Oh {dead} Christmas Tree

I'm not even kidding, although I wish I were.

Last year we threw out our artificial tree b/c it was a piece of crap & we figured we'd buy a new one this year. Then this year came & Jeremiah decided he'd rather buy a live tree each year than deal with storage of an artificial tree from year to year since we're really out of space for something like that. Plus it seems that year after year I have issues with the lights on artificial trees working.

I loaded up the kids Thanksgiving weekend while Jeremiah was on his elk hunt & went to good ol' Home Depot to pick out a tree. They cut a bit off the bottom & I bought a new tree stand with big metal teeth on the bottom that would bite into the tree to help it absorb water.

Fast forward a few weeks. Our tree is DEAD. Dead, dead, dead. I had noticed a week or so before that the tree wasn't sucking up water. I haven't had a lot of live trees, but I seem to remember the ones I did being water hogs. We could go DAYS without adding water to this tree. Jeremiah wondered if drilling holes near the base would help. This was before it was completely dead & he didn't do it. So then once he determined it was officially dead, he brings in the drill. Silly Jeremiah. It was of course too late. At first I said I didn't care - I didn't want to deal with undecorating & redecorating a tree a week & a half before Christmas. But as the days went by our tree began to look like this: (see how the left side is shriveling into itself?!)



Until it got to this point I was ready to ignore the problem & take it down the day after Christmas. But Jeremiah had already said we were getting a different tree, and once it got this bad I knew we had to do it. So FIVE (5) DAYS before Christmas we undecorated our sad tree! Jeremiah took it back to Home Depot since they guaranteed it, but they only had 2 trees left & they were both shabby looking. They gave us our money back & very fortunately we were able to use a pre-lit artificial tree that Jeremiah's parents had just inherited but not put up since they were spending the holidays in Washington. It sucked redoing a tree. It sucked the first time I did it & I was swearing half the time then (issues with the stupid new base, issues with the the lights, pine needles everywhere, etc.). Imagine take 2! Fortunately Jeremiah was awesome & set up the artificial tree & helped hang the garland (the tree is usually all me). He started to hang ornaments but gave up after about 15 mins. I was feeling quite scrooge-ish by the time I finished! Bah-humbug!