Year 13 of cutting down our Christmas tree

With the exception of a single year (before we had kids and still lived at our old house) when I bought a tree at Smiths Marketplace, we have traveled up a canyon somewhere and cut down our Christmas tree every year since we've been married. That's 13 out of 14 years of cutting trees! This was a a particularly busy holiday season and I didn't know how we were going to fit in a tree cutting trip, but somehow we did. I have a love/hate relationship with this tradition. Well, maybe hate is too strong of a word. I don't hate it, but some years, like this last super busy Christmas season, I was really wishing I had a beautiful pre-lit tree that I could put up and decorate at my own convenience without the mess. It's okay to call me a Christmas tree Scrooge, because I totally was. I have even looked for a screamin' after Christmas clearance deal on a tree as recently as 2 days ago. But alas, the only one they had at 90% off at Target was nearly a foot shorter than me... and I'm pretty short.


We usually try to go the weekend after Thanksgiving to cut a tree but it didn't happen this year. Life was just way busy. It wasn't until about a week and a half to two weeks later that Dan called on his way home from work one night and unexpectedly said "Let's go cut our tree!" I had like 5 minutes to help everyone find their winter clothes. Notice in these pictures that Carly has on 2 totally different gloves, Fisher has only 1 glove and Hunter is sporting no gloves at all. Ha! We piled into Dan's truck and zipped up the canyon shortly before before dark.


Dan and I used to make a day of it and take a couple hours searching for the "perfect" tree before making our decision. Maybe we've gotten better at knowing what tree is going to work in our house and what won't, or maybe we are not as picky as we used to be but we found this tree at mock speed! One thing we have learned is that the tree cannot be taller than Dan can reach. Otherwise, the tree will be too tall and we may end up with a sap stain on the celing like we did about 8 or 9 years ago when Dan put the stand on and shoved the tree into an upright position and the tree was too tall. Another thing we have learned is that looking at the size of a tree on the mountain is totally different than actually looking at it in your house. It seems like every year we get the tree home and say "Wow, it didn't look that big on the mountain! It's huge! It didn't seem as wide as it really is!"


Dan pulled out his little saw and lickety split, the tree was cut and loaded into his truck and we were on our way home.
The kids did nearly all the decorating themselves. I just helped throw on some lights and let them have at it.

Although I don't always love going to cut down a Christmas tree,
my kids love it.
And I love that they love it.
And so the tradition lives on :)