Where did the ornaments go?

We have a Christmas tradition.

Every year, the weekend after Thanksgiving, our family bundles up and heads to the local tree farm.  We take our black lab, Molly, and we hike the hills, the rows and rows of trees until we find "the one."  After we find it, we take our picture in front of it and flag the guy on the four wheeler to come cut it down, throw it on his trailer and cart it in.  We watch as they put it in "the shaker" to shake the dead needles off.  We watch as they send it through that weird machine that bundles it up, and then we spend a good ten minutes tying that bad boy up on the roof of our car to make the trek home.  When we get home, we hunt down the tree stand, lug the tree inside and spend a good 20 minutes trying to crank the screws into place only to find out the tree is crooked.  After we finally get our tree situated, I spend a good, solid two hours putting the lights on before we begin the trimming.  After vacuuming up the needles, watering and making sure the lights are off every time we leave the house, we get to remove our tradition from our house, only this time it's dead as a door nail and drops half its weight worth of needles on its way out the front door.  After a good (I'm talkin' GOOD) vacuum, it sits outside for a few weeks until "Christmas Tree Pickup Day."  End tradition.

I have asthma, allergies and now seriously bad eczema.  Last Christmas, I spent most of December with sunglasses on because my eyes were so swollen it was actually embarrassing.  And, when I got tired of retelling the story of how my husband does NOT beat me, I realized something had to go...our beloved Christmas tradition.  The next Christmas would hold for us (much to my demise) a new tradition...the fake tree.

Christmas of 2012 came upon us like a freight train.  I was two weeks late getting the Christmas tree up, in part because I was dreading going out and buying a fake tree.  I was mourning the loss of our tradition, but we needed a tree.  So, I began the process of trying to buy a fake tree that looked EXACTLY like a REAL tree (haha!).  I went to Target, Kmart, Hobby Lobby (where the Pixie almost took out every fake tree in their little fake tree forest), and finally...Lowes.  I looked at the trees with a critical eye.  I checked out the pricing, the options (do you know they have revolving trees now), and their "real likedness," I bit the bullet and threw the best looking 8 ft tree I could find on the cart.

We decorated it, just like we normally would have...heavily ornamented on the bottom half.  Darby decorated and redecorated, rearranged and rearranged for the duration of the Christmas season.  Every day, ornaments were in a new place.  It was sort of like an expanded version of "Elf on the Shelf" to include ornaments moving daily to a new location.  However, one day in particular, I left the room.  When I returned, ALL of the ornaments were GONE!  I'm talkin', the ornaments at the top of the TREE were gone!  I panicked for a split second, because I have some sentimental ornaments.  As calmly as I could, I asked The Pixie where the ornaments were.  With a shrug of the shoulder, she cooly replied, "I don't know."  A slight panic arose in my body.  I scoured the main level of our house for our ornaments.  It's The Pixie we're talking about!  They could have been ANYWHERE!  I even checked the backyard, wondering if she pitched them over the side of the deck into the snow!  I did not find them.  Then, I went back to the tree to check the backside.  Did she take ALL of the ornaments?  I only left for a minute or two!  How could that even have happened?!  The farther I stepped into the back of the tree, the more familiar the ornaments became.  I looked up and saw "Our first Christmas" ornament.  THERE they were!  They were ALL on the tree.  It was an awkward feat to rotate the tree 180 degrees to the original position, but I did it.  I looked from the tree to the couch, where she was sitting, happily watching Dora, and back to the tree.  Pixie, Tree.  Pixie, Tree.  Three feet tall, Eight feet tall.  Three, eight.  HOW?

Never mind.  If I tried to understand the goings on inside her brain...
Just...never mind.