O Christmas Tree!

 We got our very first Christmas tree this year. With school last year and just barely being married the year before, other things took priority over a  tree during our previous Christmases as a married couple.

But this year we decided to change all that. School and stuff still kept us pretty busy so we didn't get a tree until midway through the month.

We decided that this year we would chop one down and then maybe buy a fake tree after Christmas and try to get one for sale. I didn't love this plan because when I was younger my family used to chop down trees. We would drive clear up into the mountains and drive and drive and drive until we got stuck in the snow. Then we would chop down the first tree we saw and spend the rest of the day getting unstuck. Wasn't such a fun experience.

 

So I was a little wary when Kolton brought up this idea but thought that it would probably work this year. So we headed off. We jumped in the pickup, grabbed a little jerky (to prove we were really living off the land) and drove into the mountains/hills behind our house. We were surprised by how dry it was up there (no possible chance of us getting stuck in the snow) and even more surprised by how many good trees we saw. There were actually quite a few options that weren't so bad...for a mountain tree, anyway.

 

We walked around for a bit, hiked up and down a couple hills and were pretty indecisive. We actually ended up chopping down two trees before we got back to the pickup. And by we I of course mean Kolton. He chopped down the two trees and then packed them down the hill to the pickup while I had the much more tasking task of carrying the dangerous weapon (the saw) down the hill.

 

When we finally got to the pickup we were pretty happy with our day's work. Then on our way down the mountain we saw THE tree. It was just sitting there on the side of the road beckoning for us to chop her down. So we did. Which brought us up to a total of three trees in the back of our pickup (we ended up giving the other two away). We continued our drive down the mountain even more content with our accomplishments.

 

When we got home we put the tree up right away (twas the middle of December, we had no time to waste!). With a few lights, a couple popcorn strings, and a few thousand strands of tinsel we had our very own Charlie Brown tree. And we love it!

It's quite homemade and cheap (I like to refer to it as "vintage"- that sounds a little fancier, I think.) but it actually looks pretty good when the lights are off. The tinsel really sparkles and looks neat. I think that we are going to nix the fake tree plan and start our own tradition of chopping down our trees because it was quite fun (sans getting stuck).