one lovely saturday our family of 7 heads out to get a christmas tree. naomi would not come without her little doggie wrigley to make our family outing complete. it was nice for a minute until levi hit max in the face with his beaded necklace he got from the parade. levi being defiant wouldn't hand it up so max ripped it out of his hands (which made levi mad). thirty seconds later max and noah start arguing about i don't know what and noah jammed max with his elbow because max wouldn't stop doing whatever it was that noah told him to stop doing...tears-crying-yelling.... and we aren't even to the tree farm yet which is only 10 minutes from our house. finally we pull into the tree farm! thankfully they are still selling trees or i don't know what would have happened. the first field we drive up to we get out of the truck and the first thing kevin sees is this cute small tree that would be lovely in our crowded living room. we agree a small tree would be nice this year so we tell the kids and marlee starts to cry her eyes out. "it isn't big enough" "i don't like it" and so on. levi is ranting that it is stupid and saying "i don't like that cokesoke bosoke ugly tree.
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naomi is walking around with wrigley who poops a not so pretty poop. she faithfully picks up the poop in the bag (which is like diarrhea) and puts it into the truck. i keep looking around and the trees are few so i walk over to the next field. kev drives over there and smells the poop and you can imagine what happened to that bag of ----. and so the story goes on.
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i walk through the second field with most of the kids (kevin and noah are in the truck) marlee finds a cute tree and it is all good until tell everyone to come around for a picture-which i like to do every year of the kids. the only 3 who show up are marlee (because it is her tree that she found so now she is happy) naomi who is pretty content, and noah who can't wait to cut the tree down. so i got a picture of three of them anyway.
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max is hiding behind a really fat tree (that we loved but it would take up half the living room and had things living in it)crying terribly because he wanted that tree. the mean mom in me was like "seriously, get over it and come here and get in the picture before my head explodes!"
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levi was getting too cold and went into the truck. i was so annoyed that i told kevin to just cut it down. so noah starts to cut it with the sawzall and it dies. kev didn't think it died so he got down to finish the job and it was dead. noah goes to get the hand saw (which we have learned to take because this isn't the first time it has died on us) and levi is in the truck jumping over the seats with the saw in his hands laughing like a crazy nut. he ran away from me before i could strap him in his seat yelling hahaha... i sit in the truck because i half want to cry and have lost hope of this being fun and getting a good picture. kevin gets it cut so i get a proud moment picture of him and noah.
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then the tree guy comes with rope to tie it onto the top of our truck. i let them deal with it (because i was rounding up all the other kids into their seats. i see that naomi has dog poop on her snow pants so she freaks and takes off her boots and snowpants in the field. noah has dog poop on his coat somehow. i lift up wrigley and he smells so check him out and his butt is full of poop. gross stuck to his fur messy poop. i grab the first thing i see (which ends up being a school paper of marlee's) and try to wipe of the poop. it is just too messy for any good cleanup. marlee sees the paper and starts yelling at me that it is her special paper and how terrible i am that i used her paper and on and on and on... i can't get wrigley clean so i walk him around-i was actually ready to walk home but i had to pay the tree guy and he wasn't around yet and i didn't want our family to look completely nuts-and waited till the boys had the tree tied up. somehow we all got in the truck. i was steaming mad because i didn't get our "happy" family picture and wrigley was down by my feet with his dirty behind. we drive out ready to go home and banish the kids to their rooms and naomi starts yelling "the tree is falling off!" and by golly it was just hanging by a rope off the side of the truck. can this get any better? it is usually my job but kev knew i had it and didn't even ask at the tree farm for my help. we get it reattached and make it home. of course with fighting and antagonizing done by a few sweet children with a few lovely punches again because they just can't resist themselves. seriously. i can't believe this is our tree story. but we are a real family with real crap that goes on and the sweet picture didn't happen but a memory that has traumatized my brain will always be with here with us. i hope you enjoy this little snippet of our lives and know that every family has their stuff. we just don't see it or don't want to. i need to remind myself it is the birthday of our King we are celebrating. this "stuff" can't take away from why we celebrate in the first place. so MERRY CHRISTMAS!
amyjo
