Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Christmas Stumps


Ever since we've been married, Freddo and I have had a little tradition. The day after Thanksgiving we head out to our local tree farm (aka Home Depot) and pick out our Christmas tree.

The Hubs has always had a fake tree growing up, so this little adventure has been so exciting for him. My family never had a particular day we'd get our tree growing up... sometimes it was early in the season... other times it was later... In fact, I remember one year waiting until Christmas Eve to look for a tree... Some boy scouts felt bad for us and gave us our tree for free that year!

This little tradition Freddo and I have started is the best of both worlds for us... Freddo gets a real tree and I get to enjoy all of the twinkly lights and pine smells for as long as possible. 

Every year things go swimmingly... we sleep in, grab some Starbucks, take our time really hunting out the perfect tree, then come home to a cozy little house where we spend the rest of the day decorating our tree and baking yummy Christmas cookies... It's kind of perfect. The day is always so romantical and lovely.

That is, it was perfect until 2010. That year we bought a Christmas tree that was a little to fat for it's own good. The stump of this particular tree was knobby and when we finally got it home we realized that it wouldn't fit into our tree stand...

Freddo decided to attack the problem head on... Unfortunately, apartment living in the city doesn't really lend itself to being a keeper of certain carpentry tools... After all, that's what landlords are for. So he was left with the next best option, a dollar store steak knife.

In my most "gracious" (read: cranky snarky naggy) voice I calmly (read: aggressively, passionately and loudly) told Freddo that his steak knife idea was a bad one.

I'm not proud of this, just keepin' it real. Go ahead... "bless my heart"...

*Side note* Sometimes marriage is the worst. It makes your ugly and shows you how selfish you are. That "sometimes" happened in 2010.

We both sauntered to our corners and put up a fight. Four hours later and we finally got the stump removed thanks to some borrowed tools, Freddo's muscles and my ability to finally keep my cranky mouth shut.

Once the tree was up and we sat there on our couch practically passed out from sheer exhaustion we vowed to each other that a day like that would never happen again.

I know that marriage isn't always supposed to make you happy.
A huge part of it is actually meant to make you holy....Helping you learn how to set aside yourself and truly love the other person unselfishly.

In 2010, we promised to work on doing that.

Now every year when we take out our Christmas decorations and place the very last ornament on the tree, we'll reach into the box and take out the tree stump of 2010 and remember what our little tradition has taught us about our marriage.


Praying that your Christmas season is "stumps" free,

Hans

1 comment:

SisterlyLove said...

What a good reminder! Thanks so much for posting!

Genevieve