Our Christmas tree adventure

If your one of those people that don't like the word Christmas, you probably shouldn't read this.  At our house we celebrate Christmas Day, not holiday day.

So every year we put up a small 3' Christmas tree in the dining room and a big live tree in the living.  We do this even though I am allergic to pine trees.  Oh nothing serious, nothing like cats and dogs.  I just get a nasty itchy rash when I come into contact with the tree.    

Yeah, I know, "so stay away from the tree".  Well, it isn't that easy.  I am the one who usually does the decorating (Ray helps with the lights).  I am the one who is shoo-ing the baby away from the tree and then crawling under it to pick up the ornaments she has knocked down.  I am the one who puts the multitude of presents (that I wrapped) under the tree.     

So just staying away from it isn't as easy as it sounds.  Which is why I was so relieved this year when my mom called and offered us her old tree.  Actually it isn't that old and looks really nice.  I said "yes, yes, yes!"  She probably thought she caught me in the throes of some afternoon tryst with my excited answer.  I only wish.    

So on Saturday Ray had to do a furnace installation in Bowling Green.  Afterwards he stopped by mom's and picked up the tree.  Mom also sent along a box of outdorr lights.  Yea!  Extra goodies.     

Ray got home later than he thought he would, so we waited until Sunday morning when we pulled the box into the living room.  The household terror, commonly known as Rylie Jo, was still sleeping so this was the perfect time to begin putting it together.  It wasn't very hard, once we got the strings of lights detangled from the branches.  {{{scratch, scratch}}}  I was beginning to wonder if I could get away with saying I thought I was allergic to this metal and plastic creation too.

Nope.  I stuck it out and in no time we had the thing all snapped together and standing in our living room.  Yea!  A tree.  So Ray plugged it in and lo and behold...lights out here, and here and over here.  Grrrrrr.  "Well, your mom said there was one section out and that it needed to go to the wall."    

Okay, so we looked for missing lights and checked the little, itty, bitty, teeny, tiny fuses (don't drop one of those suckers) and soon we had it all lit up.  Well, except for that one section that we faced to the wall.     

Now the lights that this tree is pre-strung with are white.  My baby, Raymond not Rylie, loves his colored lights.  I had my white lights the first year we were together, after that he made sure we always bought colored lights.     

So there we were standing in the living room looking at this very pretty tree with all these shining white lights.  I said "I'm sorry the lights aren't colored, I know how much you like colored lights."  He said it was no big deal.  But the tree did look a bit out of place with our colored lights strung throughout the house (and I mean throughout!). 

So I told him that we still had some strings of colored lights and why not add a string or two and see what it looked like.     We added 2 strings of colored lights to our tree.  We set the blinking pattern to a slow twinkle.  Then we turned off all the lights and closed the blinds.  It was absolutely glorious.     

We opened the blinds and decided to put all the decorations on the tree later that day.  We left the light on, because by this time Rylie was up, and we all wanted to continue to enjoy our beautiful tree.

About 2 hours later I was in the bedroom working on my computer when I heard "Jill!  Jill!  The lights went out!"  Oh $#*%! 

So later Ray works on the lights again and gets them working.  Apparently one of the fuses blew.  I decided that now that it was working and everything was good, I would get the decorations out and finish this tree up.    

It was dark outside now.  The tree was all done and we were enjoying our beautiful Christmas tree immensely.  Ray was now on the computer while Rylie and I watched another inane show on the Disney channel.     

Suddenly out of the corner of my eye...darker, that side of the room just got darker.  I look over at our tree and sure enough the white lights are out again.  Grrrrrr!    

I wish I had gotten around to taking a picture of it before the lights blew again.  It really was a wonderful site to see.  Now, it is just another Christmas tree with a few colored lights...oh pooh!    

Hmmm, I wonder where that dang mouse is and if he has anything to do with all of this.  Yeah, yeah, I know...he's just a mouse.  Oh well.  Have a great day.