Several years ago, I found an awesome 9 foot pre-lit artificial Christmas tree for half-price the day after Christmas. It has been a great tree for me over the years. I have always stored the tree in the original box out in the shed in our back yard and have never had a problem. This year, however, when we started putting up the tree, I noticed a weird smell. Then as I put up the middle section I noticed a huge bundle of shredded paper. There was an enormous mouse nest in the middle section of the tree! We had trouble with mice in the shed throughout the summer, but it never had occurred to me that they would make a nest in my Christmas tree! We immediately put the tree back into the box, and took put it out in the garbage. Instead of buying another artificial tree at full price before Christmas, we decided to buy a cheap real tree for this year, then get a new tree at the after Christmas sales. We found a nice little tree, brought it home, had it all set up with lights and ornaments. Evan was in bed (luckily), I had fallen asleep on the couch while Nick was watching TV. I was quickly woken up by a crash. Yep, our tree fell over and all of the decorations fell with it! We got everything cleaned up, but were too tired to mess with it that night. We just leaned it up in the corner of the living room and hoped that it wouldn't fall over again. It turned out that the trunk of the tree was not straight. The next morning, Nick cut part of the trunk at a bit of an angle to make sure that the tree didn't lean as much. It worked. We were able to set the tree up (still with a bit of a lean), without it falling over again. Real trees are beautiful, but they are a lot of work!
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| Our Christmas tree without the decorations. |
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| Evan was checking out his new nativity scene. It doesn't stay this way for very long. In fact, we were missing Baby Jesus for a while, but he has been found. Unfortunately, we are still missing Joseph. |
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| Sitting on one of the Christmas decoration tubs. |