The Christmas Tree.....continued

Okay, so if you haven't read it yet, you need to go back and read the first part of this little adventure. http://etsthisibelieve.blogspot.com/2011/11/christmas-tree.html That will give you the background of how in the world we got to this point.....actually I am still not sure even to this day! So we survived the journey of cutting down the tree, loading it onto the car.....correction into the car, and the kids didn't fall out of the back of the wagon while we were driving home.  So far a successful adventure...Let me stress the word ADVENTURE.

Once we got home we basically dumped it on the front lawn. I realized I wasn't going to get it in the door that night for several reasons.

• 1st: It was a bit longer than expected (duh).
• 2nd: It had begin to get really cold and was misting outside.
• 3rd: It was also pitch dark.
• 4th: I was exhausted from the adventure so far.
• 5th: I had to figure out how in the world I was going to actually set this monster up!
• The 6th and probably the most challenging effort was going to be the actual method of getting the tree in the house.

Our house wasn't like any other ordinary house. (Of course not! Have I ever done anything that was ever ORDINARY? No....Wait maybe the word ordinary should be substituted with easy or sane or maybe realistic or even humanly acceptable.  Yes, I seemed to also do the....let's be nice to me today and say IMAGINATIVE.) Our house was a beautiful 150 year old one room brick school house. Now, you might say one room means ONLY one room.  No, originally the school house had an entry hall in front where you can enter into from the front door. Once you walk in the front door the hall was only five feet deep where you had to turn either left or right.  When the school was functioning, I am told that the boys went left and the girls went right.  At the end of the hall, just after the doors leading into the classroom, on both sides were closets that were only about six feet tall (remember the ceilings were 13') so we used the top of the closets for additional storage.  The closets were accessed from inside the classroom, not the hall. Once you got inside the house, the owner had added a few walls to create a small bedroom, bathroom and divided kitchen. The walls were only about 8' tall and the bathroom had a "lid" on it while the kitchen and bedroom were open above to the main part of the house. Yes, it was also an adventure living there.  My wife and I slept in the "bunk" above the bathroom that was accessed from a ladder in the bedroom while the kids shared the bedroom.

Ok, back to the story at hand now that you understand what predicament I was in.  I got a friend from church to help measure and cut off about 5 foot on the tree.  (And yes, I did cut off the BOTTOM despite what some of you might think of me as being a bit "challenged" at times.) Now to get it in the house. We had to get the 13' tall tree into the front hall, turn quickly (again because the hall was only 5' wide) and then stand it upright in the hall (again because the hall wasn't long enough due to the closets at the end of each hall), and then close the front door, back up, lower the tree and make the next turn.  Yes a lot of needles feel off and yes we had to really tug and pull and slightly bend the giant tree to make each turn.  Did it!

Now the tree was in the house and we needed to stand it up.......hum?  How do we do that? We tried a giant homemade 2x4 base as a tree stand.....didn't work.  My wife was afraid the kids would bump into the tree and then TIMBER! it would fall down and crush all that remained in it's path of trajectory.  Good point.  Okay, so the ceiling plaster was removed during the renovation and the large wood ceiling joists were exposed and perfect for attaching a nail and then securing the top of the tree with rope.  Perfect! The tree was straight and no worries.....humm. There was a few times that the tree actually did SWING from the rope when the kids bumped into it but it didn't fall.

Decorations were another adventure.....we didn't have nearly enough for this behemoth.  I honestly cannot remember what we did to help fill it up.  I know we didn't enough money to go BUY any additional ones.  Well we needed to make a star.  We had just begun this tradition of making a new star each year.  We most certainly needed one here and one that was equal in size to the tree.....of course....proportions mattered...they always mattered.  Another little detail that we (or I) overlooked before beginning this so called ADVENTURE.

We made the star out of newspaper and glue and then painted it bright yellow.  When it was done it sort of looked like a Dr. Seuss starfish sort of thing.  But it was awesome!

So that was the story.....the last bit of this adventure will be continued when I share how we got the tree down and out of the house! Yes.....yet another memorable moment!  Enjoy your tree this year my friends and never forget the adventures you have on your journey of life.

(I will keep looking for better photos of this adventure)