Christmas Memory, 2009

This year I decided to sell the 5 year old artificial Christmas tree. It served us well with it's prelit lights and grandiose appearance. But it took up a lot of space in the garage and it was a bear to set up every advent season. So for about 25.00 - bye bye Christmas Tree.

Other than wondering if I had a few family ornaments still on the thing, I wasn't too upset. So off we go to Home Depot to get a fresh tree! The girls are happy, I'm calm. We walk in the temporary fenced area and come across cute, fat little trees that come up to my belly button. So I stand one up and say, "Oh this is cute!". Amelia is like, "well......" So we wander around a little. Suddenly we come to a section that has rather tall trees. Amelia grabs one and stands it up. "This is a good one!" I eye it and say, "Yeah, I like that one!"

Proud of HER find, I take the top and Amelia grabs the trunk and off we go to pay for it. We look so cute carrying our tree! We hand the thing over to the burly tree guy and head in to pay for it. On the way we pass tree stands. Amelia says, "Oh, don't we need a tree stand?" Of course, I still have that tree stand from the preartificial days! "No honey! We have one." I say confidently. So we pay our 43 bucks and head to the car - again looking very womans lib with the three powerhouse Rumsey chicks carrying our own 6 foot tree to the car and loading it!

The tree doesn't exactly fit in the van, so we let it's top hang out a little and drive home with our back trunk popped open. This is very disturbing to my law abiding daughters and they exhale a great sigh of relief when we pull in safely to our drive way.

We get home and bring the tree in. I start looking for the tree stand.... no tree stand. I guess I got rid of that 5 years ago. This is the plight of a perjure.

Off I go, back to Home Depot to buy the stand. After the checker eyes me curiously and says, "no tree?" - I pay my 15 bucks and head home.

Up goes the tree. My house is already smelling like pine. Syd cuts the white netting off and Amelia helps me assemble the tree stand. We get it set up in the right corner and stand back. Uh oh - my garage sale artificial tree was PRELIT! I search the house for lights - no luck. The lights I had, I used to decorate my mulberry tree out front!

"I"ll be back in a few" I call out to the girls! Back to - you got it - THE HOME DEPOT - for lights! I scan my own items and debt card the cost of three boxes of lights and two timers which comes to 30 bucks. Home again! No more trips to Home Depot, and about 2 hours later...

Tree 43.00
stand - 15.00
lights and timer - 30.00
replacing your artificial, prelit christmas tree for a real one with the best daughters ever and NO MAN to help... - PRICELESS!

OH CHRISTMAS TREE
OH CHRISTMAS TREE
HOW BEAUTIFUL THY BRANCHES!