Trees and Toilets

It's been a rough weekend for Tom. Thanksgiving was great but after Thanksgiving came the string of bad luck.

First, we had our annual tree cutting event with friends. While everyone was enjoying our hot chocolate and treats after cutting down our trees, Tom was being very diligent and spending a lot of time with some new straps that he bought specifically to tie our Xmas tree to the roof of the car.  He kept adjusting and readjusting while my friends' husbands were done pretty quickly. Man, I thought these must be some great straps where I'm not going to hear the excess strap flapping in the wind or worry about the tree coming loose and flopping down on the side of the car like it did that one year. Yeah, right.

The flapping started almost as soon as we left the tree farm. We pulled over once on a country road so Tom could adjust the straps. That lasted for a bit until we got on the highway. Almost immediately, the tree slid way to the right and I thought we were going to lose it. Stop two was on the shoulder as our friends passed us and texted asking if we needed them to pull over. Nah, I reassured them, we're okay. It's Tom. He's got this. We tried again for a few miles and still the tree felt like it was going to fly off the car. It was either stop again or I was going to have to hold my arm out the window and hold the tree the entire rest of the way home. So we stopped again. Third time was a charm and we finally made it home. Well, until we pulled into the garage and Tom almost sheered off half the tree because he thought we could fit the car with the tree still on top in the garage. In his defense, it was a larger tree (wider) than we usually buy.

So fast forward to today (Sunday). The kids all had a blast with Tom decorating the tree and putting up all the special ornaments from all the places we've vacationed. Hailey's favorite was the big Mickey Mouse one from our Walt Disney World vacation in 2015. The tree looked awesome. So many great ornaments and memories and the kids were so excited! That excitement quickly turned to screams and crying after we came home from dinner to find our Xmas tree on the ground with what looked like a million ornaments in tiny little pieces all over the ground. Now, most of you are probably thinking Sadie did it and she for sure would have been blamed if not for the fact that there was a gate between her and the Xmas tree. How scared she must've been to hear that crash I thought as my kids screamed that Xmas was ruined in between their tears. Oh boy!

We quickly ushered them up to bed so Tom could survey the damage. Not too many ornaments broken. There were a few that could be glued but unfortunately Hailey's favorite (the Mickey Mouse ornament) could not be salvaged. I guess we'll have to break it to her in the morning.

To cap off the fine weekend, Austen snuck downstairs to leave his Dad this note while he was cleaning up. Now, talk about a shitty weekend. Ha! Ha!