A Slight Problem

The other night, I had just put the girls to bed and was cleaning up the kitchen when I heard a tremendous crash in the living room. Well, it started as a slight rustle, then turned into what sounded like two or three ornaments falling off the tree, and then became a tremendous crash. I froze in my tracks and basically knew what I was going to see when I went into the living room. Sure enough, this was what I found:

As one of my friends said on Instagram when I posted this picture: Pretty much the saddest thing I've ever seen.

It was so crazy—obviously nobody was in the living room. Not even Belle. I have no idea what caused it to give in and flop over at that exact moment. All I know was I said out loud: "Oh my God." That was enough to get Elsa out of bed. She came to the top of the stairs, saw the destruction and immediately started bawling her little eyes out. Something I think I was tempted to do myself!

Of course, Elsa bawling her eyes out was what got Claire out of bed, but Claire took it pretty much in stride. She seemed a little sad at first, probably mostly because Elsa was. But she didn't cry. Her reaction was basically the three-year-old equivalent of shrugging and going back to bed. As usual, I was struck by how different these two girls are!


As I was trying to get Elsa calmed down and back to bed, the first thing she asked me about was the Christmas ornament we bought at Disney World—a green ball shaped like Mickey Mouse's head, ears and all, with a Christmasy Mickey perched on top. She was devastated at the thought that that ornament might have been smashed. I told her it might be okay, but if it wasn't we would get another one just like it online. And that I would let her know what happened as soon as I started the excavation and found it.

I could not have been happier to see this sight as I was digging through the mess—the Disney ornament, perfect and whole. : ) I went straight upstairs and whispered to Elsa that Mickey was just fine. I think she went to sleep happy after that.

So here's the tree after I got it set back up and straightened. I was fully expecting to find nearly every ornament that had been on the front of the tree smashed underneath it, but they fared surprisingly well. For some reason, it seems that the ornaments on the sides of the tree were most likely to get smashed. The ones on the front were mostly intact. Not sure how or why that was, but I'll take it!

All in all I think we lost about 20 ornaments—mostly the plain and boring glass ball variety. Not a single one of our "special" ornaments that we got as gifts or while on trips were broken. And thanks to some suggestions from Instagram, I used some twine to anchor the tree to the wall, so this wouldn't happen again. Tying up the tree for extra stability might just have to be a new family tradition!