The Johnson Family Luck

Ever since my husband and I got married, we joke about having the "Johnson Family Luck". And it's not good luck either! For instance, we look at 4 didfferent houses for rent and we choose the one with horrible plumbing issues and the worst landlord ever! There are 5 boxes of a single item we want from the store, we choose the ONE box with missing or broken parts. We are in a Drs office filled with people and our chart is the ONLY one that gets lost. All of the above are true and has happened to us at least once before. So why would we expect a break from such luck during the holidays?? That would be silly wouldn't it??
On the weekend after Thanksgiving, we headed out, as a family, to pick out the perfect Christmas tree. We found a beautiful tree and choked up $60 for it. But we were satisfied with it.

Nice tree huh? Well, it died less than 2 weeks later. I was watering it and all. It sucked up so much water in the first week that I believe it was already dying when we purchased it. It stopped drinking water and dried up very quickly and was soon a fire hazard so we couldn't even light it up. We went to the tree tent on Sunday and told them about our dead tree and the guy told us to come back on Tuesday to get a new tree. Good deal. Well good deal if you don't have the Johnson Family Luck!! I had a feeling the transaction wouldn't go as smoothly as planned. We drove in traffic for 35 minutes in 40 degree weather, with the back of the truck open b/c the dead tree was in the back. We get to the tent and guess what?? It is completely EMPTY!!! They packed up and left! My husband left the number home, so we had to sit in traffic again to get home. I was just about in tears over this crap. Thinking my son will not have a tree this year on Christmas morning, even though we paid for one. We get home and my husband called the guy and he said they packed up and left b/c they completely sold out of trees. He said he would make a few calls to find us a tree and give us a call back. He called back and said he got in touch with the owner and the owner saved us a tree. Oh Joy!! Yeah sure, remember, the Johnson Family Luck! LOL! We were told to meet him at the tent at 7pm. We went to dinner and then drove to the tent. Got there at 6:45. My husband immediately noticed a tree, lying on the ground under the tent. "That's probably our tree", I say. "No, it can't be." My husband says. I love how he gives even the most unprofessional people the benefit of the doubt. I need to try that. However, I didn't expect anything more from these people at this point. I wouldn't have been surprised to find out that he just threw our tree under the tent, in the mud and left it there for us to put in the truck, with no help, no apology, no nothing. My husband wanted to sit there, so we sat until 7:20 and no one ever showed up. That was our tree. So we open the truck and get ready to pull out the dead tree and it just keeps getting better! A cop pulls up!! We told him what was going on and the cop told us that they were gone ever since early Monday! Which led me to believe that on Sunday, the guy had no intentions of giving us another tree. He knew they would be gone by Tuesday. This just angers me to no end! So the cop waited while we picked up and carried our tree through the mud and into our truck. We drove home and pulled out the tree and layed our eyes on the ugliest, mishapened tree ever. Okay, maybe that's an exaggeration, but it certainly wasn't the tree we paid $60 for, or a tree that we would even consider paying $60 for! It was lopsided, has several bald spots and one HUGE spot that takes up half the tree. It was alse growing what looked like another tree out of one side. Obviously, it was a tree that they could not sell, so they gave it to us.

So, first we were angry...VERY ANGRY! In fact, I still have a little anger left over. Just thinking that a person would try to cheat another right around the holidays. And he knew we had a little boy! However, we are experts at making lemonade when life gives you lemons! I mean, we've had years of experience in that area ;) So after maybe an hour of ranting and complaining and writing out a plan of revenge (lol!) we got to work on that lemonade. First thing's first...Chopping off the extra tree our tree was growing and making this thing resemble a Christmas tree.

This took well over 2 hours. My husband even had to take the tree outside (at 11pm) to saw off some extra limbs. Oh, don't let me forget to mention that the weight from the extra branches broke our tree stand! So this tree that we didn't think was worth $60 ended up costing us more money in the end. Finally, we brought the tree inside and creatively positioned it to hide the bald spot and the turned in limbs on the tree. That took alot of creativity and some well thought out positioning of ornaments ;) But in the end, I'd like to think that we made this tree look like a star and it is no longer a misfit!

So, I had so many plans for revenge, seriously. I wanted to call the newstation. I wanted to make plans to stand outside their tent next year with pictures of the dead tree they sold us and the pictures of the tree they gave us in exchange. I wanted to ensure that they do not sell out so soon next year, b/c I know we aren;t the only people who were cheated by them. But in the end, it's just not worth all of my energy. Life is too short and I'm thankful that we do now have a Christmas tree...a live on at that, even though it isn't the one we paid for. However, to any locals reading my blog, I feel like the least I can do is warn you against purchasing from these people next year, to save you the stress we were put through this year. The name of the place is Valley Farms/Paul's Trees, located in Richland, MS. They set up their tent on Lakeland, near the Golden Corral in Flowood, MS. Do yourself a huge favor next year and ride right past their tent next year. And to the owner of Valley Farms, if you come across this blog, shame on you for cheating a family during the holiday season!