Oh how I love Christmas! And of course it is always a busy time of year so I am a little late in writing about it : ). We started the season off a day or two after thanksgiving by going tree hunting! We have cut down one tree in the past and it was a lot of fun so we thought we should do it again. Believe me you should plan before you go!
We left a little later than we should have and so decided not to go very far. We ended up having the choice of one kind of tree (and they weren't my favorite kind). They were all very sparse or had two trunks. Finally after hunting all over the side of the mountain we settled for one. I think we kept trying to talk ourselves into how great it would look. So we chopped it down and strapped it to the car.
When we got home, we measured it and found it was 12 1/2 feet tall. Of course it was too tall! So we had to cut the bottom half off, which by the way was the best part about the tree. We were left with a little tree that had branches about every 2 feet. Not my kind of Christmas tree : (. It was too sad for me to even take a picture of so you will just have to imagine it.
Then we had a GREAT idea! I'd heard all the stories about how Grandpa Boyer would always buy two not so great trees and use the branches off of one to make the other look fantastic. He would drill holes and stick the branches in. So we tried that with a couple branches from the bottom half of the tree......It looked good......but.....if you even breathed on them the wrong way they fell out! I do not know how Grandpa Boyer could possibly have made a tree that they could decorate!
We soon decided that it was just not going to work to put extra branches in. Now we were left with the problem of holes drilled in a poor tree that didn't have enough branches to cover them up. Plus the fact that the tree was going to die ten times faster because we had drilled holes into it. So our final decision was to just go buy one. And here it is, the best tree we've ever had.
I learned many things about Christmas Tree Hunting:
1. Leave early enough to go somewhere with a variety of trees.
2. If you're trying to convince yourself that the tree will be ok....it most likely is not going to look as good when you get home : ) Every tree looks good on the mountain.
3. Grandpa Boyer had some secret way to make branches stick into the other tree. Without that secret you should not attempt to do it on your own.
4. Grandpa Boyer got the trees the day before Christmas eve and it was taken down the day after Christmas. Fake branches will most likely die a lot quicker than the rest of the tree (Yes we only thought of this after we had put them in).
5. Don't cut a tree down that you may not end up using, you feel really bad for cutting it down. I'm sad I ended the poor trees life for no reason.
6. Cutting down your own tree will always be a wonderful experience and give you great memories! It's not about the way the tree looks but about the time you spend with each other as a family : )!
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