Bah Humbug

Christmas has always been my favorite holiday, and I always look forward to putting up my 5 ft. (give or take a few inches) Christmas tree the weekend of Thanksgiving. I love decorating the tree and making it just right. Needless to say, I was so excited when Ben took the Christmas boxes out of the shed for me last weekend. So on Sunday afternoon, I went to town working on the tree. I got the tree up and unpacked the lights. Things were going well until I went to got to the cardboard box with my ornaments in it. I noticed the tape on the box had come undone, but I didn't think much of it. That is... until I opened the box and saw the gazillion ants and unidentified bugs crawling all over the place. I seriously almost gagged right then and there.

I went to find my big, yellow, rubber gloves - you know, the gloves I use no more than twice a year - and tried to clean the christmas bulbs. Unfortunately, the cleaning mixture I used completely stripped all the paint off the bulbs. So, in the trash they went...

I managed to clean off my other ornaments and set them out to dry. In the meantime, I washed my beautiful and much-loved tree skirt (since it was in the box with all the creepy bugs) and also washed my only set of Christmas-themed place mats. When I took them out of the wash, the seam on the tree skirt was completely ripped down the center, and the stuffing that went inside the skirt was everywhere! And to boot, the stitching on two of the placemats came undone. So, in the trash they went...

I tried to stay positive (which was extremely hard at this point), and I somehow managed to get the Christmas lights up on the tree, along with the tree topper. But that was all I could do at the time, I was so exhausted and disappointed. And this is what my tree looked like at the end of Sunday evening:

Next day... I go to take all my Christmas ornaments off the kitchen counter and put them in a container to take them to the tree. In the process, I somehow manage to mishandle and drop my very favorite Lenox Waterford Crystal Wedding ornament that symbolized mine and Ben's first Christmas together after we got married. This *very* expensive ornament was given to us by a friend as a wedding gift. Okay, at this point, I was in tears. I swept up all the broken pieces into the dustpan, but couldn't bear to throw it away just yet.

The ornament was a thick, glass ornament in the shape of a house, and had two pewter lovebirds at the bottom of the ornament. When Ben got home that day, he picked up the piece of glass that had the two lovebirds attached to it, and said to me "Look Honey, the two lovebirds were strong enough to survive and stay in one piece". Okay, so I'll give him an "A" for effort, and he did make me feel better for a little bit. But it's been a few days since then, and I just can't seem to get back into the Christmas tree decorating spirit. My tree still looks like the picture shown above.

Honestly, the only thing worse looking than this is Charlie Brown's Christmas Tree!! The little snowman topper looks so lonely, huh? Oh, and my ipod player that is in the bottom right corner of the picture... well I have been meaning to gather all my Christmas music and categorize it on my ipod so we can play it. I'm sure you can imagine how well that chore is coming along. So, all I can really say for now is "Bah Humbug". Hopefully my Christmas spirit comes back soon!!

And P.S. To my sister-in-law, Jessica, who is due to have her first baby girl very, very soon... congratulations, we are so happy for you and Jason!