Our Christmas Tree Comes Full Circle

 Wow, I haven't posted since November??  We decorated before Nathan and Luke went back after Thanksgiving, so it's felt Christmas-y around here.  This may be the last year for our tree, though.  I thought I would commemorate it here, in all it's glory!

When Bob and I got married in 1993, he brought this much smaller tree pictured above into the marriage.  When we were stationed in Colorado, before we had Nathan, we got permits and cut down our own trees for 2 years in the national forest, which was fun.  (But we decided dealing with a live tree really wasn't all that much fun, so we have never had a live one again, lol.)  So we kept putting up the same small tree.  (And isn't Luke adorable here in 2005, in his footie pajamas!  This was an actual printed off picture from an actual roll of film, which is why I couldn't tell I had cut him in half, lol.  I never was that great of a photographer, but at least now with digital cameras, I can try again!)

The small tree was really hard to assemble, the lights were a total hassle to string, and taking it all back down again was the absolute worst.  I grew to loathe that tree, although as I look at this picture, it doesn't seem as bad as it does in my memories, lol. 

Finally, in 2006, we bought a new tree!  It was so easy to assemble, and you just plugged the different cords in different places, and voila, lights!   That was great for quite a few years, but then about 4 years ago, we started noticing that one section just wasn't lighting up when everything got plugged in.  And the next year, another section . . . and another one.  When we plugged everything in this year, there were huge swaths of darkness all over, including the entire top 2 sections. 

So what else was there to do but string lights??  Now we not only have the hassle of stringing lights,but also we're working around the old, non-working ones!  It does look pretty again though.  I don't think it's going to make the trip back down to the basement again though.   Some of the branches have broken, so they just fall down, instead of sticking out, so if you really look closely, it looks pretty shabby.  I think an artificial tree lasting 12 Christmases is pretty good--although our original small tree lasted 18 years. 

Merry Christmas!!