Christmas gift caution

This story starts oh let's see...hmm oh yeah last Christmas morning...2007. My Mom and Dad decided to get Oma, my Mom's Mom a new chandelier as a Christmas present. About half way through the morning of tearing open wonderful gifts, dealing with two 1 year old's, a 4 year old, a 9 year old, a 14 year old and two 17 year old's, my parents presented the chandelier to Oma.

Now take note everyone...because of all the commotion of the kids, presents, hot coffee and what not, the chandelier was never taken out of the box. They figured why take it out when it was so nicely packed. They would just have to repack it and take it over to grandma's house and at the time it just seemed like too much work! Plus in a few days it would be hung and Oma could then really see it!

Well, basically for the whole of 2008 no one had time to hang said chandelier and so it sat in it's nicely packed box out in Oma's garage. So sad :(

So this past Saturday morning David and I decided to help out my parents and hang Oma's chandelier. We figured waiting till after another Christmas had passed to finally hang the chandelier was just pushing it to far. Plus we have a sneakie suspicion that Oma was holding it over my parents head that her last Christmas gift was sitting in the garage...the only gift I would want sitting in the garage would be a new sports car! (OK I'm dreaming...but it sounded good)! Anyone? Anyone? Bueller??

OK I digress...David and I got over to Oma's house about 3pm thinking that it would take about an hour to put the chandelier together and another half hour to hang. It didn't happen...David started to unpack it and found that a bunch of parts were missing. Namely the chain, canopy, mounting strap, I'm sure there was more missing but by then we knew we had a big problem on our hands. My parents showed up and were promptly informed of the situation, the words crap and oh shit were thrown around the room, each looked at one another they couldn't believe it. Oma just sat there and smiled...laughed a little also!

It was finally decided that the lamp would be taken back to the store, in the hopes that A: they could get the missing parts, B: a new chandelier, C: store credit, D: make the manager believe that the lamp had been sitting in a garage for a year and that no one had messed with it. As luck would have it, they did still have the chandelier and it had not been discontinued. Seriously, what were the odds? The only problem was that it would take a week to order or they could have the floor model...they took the floor model. So after 11 months, 26 days and 18 hours Oma's chandelier was finally hung!






So if your giving a gift to someone that you truly love, make sure you have the time to open it up and make sure all the parts are there. Oh yeah and hold onto that receipt! Good job Dad!!!