The road to hell is paved with good intentions, or in our case, shattered Christmas tree stands.

The saying “the older you are – the quicker it goes” is absolutely true. 

Christmas is 12 days away. How in the holy hell did that happen? I started planning and shopping in like August so how am I still not ready? And what in the hell happened to October? Did we even have October? 

I was talking to Ruby last Thursday and we were going through the calendar for the next few weeks trying to figure out schedules and events.  We throw a Christmas party every year and this year we are holding it on the 22nd. Then we have  Swedish Christmas on the 24th followed by Canadian Christmas on the 25th – so we have three big things to plan for…on top of all the normal shit (getting gifts, baking, decorating, wrapping, visiting, etc.)

We do this every year – but somehow (and I am starting to suspect early onset Alzheimer’s) I am still surprised at how much stuff there is to do, and how quickly Christmas seems to sneak up on me. (I can totally see about 35 years down the road and I can say with pretty high confidence that yes, I will absolutely be the crazy old lady standing in the gift wrap aisle with no pants on and a live squirrel in my purse.)

So – knowing what had to get done – and knowing (as of last Thursday) we really only had two weekends to get it together, I kind of started to lose my shit and go into a full-blown Type-A freak out. I made lists and had both weekends scheduled to the minute. What I did not schedule was me getting the stomach flu. Saturday was a blur of hot baths, naps and waking up to little faces planted three inches from mine asking if I was okay.

I bounced back a bit on Sunday,  so we ventured out to get a tree only to discover that apparently everyone else in Calgary had as well…on Saturday. All that was left were these sad-ass looking, short, mostly dead, spindly trees.  We drove around to a few places before we finally ended up at a local grocery store that had some okay looking trees left. We grabbed the tallest thing we could find and Anders ran in to pay while I waited with the tree and the kids.

By this point in the day, patience was thin and the kids were at their limit so I decided to haul the nine foot tree – by myself with three-year-old twins in tow – across a busy parking lot to the van. Not one part of that plan was well thought out. Three steps into it Molly fell and started to cry at full Molly volume (which is on par with a standing next to a police car with the siren on full blast) and Max ran off the sidewalk straight in front of a Suburban. 

We were such a mess and making such a scene that some nice guy actually came up and offered to take the tree for me. I am programed to decline help for some reason so without even thinking I went into my normal “oh thanks – but no…I am good. It is fine, I got this, but thanks!” followed by (what I am guessing was) a slightly crazy looking smile, and an even crazier was sounding laugh. The guy was probably like “yeah lady – you look like you got this alright! One kid was almost a grill ornament and the other is frozen to the sidewalk in a pool of her own blood - yup – super great job!”

We finally made it back to the van and I managed to throw the kids, the tree and most of Molly’s shredded pants into the van. Anders got caught in the line-up that never ends so when he finally made it back to the van, we had all had enough and basically peeled out of there on two wheels.

Once we got home – and determined to somehow still salvage this and make some great family memories – we started to put the tree up.

We wrestled that bitch of a tree for a good forty minutes. Pretty quickly into the process we figured out that the tree has a pretty serious bend about halfway up the trunk. No matter how we positioned it - it  looked cock-eyed and like it was about to go over at any minute. At this point, Anders and I were speaking to each other in one syllable words only, and tension was pretty high. We finally admitted defeat and agreed that no matter what we did the tree was going to look a little bit like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

The whole time this is going on, the kids kept running in and out of the room to check on our progress and see if the tree was ready to decorate. They were so excited, we knew that even though we wanted to set the tree on fire in the yard, we had to suck it up and pull it together for the kids. So - we threw on some Christmas music, poured straight rum into our glasses, gave the eggnog to the kids and started to decorate.

Here she is...with a heavy lean to the right.

We actually had fun for the next two hours or so as we slowly made the tree look pretty decent for what we were working with. Max was so cute – he followed me around with the vacuum asking over and over again, “you make enough mess now for me to clean up Momma?” as he sucked up every last needle on the floor, possibly some ornaments and definitely most of the dog’s kibble. Molly hung about thirty ornaments in a two foot square area but was thrilled with herself and thought it looked beautiful.

With the tree finally done, we headed upstairs to get the kids cleaned up and ready for bed.  About 20 minutes into the bath we heard a big crash from downstairs. You guessed it…the fucking tree fell over. I am not even kidding. The weight of the tree along with the angle must have been too much for the piece of crap $15 stand as it total cracked and blew apart sending the tree onto our coffee table and couch.

The whole Normal Rockwell vision of a perfect Christmas is quickly dying at the Jonsson household. I really wanted this year to be perfect for the kids since it is the first year that they really truly seem to get the whole Christmas thing and they are both so excited. But between the piece of shit tree, the scary-ass elf who despite bringing a gift every morning still manages to have a bad reputation, and the lack of completed baking – this is not shaping up to be the most successful Christmas.

Here is Tomte...trying his damnedest to get back in the good books. As you can see from the size of the calendar it isn't like he is bringing craptastic shit from the dollar store - he is bringing some quality stuff. Short of a real pony for Molly and an actual monster truck for Max I don't really know what else he could do. I think Tomte may have to be retired for 2013.

I did book Santa to come and attend our Christmas party – and no pressure here, but pretty much everything is riding on him. And based on the way Christmas has been going so far, my expectations are low. I am going to predict that he will be someone who is unemployed the other 11 months of the year, possibly homeless, has some sort of dependency problem and most likely has visible tattoos.