Last week, our Christmas tree fell over.

I’m writing about it not because I’m surprised, but rather, because I’m absolutely not surprised. And I wonder if there’s something wrong with me.

It started with our annual Christmas tree hunt with the family last Saturday. We had a window of about 45 minutes to complete our 2,000-acre hunt for the perfect holiday centerpiece between the time my husband got home and when the prairie would be pitch black, but I was determined. This was the only weekend I had open to make the house magical before the holiday and, because I was on a strict timeline, the side-by-side was dead and we had to wait another 15 minutes to jump it while our girls threw snowballs at each other’s faces.

Never fear though, I thought I saw a nice little cedar back in August just a quarter of a mile or so in the home pasture that would work nicely in the new addition in the house. And so, we followed the trail and our instincts to scope the northern slopes of the clay hills where the cedars seem to grow. After all these years of hunting for trees, I vowed to finally learn our lesson about scale — like, they always look smaller under a big prairie sky and about 10 times larger when you bring them inside to thaw out and take up the entire living room.

Turns out this year, once all was said and done, we overcompensated (undercompensated?).

Simply put, in our attempt to not overdo it, we picked a tree that looked sad and bare-boned and far from holiday material when we stood it up against the window and let the light reveal its flaws. Honestly, I didn’t care that much. It’s a wild tree after all, what can we really expect from it? I figured adding a few lights and ornaments would fill the gaps. I was prepared to call it good.

My husband was not on the same page, however. And while I made 10,000 trips to the basement to retrieve our ornaments and decorations, my husband again took to the frozen hills with his saw and returned with a plan to perform cosmetic surgery on our scraggly tree. And when I say this, I mean he whipped out his nail gun and hauled in an armful of cedar boughs and proceeded to nail them to the trunk of our little tree. Essentially, he did what he’s best at and remodeled the thing.

But because the tree was only 10 feet tall and not 25 feet tall like usual, he opted out of nailing the whole thing to the wall and we all got on with decorating what turned out, in the end, to be a pretty decent tree.

Now I’ve mentioned before that we found ourselves in an Elf on the Shelf predicament last month when my 7-year-old found the felt toy lying limp in my bedroom drawer stuffed among mismatched socks and extra phone chargers; understandably, she had some pretty serious questions that needed answers.

So this Christmas, like never before, it is imperative that I restore the magic that is hanging on by the tiny threads of that dang elf’s hat that I now cannot find anywhere. Anyway, I needed to tread carefully and creatively this holiday season, so I retrieved that hatless elf out of its new hiding place that evening and put it on one of the transplant limbs of the Christmas tree with a note wishing the girls a happy hello in handwriting I tried my best to not look like mine.

Now it’s here I must pause to ask, why do we do this to ourselves? It’s all fun and games when the kids are little and oblivious. But thanks to my recent magic misstep and a couple unfortunate situations with the tooth fairy earlier this year, this Christmas season has me under constant surveillance and major pressure to keep the magic alive and real because, well, skepticism has entered the house and she’s a lurker.

Anyway, all seemed to be going well in our freshly decorated Christmas house until the girls started flipping cartwheels on Monday evening, shaking the stability of that retrofitted tree and sending it toppling over right next to Rosie sitting pretty and shell-shocked on the rug, swearing up and down it wasn’t her foot that caught it in her most flip.

And then: “Oh no, Ella! Ella was on the tree! Is she dead?!” (Ella is the name of our elf, if I haven’t mentioned that yet.)

I ran to the living room and, after I made sure that both kids were cleared of the tree, called my husband from the garage to help pull that cedar up and assess the damage. And there was that elf, still smiling and hatless, surrounded by broken bulb glass and Chad’s now legless and one-armed He-Man ornament, his sword arm launched all the way across the room.

Yes, there were some casualties for sure — He-Man was one — but Skeletor was seemingly unscathed, and so was the elf. I suppose that’s why she’s made of felt. But now she was in the way, which was a problem because, well, you can’t touch the elf or she will lose her magic and THE LAST THING I NEED IS LESS MAGIC AROUND HERE, OK?

“Get the kitchen tongs!” I hollered to my oldest. “Grab her with those and put her somewhere safe. We’ve got to redecorate this thing. And no more cartwheels in the living room until after Christmas!”

No more cartwheels in the living room until after Christmas? What kind of sentence is that?

If you need me, I’ll be Googling Elf on the Shelf ideas, but not while my daughters are lurking, because they can read now. Learned that lesson the hard way …