so in the midst of all this happening ben talked to his friend, norbert, to see if they wanted our new prelit tree. they already had one, but said we could switch and use theirs. turns out that their tree wasn't prelit though. ben kept telling him, "NO... WE NEED A PRELIT ONE. YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND. ERIN DOESN'T DO LIGHTS." i'm sure he was just as afraid for me to tackle that again as i was. but norbert kept saying that it was a pretty nice tree and it was smaller. so i came up with the conclusion that i could just have a tree with no lights. that would work, right? so ben and norbert brought our tree to their house, and brought norbert's tree back here. well when i took it out of the box i realized that norbert's tree was the exact same tree we got rid of last year!!!!! i definitely was NOT going to go down that road again, so i resorted to having no tree, or getting one of those 12 inch mini trees (that was actually our only Christmas tree the first year we had samantha). i was getting more grinchy by the minute. but then ben talked me into Christmas tree shopping.

so for the rest of sunday we went to target, home depot, and kmart with no luck. sunday evening was spent looking at trees online. again, with no luck. you can't get a prelit tree that is taller than you but only 30" around for under $150. and i really didn't want to spend a lot of money on a tree when i could get one for half the price after Christmas. we finally decided to get one of those tall, skinny, potted trees that are supposed to go outside on your porch. so monday afternoon we went to about 5 more stores looking for a tall, skinny, potted tree but ben didn't like any of them that we found. we finally ended up at walmart and ben found a tree he liked. it was still a little big for our living room, but we decided to bring it home and see how it looked. so we did. it actually looked really nice and it was PRELIT! (although now i realize i also don't like fluffing a tree...) when we put on the very top section of the tree it was sooooooo messed up. we were going to have to take all the lights off and redo them, but instead went and got another one and just switched the tops. so our tree is finally up, i am finally satisfied with it, and it will be much easier next year!

i am now finally over my grinchiness. for a couple days i was seriously considering not putting up a Christmas tree at all. but i'm so glad i did. when samantha came downstairs and saw the tree right after we assembled it, she gasped, covered her mouth in amazement, and said it was so beautiful. and ryan... you wouldn't think a one year old could be excited about trees, would you? but every time we go to target or walmart or anywhere with trees, he gets so excited and says "preeeee" (pretty) and "treeeeee" (tree) in his squeaky high-pitched voice. so now he looks at our tree and says that. how could i not put up a tree and miss him saying that?! and if you read my previous post, you already know my biggest reward for putting up the Christmas tree.

so if you find yourself stressed with decorating this Christmas, ahem *JENNY*, just suck it up, get over it, and do it for the kids at least! i'm glad i did... you will be too!