A Hunting We Will Go

Although we put up an artificial tree right after Thanksgiving this year, I really wanted to take the kids to get a live tree from a farm like we always used to do when I was a child. My friend Shannon was doing a photoshoot at a local Christmas tree farm in Browntown and needed to borrow my camera because she'd misplaced her charger. As a favor to us in return, she offered to take some shots of us getting our tree. So, Dec. 1st we went hunting for the "perfect" tree for the McKinstry household.

 

Because I wanted the kids to be involved in the decorating process, I decided it would be best to choose a white pine this year so it wouldn't stick their fingers as they hung the ornaments. Almost all of the pines were located on the side of a steep hill though. This made the search kind of tricky juggling our two plus having Shannon's little girl Vivi in tote. Shannon couldn't get the stroller any farther than the base of the hill so Viv had to try to scale it with the rest of us. She was so cute! Despite the climb, it was so fun to let the kids explore and check it all out!

 

 

 

 

 

 Sizing up a tree?

 

I guess because of the way the trees were growing on the hillside, most of the them looked okay on the front side but had very few branches (and most of them dead) on the back. I found a few I really liked but Dave kept telling me they were too big and that they wouldn't fit in our house. After running back and forth a few times, we finally settled on one that we thought would work. It may not have been the most beautiful tree ever, but it suited us just fine that day.

  

 Here it is - our tree!

 

 Dave warned Caleb to stand uphill from the tree so it 

didn't fall on him during the sawing process. 

Hadley, Viv, and I cuddled nearby to watch.

 Uh-oh, takin' off the coat! This is getting serious.

 Saw, saw, saw! 

 Timber!

 Someone is all smiles in the background about 

Daddy cutting down the tree

Caleb was more than obliged to help Dave start dragging it down the incline to my dad's pick-up that we'd borrowed for the occasion.

 

 

 

 

 

While the kids napped that afternoon and I worked on something else (I can't remember what), Dave decided to get the tree in the house by himself and put it in the stand. It was quite a bit more crooked than we'd thought but he did a good job getting it straight and I was impressed that he'd done it by himself. I was shocked at how big it was once we got it in the house though. It didn't look that huge when it outside!

 

Good job, Dave!

Once Caleb woke up we started trimming it. I separated all of the breakable ornaments and made a pile of child friendly ones for him to put on the bottom. He was very distraught that certain decorations were off-limits though and kept saying,  "But I like all of them. I like all of the ornaments." 

This little penguin was my first Christmas present from Dave. 

He gave it to me the first Christmas after we met, right

 before we started dating. I named him Eddie.

From the side, the tree looked a pretty crooked; the back was lopsided and bare in areas, but the front was okay if you looked straight on at it. I didn't have nearly enough ornaments but we were still happy with it.

Side view - Lookin' a little sad

The front

 

Our artificial tree could be seen in the upstairs window as people approached the house or drove down the Interstate. This one shown out the back, with a friendly glow to those traveling on the highway. We had to move our kitchen table out of the nook, so things were a bit displaced for the month of December, but it was worth it. Two days after Christmas when we took the tree down because we were leaving for our trip to see Dave's family in IL, Caleb was very upset to see the tree go. I'm not sure if we will get a live tree every year but for this year it was fun.