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Sunday, December 5, 2010

Tree Trimming....literally

This time of year, I love driving down the road and seeing a family driving the opposite direction with their Christmas tree tied to the roof of their car. Selecting, transporting, and erecting the Family Christmas Tree is such a fun kickoff to this wonderful season. Our family joined the party this weekend. In years past, we've hit random roadside tree lots to select our tree. This year, we wanted to cut our own....Not so much for experiences sake, but more for functionality. Our home is a bit on the dry side with the fireplace going 24/7 and trees seem to brittle up pretty quickly in here. Also, we are having some family up from Jersey in early January and wanted the tree to still be in pretty good condition late in the season. So, we figured that fresher was better. There's a guy about 1/4 mile from our home who owns a couple acres and has planted some Christmas trees to cut yourself...the trees aren't the fullest you've ever seen, but they're pretty enough. And for 25 bucks, you can't go wrong. It was nice buying local and supporting a neighbor. Anyway, here's how it played out....


looking....


still looking...


Found It!! Now, a couple of things about this photo....

1. The chainsaw. Not the way our forefathers did it, but look, here's the deal...anytime you go to a "cut your own Christmas tree" place, they send you off into the woods with some old, rickety, dull, rusty, busted hand saw that looks like it should be hanging on the wall of a Cracker Barrel...sure it looks all old timey and what not, and probably nice in the family photo of the event, but the reality is that it's fun for about 5 seconds, then the nostalgia of the moment wears off real fast when dad is on his knees in the freezing cold just sawing and sawing and sawing and sawing and sawing....I'm all set with that. let's fire up the Stihl get to gettin'.

2. We have 8 foot ceilings in our living room...This tree is just under 12 feet tall...looks like a drastic miscalculation, right? Well, only sort of...we all really liked this tree...it's got these really cool short, stubby, rounded needles...not all jabby like a usual Christmas tree. We decided to cut it down, lop off the top 4 feet or so, and reshape the new "top" to look more Christmas tree-ish...It ended up coming out great.


Cuttin' her down....


Loadin' her up


My Girls decorating





These 2 photos are like a microcosm of our lives...we do things together as a family, give our children opportunities to try things and experience life under our close supervision and guidance, and do our best to help them avoid blunt force trauma from nosediving off a chair.



"I never thought it was such a bad little tree. It's not bad at all, really. Maybe it just needs a little love." - Linus Van Pelt


Here's to hoping for a blessed Christmas season to you and yours.

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