Our first...and second...Christmas Tree!

We, the Ducketts, live through every holiday or event just like everyone else. Granted, ours normally have an added dose of mishap, sarcasm or just downright silliness. 

Let's see, there's my attempt at baking which ended in black bottomed muffins and something that looked like wet dog food gone bad. There was the second attempt at baking which actually succeeded only to be dropped all over the living room floor. (I guess I never blogged about that. Full story coming soon). We have video proof of my nervous husband with his hands cupping (yes, cupping) my lovely behind as he asked me to marry him. There's the three (yes, three) times we locked our key in the room on our honeymoon and had to beg the lobby for forgiveness.  Let's not forget the chickens that are stinking up my bathroom as we speak (err, type?). Oh, the time Jeremiah got his car stolen (ok, guess that's not exactly funny). Me, locking my keys in the car and being too prideful to ask for help, resulting in an accidentally busted window. Recently, we went to the lake to roast marshmallows but couldn't find a place to light a fire and ended up roasting them on a cigarette lighter. The day before Thanksgiving I almost burnt the house down and at lunch on T-day an elderly friend threw up all over the table. Humorous. Disastrous. But, never boring. I wonder what Christmas has in store for us...

Well, while other little girls were dreaming about their big puffy white wedding dress and two boxes of china, there was always this one thing that excited me the most about marriage. The first Christmas! With the day finally here, we set off to buy our first Christmas tree. We spent the morning cleaning and rearranging to make a place for it. We drove to a Christmas tree lot that's only there during the holidays. They had the big lights strung everywhere and it was almost like walking through a Christmas tree forest! But let me tell you, these people were mighty proud of their dang trees that they probably chopped down and loaded in the time it would take to yell "timberrrrr". The smallest, shaggiest one we could find was still around 60 big ones. Uh, no thank you. Newlyweds, here. 

I thought I remembered hardware stores having live trees so we headed to Lowes. Cheapest one-20 bucks. And that was for a 6-7 footer! We picked out our tree-wait, maybe I should rephrase that. I kindly and sweetly asked my husband to show me just about every single one of the dumb trees until finally I had them all so confused I just closed my eyes and picked one. 

My smart husband wanted to put it inside our little Explorer. I argued, of course. Everyone else straps theirs on top! And if its inside then it will get all squished and mangled! So on top it went. Fast forward a few minutes. We're driving down hwy 121, fighting mall traffic, when all of a sudden it sounds like Santa's reindeer are landing on our roof. 

BABOOMPH. 

I didn't realize what happened until a few curse words later. There she was. Our first marital tree, innocently lying helpless in the right hand lane. She was only helpless for two seconds though, then 

BABOOMPH,

 

BABOOMPH

...as cars started slamming their big 'ol tires over her. She flipped and flopped until nothing was left but the trunk and a few branches. First was shock. Then was me trying to convince my husband it was NOT a good idea to run out onto the highway in hopes of recovery. Then came the laughs. Of course. Why wouldn't something like this happen?? Ahhhh, I still laugh thinking about it. What a great story to tell the kids. Jeremiah, unfortunately, still has a hard time seeing the humor in it all. We contemplated building a tree with leaves from the front yard and Elmer's glue, but then decided to just go back to Lowe's and pick up another one.

 And so the story goes of our first...and second...marital Christmas Tree! And to think, Christmas isn't even here yet....