Christmas Tree

Our holiday season is over, but I get to relive them again as I post all of our events. We will start at the beginning--the Christmas Tree. Now, I had great intentions of recording our escapade of going to cut our tree, but when we got up to the mountain, my camera decided it didn't want to work anymore. No problem-- I'll just use my phone camera. I got some cute pictures, but forgot to save any of them. So, I have no visual aids to go with our cutting the tree. You'll have to settle for my words to paint your picture.

I had our tree cutting permits in hand. Nothing like a $5.00 Christmas Tree. The Hoxie family went with us. We let the men go in the truck to get the trees home, and us wives and our children loaded into the minivan. Steve is only about 3 full days out of his little snip-snip procedure--so this promised to be an interesting excursion. We headed up Skalkaho--reached to top where they shut the gate for no further travel on the logging road. We unloaded and bundled up and headed up the side of the mountain on foot--there was about 1-2 inches of snow on the ground. The kids were like billy goats, but we didn't have any luck, so we headed back down and hunted along the side of the road for the perfect tree. Well, it started getting pretty cold and some of us didn't wear the correct footwear for this job, so I spotted a tree pretty quickly and Clint was kind enough to cut it down--sparing Steve the strain. Well, finding the Hoxie's a tree took a lot longer, but they finally found one about 5 minutes too late. The walk back to the vehicles involved a lot of crying because kids had cold feet, hands, and hunger set in. Nothing like ruining the holiday spirit than 5 kids with various intense tones of whining. We got loaded and warm and food and things improved.

Later that day, we took the girls to pick our their ornaments to purchase for this year. Somehow they are now able to pick out the most annoying or most expensive ornaments, but we started this tradition, so we have to continue it. Below are some pictures of us decorating the tree with Elmo serenading us with his version of Christmas tunes.

Here the girls are "helping" decorate the tree.

Rylee picked out a Rocket ornament from Little Einsteins. It played the theme song and we happen to hang it in a spot where she could reach the button to play the song...over...and over...and over... Lesson learned!



Kailen chose a Nutcracker Ballerina ornament that played the song and the ballerina twirled. Somehow it ended up in a nice hidden place. We are getting smarter.

So we got the tree nicely decorated and it really turned out nice for a fresh cut tree. We were able to push the bare spot close to the wall and the fuller part looked well decorated. We even got a new tree stand so the tree wouldn't fall over like it did last year--twice! It was a nice evening.

Steve got up early the next morning like he usually does--only to find the tree had indeed fallen over. In his pain medicine induced state, he failed to look at the cut made on the tree. We cut it from a slope and therefore the cut was at a pretty good angle. So basically the tree was supporting itself on a sliver. When we added the water--it was too much for the stand to handle. Anyway, he tried several times to get it back up by itself, but it kept falling. He finally woke me up to help. It was a little too late, one of the only ornaments to break was Kailen's first year ornament. It was upsetting, but thanks to e-bay we will be able to replace it. After that, it took some serious teamwork to get a decorated tree cut again to fit in the stand. Steve screwed some shims into the trunk and tightened it down--there was no way it was going to fall again.

So, we had the Christmas tree up and now the holidays could officially begin.

Next blog will come within the next couple of days and will be all about Kailen's first Christmas concert at school, so check back.