Oh Christmas Tree

We have rules in our house, some more firmly established than others.  The Christmas celebration rules, though evolving with the growth of our family and its traditions, are pretty clear.  For example, no Christmas music is allowed until Thanksgiving day, and from Thanksgiving to New Years, it's almost exclusively Christmas music around here.

Along with the music, the getting of the tree marks the beginning of our favorite time of the year.  With the exception of a few years, we have always foraged for a "natural" tree.  Our first tree-getting experience will always stand out in my memory.  We were living in a little one-bedroom apartment and had been married for just 3 months when Christmas rolled around.  We discovered that there was a quaint little tree farm a short drive away where you could cut your own beautiful tree.  We excitedly bundled up to get our very first Christmas tree.  We parked and walked into the lodge, soaking up the nostalgia of the place...only to discover that the cheapest tree there ran about $40.  Erm...$40 on a tree that would die?  Our "natural" trees were free.  We reasoned that we could probably find a "natural" tree if we just drove a little farther to some state land near where Shandy's grandparents had lived.  So we hopped back in the car and drove...and drove.  By this time it was pretty much dark and upon our arrival the the land, we discovered that it had only deciduous trees...no evergreens to speak of.  Before this moment, my new husband had determined that we were not going home without a tree.  SO.  He recalled seeing a few evergreens in a ditch not far away.  We proceeded to drive up and down dirt roads, shining potential Christmas trees with our headlights.  Upon finding one that seemed suitable, I switched to the drivers seat, Shandy hopped out, and I continued on down the road while he cut it down.  I quickly turned around to pick up him and our tree, only to discover that he was not satisfied with said tree.  He jumped in quickly and we repeated our tree-finding method: Drive.  Shine.  Hop out.  Cut down.  Drive.  Turn around.
This time it was "good enough" and we shoved the tree in our little Mazda 626 and peeled away on the dirt road.  I still haven't decided if the way we acquired our first little tree was exactly legal, but it sure was memorable!

Fast-forward 9 years and we are on our third giant-sized "natural" tree.  Here's what we looked like on the 45-minute ride home:

And here it is in all it's glory, with the three munchkins in front for a little perspective:

 

 

Finally, I've always wanted to photograph a few of our ornaments and tell the story behind them.  This year it seems fitting to show you the ornament from that very first year.  That year, I had a beautiful tree in mind with all matching bulbs and lights.  We strung popcorn and cranberries.  In the end, it didn't really help that scraggly ditch-tree much. Anyway, the point is that a friend gave us this ornament to commemorate our first Christmas together.  I put it in a box.  It didn't match the theme.  I think it stayed there until we had Lily, when my "theme" changed from matchy-matchy to meaningful and unbreakable.  Now, I think our "meaningful and unbreakable" theme goes perfectly with our wonderfully "natural" trees.  And I'm so, so thankful to my friend for giving me a memory I didn't know I wanted.