It all came tumbling down

Today we decked the halls. The girls waited patiently while I strung the lights around the tree, all 500 of them. Regan read me stories, and I helped her sound out words as I climbed up and around the tree over and over again. 

And then it was time to add the gorgeous ornaments. We only use German glass ornaments. And we are prepared each year for at least one broken ornament. This year, Regan reached for her first ornament and dropped it. C-R-A-S-H. Broken ornament number one. Ah, but we made it through the rest of them and the tree looked great.  

Until, it happened. 

I was carefully returning the manger scene to its spot under the tree and I could hear a terrible sound. 

The tree was heading towards my head!! I dropped the manager and held my hands up to catch the 6 foot tree approaching my head. 

C-R-A-S-H! 

Yep, ornaments tumbled to the hardwood floors, many of them breaking. Too many to count. 

Tiny particles of glass everywhere. 

We tried hard to re-secure the trunk to the very old base but it wasn't helping, the bolts just kept pushing into the soft tree trunk. 

I couldn't help but laugh. How can you not?! Outside of the broken ornaments, it was a very funny sight. 

Then, as Ryan held the tree, I drove to Target and bought "the mother of all tree stands!". Laughing the entire way as I picked out needles from my hair and wiped sap from my fingers, picturing the tree as it was heading right towards my head. 

After it was secured into "the mother of all tree stands", we decked the halls.....again. 

And I would have taken a picture of him holding the tree for 20 minutes, but I think he would have strangled me at that point....he didn't find the scene as funny as I did.  

The kids and I took on an art project this afternoon as well: hand print Christmas trees. It's tough to see the stars at the top that makes them look like trees. They had a lot of fun and we did them on canvas so we can keep their tiny hand prints for years to come! 

Finally it was on to baking Christmas cookies. They mixed the dough, cut out the cookies and frosted them. It went like this: some for the cookie, some for my mouth :)