Christmas Part 1: The Great Tree Hunt

If you haven't met my family you may not know the seriousness that is taken when it comes to the Christmas tree.  Corey's family has a few guidelines that we have adopted and have followed over the years.  Here are a few:

It must be real.
It must be full (no weird open places missing branches).
It must be healthy.  No one wants a dead tree at Christmas.
And, the most important guideline is that it must be the biggest tree that your house can possibly hold!

All joking aside, we do love the tradition of picking out our Christmas tree.  It's a family affair and tradition that I hope to continue for many years to come.  Even though they make a mess, bring in the spiders, and have fallen (yes, I said fallen) and destroyed some of my favorite ornaments I will forever cherish the memories that I'm making with my kids.

Here are a few pictures from our Great Tree Hunt 2010:

Will & Gracie "hunting" for the perfect tree:

After walking around for about 30 minutes (at least) we found the perfect tree:

It took some convincing, on my part, that this was the tree because it was HUGE!

But, after some discussion we decided it was the prettiest one out there and the most full (because it was at least 18 feet tall... not joking!).  Now, it was time to get to work.  The kids were watching in amazement.

Then, with the help of Papaw & Will (of course) the tree began to fall down.  I love this picture of Will pushing on Corey to knock the tree down.

I'm pretty sure Gracie agreed with me and thought we were crazy!

Next, we helped Nana & Papaw pick out their tree.

Will got even more involved in the cutting down process of their tree.  He really wanted to help.

Then, it was time to load both tree's up and head for home!

The kids loved getting to ride in the front of Papaw's truck around the farm.

And, off we go to decorate our prize tree.  Did I mention that we only paid $28 for our tree?!?  Every tree at this farm was $28... crazy!  

Here are a few pictures of the finished product.  It was a little crazy getting it decorated.  It took 2 ladders and a lot of patience, especially for the kids, oh, who am I kidding?... mostly for myself!  

We had to buy a lot more lights to fill the tree up and it required a little lasso-ing (sp?) skill on Corey's part to get the lights around the top.

Did I mention that this tree almost fell too?  It didn't hit the floor (like last year's) thanks to Mark, Corey & Debbie catching it.  However, we did loose a few more ornaments.  After that scare, they tied fishing line from the tree to the window to give me some added insurance.  Or, else I was going to take every breakable and special ornament off!  : )

We loved this tree and were very grateful to have it.  Will was very proud of it and loved telling everyone that we had the biggest tree ever.  I'm not sure that we will get a tree this big next year but you can guarantee that it will be a real one!