Operation Christmas Tree 2013

O Christmas Tree! O Christmas Tree!

Thy leaves are so unchanging

Every year during the first weekend in December we head out in search of the perfect tree to call our own. This year my husband came up with the most wonderful idea of cutting down a tree instead of going to our local Home Depot Farm. I thought of how perfect and nostalgic it would be and oh the pictures we could take. Little did I know about how this little adventure would actually turn out.

We jumped in the van and drove 30 minutes down the road to a local tree farm. I had to be the most excited person there. This would be a first for me and I would be sharing this special moment with my most favorite people in the world. Grinning from ear to ear, like a crazed elf, I head down to the trees. My grin quickly turned into a frown. 

You see to me the perfect Christmas tree is a noble or fraser fir and non of these trees were anything like it. The prettiest ones they had were leyland cypress and they were all too little and the branches were too weak to hold up my ornaments. The other type of tree they had, and they had a ton, were the virginia pine. These were for a lack of a better word ugly. They were shaggy, the needles could put an eye out and they were prickly to the touch.

My daughter with a leyland cypress! The tree is her height for peat sack.

The boys were running all over place weaving in and out of the trees, jumping over stumps and having pure fun. My daughter wasn't happy with the selection, which left me and the mister to make a decision. Do we just get a tree and be unhappy just for the sack of nostalgia and the drive out there or do we pack up the crew and head to Home Depot?

Needless to say we packed the crew up and drove a few minutes down the road and stopped at one of those cute little side of the road tree shops. The people there were really nice and hilarious, my type of people. We spotted the perfect, to us, fraser fir that was from North Carolina and just cut down less than a week ago. Sold...and my husbands' favorite part was that they tied it to the roof of the van (I mean he wouldn't shut up about it)!

What we learned was that if you want a fir tree just buy it pre-cut cause here in TN the only local trees are virginia or white pines and leyland cypress. 

After we decked our tree out with twinkle lights and ornaments, which I will share next week, I read this book to the kids. It has a lovely message of Gods love.

"For, as have many of us, the trees have learned that living for the sake of others makes us most beautiful in the eyes of God." ~Schneider

See ya soon!