The Rise and Fall...and Rise of Andre the Giant Tree

Just like most of you, we are in the process of decorating and preparing for the Christmas season by dragging all the Christmas stuff out and sprucing the place up with some holiday cheer and twinkle lights. Over the past couple of years, I have toned down the decor a bit in hopes of creating a more simple and uncluttered look as opposed to the house looking like the Target Christmas section exploded in my den. One thing I don't tone down, however, is my tree. It's must meet two very important criteria. #1 - It must be BIG, TALL, and FAT. #2 - It must be BIG, TALL and FAT.

As we do every year, we went to Home Depot the Saturday after Thanksgiving to pick the out this year's tree. This usually is a great source of stress for Da Hubby and usually takes more than an afternoon to accomplish, so we completely clear our schedule for the day to shop.

I am one of those people who weighs my options and needs to know that whatever I buy is the best deal for my money and is exactly what I want. My poor Dewayne, bless his sweet, little heart, usually has to cut the string binding the trees on at least 15-20, then precede to hold them up for at least 5 minutes of inspection time each before I find that "perfect tree." (He HATES this day.)

So this year we pack the kids in "Lefty", our truck, and head to the nearest HD. Amazingly enough, I fell in love with the first tree we found (That will never, ever happen again.), piled it on top of our ride, and headed to the house to begin bringing the giant to life.

We named our 11 1/2 foot tree Andre .(BTW - if you have not seen this movie - Go. Right now. Get it. Watch it. Laugh your boody off. It my favorite movie of all time.) We unleashed it and let the branches fall out for the rest of the day and then on Sunday began to decorate it.

The rest? Well, I'll let the pictures tell the story.

Tree's all done! So pretty! Let's all gather around and sing "Silent Night". No, not really, but it was all so picture-y and Currier and Ives...that is, until the next morning...

Tree fall down. Sad. The kids thought Christmas was going to be cancelled. Looking back, it was pretty funny, but at the time it royally sucked.

Poor thing, it had a rough day. Dewayne had to come home from work and pick it back up for me. It weighs a good 60 pounds or more.

We broke around 20 ornaments. We have collected an ornament a year for each of the kids to take with them when they had their own trees one day. It made me sad to lose those, especially the baby's first Christmas ones. (Yes, I cried. I am a completely sentimental person. I am fine though. Thanks for your concern.) We are hoping that some we can glue back together.

Anyway, after making sure the trunk didn't split in half and figuring out that the tree had shifted in the base, we secured it again, pulled it back up and took all the ornaments off and put them back on again. I think it's going to stay put now....I hope. :)

You gotta love Christmas!