A Kit-Kat Moment

Tuesday night, Libby's right eye started swelling and tearing pretty badly. It was really irritated and bothering her. Wednesday morning, it looked worse, so just in case it was pink eye, I kept her home with me for a "Mama and Libby Day". We had a lot of fun together and I really love when I get to spend some one-on-one time with each of them. I get to know them so much more than I already do, if you can believe that.

We had our Christmas tree we bought last weekend in the stand, but not decorated yet. I decided to have Libby help me start. We put on the lights (she and Drew decided we should have "rainbow" ones instead of just white ones this year) and even our old bubble lights-- so cool. And we even made some lights blink. So, it's basically a Vegas-style tree. Actually it was really pretty. We added the "beads" (a.k.a. garland) and left it at that. I wanted Drew and Darrell to help us add the ornaments as a family. After dinner that night, Libby's eye magically looked normal again, so obviously not pink eye-- perhaps allergies? We put the ornaments on together and it looked great. Libby had more fun unwrapping each ornament, while Drew wanted to put them on the tree (basically all on 1 branch). The kids went to bed, Darrell and I vacuumed and cleaned up and as we were going to bed ourselves at aroun 11:45, D checked the tree's water and it needed some. After he watered it, you will NOT believe what happened...

THE ENTIRE TREE FELL OVER ON ITS SIDE INTO THE LIVING ROOM!! Yep, I'm serious here. The whole thing just lost its balance somehow or maybe we weighed it down too much or the fresh cut was not level making it unlevel when we forced it down to the bottom of the stand or our older stand wasn't cutting it or WHATEVER the case, THE ENTIRE TREE FELL OVER! I just covered my eyes because I couldn't look. I didn't want to see the damage as it was lifted up. I just said, "I CANNOT believe this."

Fortunately, since it fell on carpet, we didn't lose too many of the 6000 ornaments on the tree. But of course the ones we lost were special ones, like the Senorita from Cancun on our honeymoon, one of Drew's "1st Christmas" keepsake Lenox ornaments from Maw Maw, a pineapple from our 1st trip to Williamsburg, and others. This made me stop and think (after I got over the shock of it all) about ornaments and how important they really are to our family. Darrell and I used to give each other ornaments as gifts every Christmas before we had Libby and Drew. And we would make them pertinant to what happened that year. For example, he bought me a beautiful bride one the year we got married, I bought him a train one when he started working at the Federal Railroad Administration, etc.

We ended up having to take EVERYTHING, EVEN THE GARLAND AND LIGHTS off the tree because it won't stay in the stand for whatever reason. Oh, and we did this with only 3 hands because Darrell had to hold up the tree and use only 1 hand. It was not fun. But you know me-- I grabbed the camera and told Darrell that this was definitely "blog worthy"!

Oddly enough, this has actually happened to me before. When I was younger, we got a tree that was not agreeing with the stand and after it was up and decorated, one of our cats, Kit Kat, decided to climb it and down it went. We never could get it back in the stand right, so they roped it to the wall!! I had to call my mom today to tell her that I had experienced a "Kit Kat Moment" and we laughed and laughed. That did make me feel better. ;)

before:




after: