We have our Christmas tree! Meet Sparky, our very spunky, electrically-compromised Frasier Fir. Your challenge is to not to look too closely at any individual picture on this blog post, because I guarantee that different strands of tree lights will be lit/darkened in each photo. But more on that later...
This is a true story about an adorable family who took a scenic drive to a tree farm in their new home state. They were on their quest to cut down the perfect Christmas tree. After traipsing through field after field of beautiful long-needled spruce trees, we concluded that we were creatures of habit and preferred short-needled firs instead.
So we chalked it up to a learning experience to teach the kids that "No, trees do not just come from parking lots", and promptly drove back to our home town to purchase the perfect tree... in the middle of the Tractor Supply parking lot less than a mile from our house. When in "cute country"...
We were home for less than 5 minutes when the kids started begging to put ornaments on the tree. Mommy explained that we needed to put lights on first, and after untangling strand after strand of tree lights that somehow barely survived our move, we found that most of our strands no longer worked and that half the lights burned out. Sigh. So Daddy drove to the store to buy more...
Mommy carefully worked on placing hundreds of lights on the tree while her very patient children repeatedly offered their assistance and input. 6 feet of lights were on our 9-foot tree when we ran out of lights.
Daddy drove back to the store...again.
14 boxes of lights in total (yes, that's 1,400 lights), Mommy was almost to the tippy top of the tree.
"5 minutes until ornament time, kids!", she gleefully called, and two munchkins started running wildly in circles around the house. Mommy plugged in the last strand and... the tree went dark.
APPARENTLY, we blew a fuse, and we later read on the box that no more than 4 strands of lights should be plugged in together at one time... WHICH IS RIDICULOUS, because they are Christmas tree lights after all, and are made to string together on various sized trees.
So Daddy replaced the fuse on Strand 1, and we creatively unplugged the tree about halfway up, so that the top half of the lights were plugged into a separate outlet, thus dispersing the electrical current. Brilliant! The children posed with their special ornaments this year, pulled out some of their favorites, and tree decorating commenced.
About 20 minutes later, a different strand of lights went out. This time, it was the second strand from the bottom. Mark replaced another fuse. Joyous Christmas carols played in the background.
The reindeer antlers, Santa hat, and mustache were located among the decorations, and we giggled at these adorable accessories:
Suddenly, another strand of lights went out. This time the darkened area was in the middle of the tree...
We kept decorating. We posed for pictures. We commented that we felt like we were on a hidden camera show or Saturday Night Live skit. Fa La La La La....
So when the top strand of lights went out on the tree awhile later, we weren't even fazed any more.
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| Yep, not a single light on the top 12 inches of the tree. |
I have since unwound hundreds of lights and tried to reconfigure the entire tree. It's been 3 days, and it's still not fixed correctly, but the random patches of white lights on Sparky are starting to grow on me. I'm going to take Luke's attitude in the below picture, and give Sparky a double thumbs up for providing an entertaining Christmas story and a newfound appreciation for artificial pre-lit Christmas trees!
