Oh Christmas Tree, how pokey are your branches

This past weekend we piled in the vehicle on a misty Saturday afternoon and headed 25 minutes up the road to a Christmas tree farm. When we moved this past summer our fake tree ended up in the garbage. The pre-lit lights didn’t work anymore, branches were saggy and losing their fake needles.
The hubby and I had a real Christmas tree every year until our old yellow lab Bailey thought the real Christmas tree was a great place to relieve himself, numerous times. Awesome stuff that dog pee on our Christmas tree and tree skirt!  Good thing we hadn’t put any gifts under there yet.
Then there was our cat that liked to climb the tree and it eventually crashing to the ground one fine evening.  Add in our curious toddler and a baby crawling around trying to eat pine needles the following year and we decided a fake tree would probably be a better fit for us.
Now that we don’t have a cat, our dogs are both females and the bubs is not a baby who will eat pine needles off the floor, it seems like the perfect time to try a real tree again! I didn’t want just any real tree though, I wanted the experience for our family of trudging through the snow covered fields finding the perfect tree, hubby sawing it down and then our family bringing it home to proudly display in the family room!

Unfortunately the fields were not snow covered on the day we went to find a tree, they were wet and muddy from the cold mist. We didn’t mind though, we were on a mission, as a family, trying to find “the tree” and all agree it was “the tree.” The long needles vs short needles debate was on, some wanted short some wanted long.
We ended up choosing a long needle tree for the family room and will get a short needle tree tomorrow from our realtor for the formal living room. 

They also had pre-cut trees ready for those who didn’t want to brave the fields or maybe couldn’t find that perfect tree. 

Santa happened to be there the day we went so we sat on Santa’s lap, well at least most of us did.  Our oldest daughter who will be 11 next month is too cool for Santa now.  

When we found our tree we had to get a picture of it before we chopped it down which made me kind of sad that we were essentially killing a tree.

The girls did a good job supervising daddy’s cutting job while the bubs brought his own saw to help daddy cut the tree with.

I really wasn’t going to upload this picture because I look like a giant dork but I figured I better keep it real.  The youngest daughter took this photo of us with mist on the camera lens and also in our faces.    

After a snack of hot chocolate and loft house cookies which the kids have declared a new tradition on the day we get our tree, it was time for the first ornament.  They voted the bub’s should be the one to put it on because he doesn’t remember any Christmas before this one.  He of course chose his daddy’s guitar ornament and then had trouble getting it on the tree, those real needles are pokey!