O' Christmas Trees

Yes, that is trees...plural.

We got a beautiful tree at The Home Depot the day after Thanksgiving. Several times in years past, we've gotten a permit for $5 and driven to the forest to cut our own. After a few times of that, I decided it was not an activity for little ones. The last time we cut down our own tree, Rebekah was 2, and Joseph was 3 weeks old. I stayed home with them and Chad took the oldest 3.

Since then, we've enjoyed trees from stores. They are fuller, but don't last as long. As we experienced this year.

Here was our "Black Friday" tree. We decorated it on Saturday. By Friday the next week, it had lost more needles than any other tree I'd had...after New Year's and all. It was turning brown and pine needles were curling in Wicked Witch of the East fashion. I called The Home Depot and they said they would replace the tree or refund our money...our choice. I love a good return policy!

So we UNdecorated the tree, put it back up on top of the van and drove back to the store. We decided to try again. (We got a nice tree from THD last year.) We got adventurous and chose a tree that had not been unwrapped yet.

We put it up in the living room and watched it slowly relax during the evening. It reminded me of those tall, decorative bushes people plant on the sides of their houses!

We decorated it the next night.

Even Sarah got to help.

In fact, everyone did!

Daniel looks like he's singing a carol. He's not.

When we first talked about replacing the tree, Chad asked, "Do you think it will be as fun to decorate it the 2nd time?" What do you think, Chad? Was it?

Sarah was good at putting the ornaments on. But she's been even better at taking them off!

Beautiful! I see our ornaments are clustered. In the tradition of The Forgotten Carols, "Not so close! It's a big tree!"

This is the tree we still have up. It would have taken A LOT for us to take this one down.

We'll drive to the forest and cut our own in two or three years.