Christmas Tree

Yesterday we went as a family to cut down our Christmas tree.  When I say cut down our Christmas tree, I don't mean going to a Christmas tree farm and selecting a tree...I mean getting a permit and going into the national forest to chop down our tree.  This is something that my husband's family did for several years, and he wants it to be a tradition for our children, so we started doing this the year James came into our family.  It is a fun day to spend together, and the experience of picking out your own tree is very exciting even if they don't always look as full and perfectly shaped as the Christmas tree farm places.

The first year we went, it was just my husband, James and myself.  Last year my husband's cousin joined us.  This year we had both sets of grandparents along with my brother and his family come along on the Christmas tree hunt.  We learned a valuable lesson...next year if other people will be joining us, we should be more specific about how the day will work out.  We had planned on doing a picnic lunch, so we had packed our own lunches, but that didn't get communicated well, so most everyone else expected to eat out.  We ended up stopping at McDonalds and letting the little ones play for a little bit before going to purchase our permits.

This morning we pulled the Christmas tree inside the house.  We also started putting up our Christmas lights on the house.  Our tree won't have lights this year because Sam is very fascinated by electrical cords, and we don't want a huge temptation sitting there for a long period of time.  When the boys are older, we will put lights on the tree.  Later this afternoon we will decorate the tree with ornaments.

Here is a picture of our $10 tree (the cost of the permit)...of course that doesn't include the gasoline to get to the location, but it is definitely a great way to jump into the Christmas countdown.  This year we did pretty good on our tree...in the past they have been much smaller and the branches have been more spread out.