Bundle of Brooks Blessings: The Story of the 3 Trees

It has always been the tradition that the tree goes up the Friday after Thanksgiving. Given our Thanksgiving, this thought might have been a little ambitious, nonetheless I am BIG on tradition! Finally feeling better, I spent the entire day on Friday sanitizing(aka cleaning) our whole house to leave no sign of how our week had gone. Early in the morning I talked to Emerson about staying up with me after Braelyn went to bed that night to help me put up the tree. This conversation took place long before I was totally exhausted but there was no way I was going to disappoint her. She and I had bought the new tree at Hobby Lobby the weekend before. Since this was the first time I had put this one together, it took be a little longer to figure out, in fact I started wondering early on if the tree might not have been made correctly. I finally got it together and Emerson went to putting on ornaments. She was so cute because she was very particular about where each ornament went. I had already decided that I would only get out one box of ornaments while she was up and do the rest myself later given how late it was. The more I looked at the tree I was a little disappointed with it because I felt that the lights were very unevenly spaced on the tree but figured it would look better when fully decorated. On Sunday, I was walking through the entryway and Shawn asked me why I was looking at the tree funny. I said that I just really wasn't happy with the lights on it. His response was that I should just quit looking and that the lights were fine. A few minutes later he said "The reason you think the lights are unevenly spaced are because this entire section isn't working!" Sure enough he was right...2 days after putting up a brand new tree it already had lights out! When I called Hobby Lobby on Monday morning they said that they would be happy to replace it. This meant all the ornaments had to come off, the tree had to come down. End of tree number 1. While at Hobby Lobby to exchange, I happened to notice that the same section of lights was out on the display tree as well. I got my money back and headed to Garden Ridge. I found a very similar tree and raced home to assemble. When I got it up and fluffed, it was quite possibly the ugliest tree I have ever seen! It was like whole branches were missing. Down came that tree, back in the box, back to Garden Ridge...end of tree number 2! I then headed to Lowe's found tree number 3, raced home, put the ornaments right back where Emerson had them, picked her up from school, and she is none the wiser that it is not the tree she decorated! The things we do for our kids! Had it just been me and Shawn, getting my money back at Hobby Lobby would have been the final step this year and would have started fresh next year!