It is very obvious from reading this chain that you are not living in the same country/area. This all is very interesting to me, but please (everyone, not just you) start stating where this system is in use.

The system you describe sounds good, however, it’s nothing I’ve ever encountered. May I ask where you live?

It stayed up for usually around 2 weeks after that, depending on how quickly it started losing lots of needles

“only” 2 weeks? What is normal where you live? When we still had a tree (when I was a kid) it got put up on the 24th

We turn on our vacuum robot after we leave because the kids are scared of the sound :0) but they eagerly help press the button on the phone to turn it on

Because they said somewhere else that the dog has been dead for a few years now ;0) unless, of course, that was someone else’s comment