The Christmas tree

Once upon a time, before the Millennium, and after a few years of going out to get a real tree, we splurged for a really nice flame-retardant tree at Naamco for $100. It was a great tree. So great, in fact, that visitors commented on how nice it was and asked if was real because, well, it even looked real.

In its early years, I set up the video camera and we'd video tape us decorating the tree. Our first dog, Mousse, loved to help. As the boys got older, they enjoyed putting their ornaments on the tree, and they were still young enough not to notice when I'd relocate them to balance out the tree.

Eventually, I ditched the video and settled for still snapshots, but even those were scarce.

And suddenly, a decade had past and the years started to show on our happy Christmas tree. So let's review. We will go back the last five years because the photos taken before that time were developed (as those taken now never are), and said photos are filed away chronically in photo boxes that I really don't care to rifle through and anyway, the scanner isn't working so even if I wanted to, I couldn't. You'll just have to take my word for it that the tree looked absolutely SPECTACULAR, even in 2006.

2006. Thankfully, the volume of gifts lessened with each passing year.


2007, still looking good. Apparently the tree was adorned with the angel this year.


2008. It could be 2007 all over again!


2009, and it's still standing tall, save for the top struggling to hold the star up. Maybe we should have stayed with the angel.


2010. I took the picture at a good angle, so you can't see it sadly tilting. But trust me, it is very much leaning. Can you see where the ornaments had to be moved because Sammie kept helping herself to them? Lots of bare, empty space at the bottom.


This photo shows the teetering a little better, as well as the bare spots. Trust me when I say there were no ornaments at the bottom of the tree, all around. No, if they didn't get eaten, they were saved and moved up, up, up.


Here it is naked. It looks even more slanted in person.


The husband says the tree is fine, that it is the stand that is crooked. I disagree. You see, I intend to take this tree down this year for the Very. Last. Time. I will set it in its original box and even pack the instructions (--yes, don't ask me how, but I managed to save those sacred instructions year after year so I knew the order to assemble the branches and followed them to the letter). Literally, I followed them to the letter the instructions gave me. N3, followed by M3, K3, J3, I3, H3, G2, F2 and F2.

Instructions. In case you don't believe I really do still have the original piece of paper. Original.














Today, Sammie actually managed to topple the tree over in one of her many attempts to eat yet another ornament off the tree.

See? Here she is looking as guilty as ever with an ornament in her mouth. A home-made ornament made by one of the boys, no less!

So, said tree will be packaged up, instructions and all. I'll even be generous and throw in the base because I'm thoughtful like that. Also because I intend to have a real tree next year and the year after that and so on, so I won't need a fake tree base.

If I was home this year, I would have quietly removed our tree from the home before the husband could protest and a real one would have taken its place. But I was visiting my sister and her family in IL, so the tree was put up by G and the boys.

I'll bet they didn't even read the handy instructions. Maybe that's why it was tilting...

The end. (of the 12-year-old Christmas tree. Bwahahahaha!)