Christmas Tree Hunting we go.....

Last year, Andrew and I disagreed over how important a Christmas tree was and especially to me, how important a real one was..... My family spent many a winter hunting through Christmas tree farms in search of the perfect tree to cut down....Although there was always someone cold and whining and Dad was upset when we got home because the tree wouldn't stand up straight in the stand; I liked the tradition. Last year we had a white fake Christmas tree that we had used at our wedding reception. This year, I was bound and determined not to do that again!

We found out from friends that for $10 you can get a permit and go into the Pikes Peak National Forest and cut down your own tree. That sounded even better than a Christmas tree farm!!! We packed up Boots, headlamps, blankets, ropes, snacks and snowshoes and headed off. After driving for several miles into the "Xmas tree territory" Andrew picked a spot to park, marked the spot in the GPS and off we went. Boots was in heaven! We decided against the snowshoes which was a wise decision in the end. We hiked around for a while and then Andrew thought (very logically) that the better trees would probably be down in the ravine where there was more of a water source for them to grow. As we slowly made our way down the hill into the "valley" I of course thought to myself...."this is going to be a pain to drag out, but Andrew must have already thought of that because he is an engineer and because he is so strong, he is not worried about coming back up this hill with a tree" *** Almost two years of marriage and communication still is an issue sometimes :)

We marked a couple trees in the GPS (think of the cellphone/GPS commercial about finding a Christmas) After finding 3 good ones, and doubling back to compare between them, we decided on the one furthest away...of course! We took a photo op and then Andrew started cutting. Turns out that although Andrew and I were prepared for hiking and possibly hours of searching (snacks, headlamps, GPS etc) we were not prepared for how prickly and heavy our tree was! Leather gloves in multiple layers would have been very helpful! After dragging/carrying our tree what felt like hundreds of feet (but was probably only 100ft) Andrew checked the GPS to see how long it would take us if we followed the ravine out to the road....3/10's of a mile!!!! After about 10 more minutes of dragging/carrying our tree, wishing we could harness Boots up to help us out, we decided it was too long to take the ravine and we should go straight up the hill....It was about this time that Andrew started commenting on how maybe we should have thought about where we picked a tree in terms of dragging it back to the car.....Helpfully, I said "I did, but I had trusted him that he had already thought of that when he picked the ravine, because he is an engineer" :) (next time I will speak up sooner;)

Well, several hundred feet later we were up the hill and in a clearing where we could leave the tree and drive to it. I was not excited about driving to it, but the thought of carrying the tree any further was worse. We almost mashed into several trees trying to back to the tree, but by the grace of God we missed them all. (somehow the gearshift had popped out of 1st/4 WD and into regular drive without 4wd....big handling difference!) Andy of course thought almost sliding off the mountain and/or into a tree was fun where I was almost in tears! We got the tree on top of the car with an issue and started home (thankfully the car stayed in 4 wd this time)

Once we got home...the "small" tree in the forest was much bigger than we thought.....My old tree stand wasn't big enough for the trunk, so out we went to Walmart.... On the 3rd attempt to make the tree short enough for our ceiling, it fit! After all that work though, it is still sitting in our living room, bare except for 4 ornaments....(3 of which were early Christmas presents!) I am in a minimalist mood this Christmas :)