Christmas tree farm with a Stevens twist

A couple of weeks ago we went to a Christmas tree farm with my parents to get their tree and this is what it  looked like....

There was a pump station and if you pumped really hard the water would move the ducks down a trough, and this was fascinating to Annabelle because we are reading Farmer Boy, and fascinating to Tallulah because there were "quack quacks, momma."

 Of course, everyone had their own idea about which tree we should pick, but in the end, Grandpa cut down the one mom told him to cut we all agreed on, and we went home happy, with a couple of tiny daisies in our pockets.

"ga-ma, look fwoweh! see!"

We put  lights on it that night and a couple of ornaments and my mom finished decorating it after we came back home to Houston.

But, because we are the Stevens family, I get a call this week, and it goes a little something like this:

Mom:  mija, I have to tell you something and I don't want you to be upset.

Me: what?

Mom:  I think I am going to have to take down the tree

Me(bemused at the fact she still thinks I am Annabelle's age)  Really, why?

Mom:  because it stinks.  (when my mom says stinks it kind of sounds like steeinks).  It smells like rotten wood.  Like a stinky tree.

Then my dad chimes in because they always talk to me on speaker so they can both hear..

Dad:  it's either that or the refrigerator, we can't tell.

Me(trying real hard not to laugh): what?

Dad:  you open that thing and you want to pass out it stinks so bad.

Mom:  but that smells like rotten meat, and so I threw out all the meat.  I threw out the good eggrolls that your mother gave me, because I thought it might be them, but it wasn't.  But that is not the tree stink, the tree just stinks if you get near it.  Plus, I woke up with a rash, so its gotta go.  And the only thing I did different was drink some orange juice from those orange-things that are growing on B_____'s tree.  But I think I am going to try to keep it up until friday, because we are having people come over.  But we can't turn it on, unless I want new curtains, because it will catch fire.  I don't think your father watered that tree at all.

Dad (indignant): toni, I did so!  I'll do it right now

Mom:  oh, siguele, yes, that water will do it good now.  In another day it will be a skeleton tree.  If you get near it all the needles come off.  Besides (changes to her guilt trip tone), you are not coming for Christmas anyway, so the girls won't see it , so who cares?

Later on, I got a call about the fridge.  It was the cranberry sauce from Thanksgiving that smelled.  "But that shouldn't stink, unless your sister put meat in it.  It was a meat smell."

Or it could be a hello, my name is cranberry sauce and I've been here since thanksgiving and am ready to meet the garbage disposal smell.  It could be that.

The tree is still up, as far as I know.  She's got to impress the guests with her beautiful, stinky tree.