De-decorate - or is it re-decorate?

Well, last week we had one of the more interesting things that ever happened to a Christmas tree happen to us. We have had our tree decorated and lit since the Sunday after Thanksgiving and it is holding up great. All of it except for the lights that is. My wife noticed one of the strands was out about a week and a half ago so she just unplugged it and plugged it back in again. It sprung back to life and all was well. Then our oldest son plugged in the lights one evening and all of the light strands were out save one - the one on the very bottom. No amount of unplugging and plugging back in would save us now and we had to de-decorate the tree last Thursday night. There was a sense of urgency to it all because we had friends coming over Friday night and wanted to enjoy the tree with them.

So, we did it. Of course I commented that hanging lights for a second time would be the death of me (less stress this time around), but we got through it all right. It turns out that there were two strands that bit the dust. Thankfully we had another working strand of lights in the basement so we were only down one strand of lights. This still causes my wife great pain as she likes a little Christmas tree with her lights, but the alternative could have been much worse.

All has been well since. Thankfully. Because if I have to hang lights again I think I will end up in the hospital....or worse.