Christmas is Over....I think

Here at the house of Kids and Cakes, we took our Christmas tree down just 9 days ago....

No need to adjust your bifocals or check your calendar. Yes, I meant February 22.

There were multiple reasons for leaving it up after Christmas: celebrating the "season" not just the "day", it went up late and the kids wanted to keep it for awhile, most of my storage boxes got water damaged somehow and I needed to find new storage boxes.... Those were all reasons why it was still up in January. But the reason it was still up in February was that we homeschool over here.

You see, when you homeschool, just about everything can be turned into a lesson of some sort. And so our Christmas tree became just that...a science experiment. You see, it was still drawing water, and looking quite lovely far into January. Oh, did I fail to mention that it was a real tree? It was. So, there it was looking good, and still pretty fresh a month after Christmas....and that my friends, shouts "Challenge!" to a homeschooler.

We decided to see just how long that tree would: a) continue to draw water, b) hold onto it's needles, c) keep it's branches strong and upright, and d) keep it's lovely dark green color. And the results are in!

a) up until about the 1st or 2nd week in February
b) never did lose any needles, until we started taking off the lights, and that pulled some off. They were very brittle by then, but they hung onto the tree unless you knocked them off somehow.
c) the branches started drooping around Valentines day, but only a few ornament slid off, it still held most of them up just fine.
d) about the same time it started to droop, the color started to fade.

So, what was the lesson learned in all of this? If you buy a real Christmas tree, buy a Frasier Fir and buy it from your local Sertoma Club, because that tree was AWESOME!