To Tree or Not To Tree, That is the Question

The twins are avid and talented climbers. They are fast and they are clever. You may have noticed in previous posts that we have an ever-evolving arrangement of oh-so-attractive plastic storage boxes in our living room, used to block off furniture/window sills/radiators and thwart the climbing method du jour.

In our previous life, we used to put up a 12 foot Christmas tree, with lovely matching silver and white and glass. Small children from our neighborhood used to stop in to see our tree. You can see it in the background of this photo. (How happy am I to have a legitimate reason to post this photo for all to see!! Haha!)

In addition, we used to put up a super tacky -- but much beloved -- white tree with Star Wars ornaments. The photo below is from 2000 as I don't seem to have a more recent version. (And we also put up some other minor trees . . . perhaps we had some misguided energy.)

Obviously, we Relcuks love us some Christmas Tree. But what to do this year? Where to put the tree so that the twins can enjoy it -- but not kill themselves climbing on it? And what tree? The 12 foot won't fit as our Deluxe Apartment in the Sky has only normal height ceilings. The white tree would fit -- seriously is a shiny white tree really what we want for our first family Christmas??

Daddy Relcuk vetoed a live tree because he's only had two in his life. The first was in his childhood and spewed forth some sort of live critters. The second was in the early years of our marriage and it almost collapsed on him.

So, not wanting to go out and purchase yet another artificial tree, we decide to just deal with the white tree for this year. We`ll have years to craft some sort of credible explanation about it for the kids. Alas, the white comes out of the box looking . . . brownish. Like it has spent the months in storage since last Christmas smoking. Or soaking in coffee. Look at the branches on the left side of this pic:

We're not sure how it happened but we have some ideas:

We kept on assembling the now-brownish-white tree, saying that it wasn't that bad, we can put the icky branches in the back and hide them against the wall . . . We are not wasteful, we are cheap and we wanted to make this tree work, rather than buying a new one. At some point though, one of us just says that we have enough money to get a non-smoking tree.

Daddy Relcuk then insists that he can put up just the top part of the 12 foot tree to make a smaller tree. Mommy objects vehemently, based on her past experience with Daddy's over-engineered duct-tape-rigged solutions. Daddy tries it out and, much to Mommy`s surprise, it works! An acceptable and straightforward solution.

We put the tree in the living room, with no decorations for swift movement/removal if needed. We'll give it a few days and see how W and R treat the undecorated tree. Note that we still have the charming storage bins flanking the tree. This is to prevent the twins from climbing on the radiator and falling on the tree.

We`ll do an update soon once the tree is decorated and we see how much destruction is going to take place . . .