Someone somewhere must have decided the quickest way to ruin holiday joy would be the invention of the christmas tree light. We have an artificial tree. We normally get it up about 2 weeks before Christmas, but this year I decided in my push to actually enjoy the holidays to do it earlier. Silly me. We got out the decorations & tree Sunday night, but it got late and we put the kids to bed promising to put up the decorations on Monday for Family Home Evening.
On Monday night we got the tree assembled but not lit. Last year I spent about 1 1/2 hours stringing the tree then unstringing it having not tested the lights before I started, so I was eager to not do that this year. I tested them separately and together and they worked mostly-a few bulbs here or there on most strands and one whole strand was dead. I like to work from the bottom of the tree and go up having the lights lit as you work. Karl wanted to go from the top down-not lit while working with his method. We ran out of lights. Always eager to conquer a challenge Karl spent about an hour fixing the other light strand, wrapped it round the tree and plugged it in. The tree was striped. Sections of it worked, others were dead.
Again the girls went to bed with the promise that tomorrow we would decorate with ornaments. I went to the store today to buy more lights. I brought them home and started trying to figure out the 3d light puzzle. Oddly enough while I was unstringing the sections I decided to plug them in again. I was able to get a whole unlit section back and running again. Yeah me! Now I had to wrap it back round the tree. I was able to do that with both the unlit sections so the whole thing is lit up nicely. Now I just have to get the kids to clean their room so we can do ornaments. But by now, I have lost a little of that magical feeling. Oh well. I will crank up some carols and start tossing on the glass bulbs!
Terilynn began several years ago to simply (using the largest, drum size garbage bags) to put our tree away "whole" with the lights still on it in place. Granted this isn't perfect in terms of lights burning out, but we get less burn-outs from less manipulation of the strands (rolling them up and untangling them can't help but shorten life). Also, it makes for less of a yearly puzzle to figure out.
ReplyDeleteWe were excited to have Ryan, Ellen, Zach and Becky here for Thanksgiving (which was at her folks house across town). When they were here before Turkey Day Terilynn had the fall decorations up and when they returned Saturday she had the tree and other interior Christmas stuff up.
Both kids loved the lights. As with your two, it just seems more like Christmas with kids around to enjoy it. Good luck with all your decorating and traditions -- it is remembered and loved.