Santa is SO messing with me right now

We have a new motto around here..."Remember, we don't fart money anymore." If you've seen the SNL (or maybe it was MadTV) with Oprah walking around with money flying out of her butt, you know what I'm talking about. That's kind of how we acted about money for a while there and now we just can't, so sometimes one of us has to remind the other that we don't fart money. For example: We no longer decide that taking all of us to Disneyland would be fun for Christmas in a few weeks, let's do it! That was one of the things that makes me cringe. But NO LONGER! We are oaks. We will not bend. We do not. Fart. Money.

When we got our fake tree out of the shed there was a hole in the bag. I waited until we (by we I mean he) got that huge bag up the hill and onto the porch and then I pointed the hole out. If I'd said anything sooner, that bag would sit in the shed until we die. Turns out the hole was the least of the problems. Inside there was a big nest. A big rodent nest. On the one hand, we didn't see any rodent. On the other hand, there clearly had been a rodent. I'm all Dude, we don't fart money, we cannot just take the tree into our real trees and dump it. And he's all AMY IT IS A RAT'S NEST. And he was right, the poop in the bottom of the bag was REALLY BIG. I don't know for sure, but I'm thinking that rats don't even poop that big. I don't know what does. I don't want to know.

We shook the rodent of unusual size's poop out of the fake tree and got it set up. Gross? Yep. But, again, we cant' go buy a new tree, so it is what it is. Then we realized that the "pre-lit" tree was no longer lighting.

I'm a big fan of well decorated trees. I'm by no means a perfectionist, as you may have noticed, but I like some color/theme/pattern that pulls it all together. With the pre-lit little white lights I always used red bows, lots of gingerbread mens and womens, candy canes, and red beads. Super cute. Even with the variety of children's hand-made-with-love-and-snot ornaments thrown in. Here is what I'm talking about: This is our tree from a few years ago. Glorious, isn't it?Here are my sweet daughters in front of it. One of them gave me a crotch shot for Christmas that year. I'll let you figure out which one. Hahahahaha...that's so funny, Kiki, even as an emotional teenager, you've got to find the humor in that one. Right? Kiki? Now I have no white lights, which means I have NO THEME. All I have in my stash of lights are the big multi colored lights. Big, multi colored lights are NOT going to go with my theme. Let's look at it one more time...

Sigh. I love that tree.

Here's what I ended up with this year...

But WAIT, it actually does get EVEN BETTER! Now all of the strings of colorful lights have blown their fuses. We changed them all and they blew again, so now I have NO lights and a funky jacked up tree with ROUS poop in it.

I'm having a hard time getting in the Christmas spirit with an unlit tree. None of this dampened my kid's excitement to decorate, which was nice.

I can't believe that Leanna went to that tree auction and didn't buy me anything in my moment of need. It's not too late, sister, you could just decorate a lovely fresh tree with some of your past year's ornaments and show up on my door step. I'm not proud. I'll take it.