O Christmas Tree

Last year we were not the brightest and did some damage to our Christmas tree as we put it away. Some how (I'm too embarassed to say what happened exactly), we bent some of the branches on the bottom half of the tree. I was worried we'd possibly done something to the lights as well, mainly because that part of the tree always has issues with the lights when we put it up, even though it's only 4 years old. Anyway, it's our tradition to put the tree up the day after Thanksgiving, but I couldn't remember how much damage we had actually done last year. We woke up pretty late on Black Friday, about 10:00 a.m., which we haven't done for a very long time (I have to say that I had previously been sick and was still recovering, so I was pretty tired. I have no idea how Todd slept that late!). I was sad because we had decided not to wake up at 5:00 a.m. to go stand out in the cold and go shopping, and I wanted to go! I suddenly remembered that we might need a new Christmas tree and jumped out of bed and made Todd go grab our tree so I could test the lights. I found the plug and plugged it into the wall and NOTHING HAPPENED! I panicked! How could all the lights not work? Then I remembered that Sears (which opened at 4 a.m.) had a really nice looking tree for $99 and so we jetted off to see if we could still get one. Of course, on Black Friday at 11:30 a.m., most of the doorbuster items are long gone and the lady at Sear's just laughed at us when we asked if they had any trees left. So we went home to see if we could salvage our poor tree. We set up the bottom half, and amazingly, the branches we thought we had broken, seemed fine. They just needed a little help being propped up with some strategically placed paper. Now the next test was the lights. Todd found the plug and pulled on it just enough for us to discover that when I had plugged it in earlier that morning, it had been attached to absolutely nothing else. Sooooo, we plugged in all the little extensions and, TA-DUM! Our tree worked! It was a Christmas MIRACLE! We (and when I say we, I really mean I) decorated the tree and the house and all was well. We are so excited for Christmas!