The year Avery was a baby was the last year we purchased a real, live Christmas tree. The price kept creeping up and I'm too cheap to be spending so much money on such frivolous things. So I shopped around and found a nice artificial one that would pay for itself in just two years.
As the years passed, I came to really enjoy the freedom of being able to take it out of the box the day after Thanksgiving, regardless of plans for the day or the weather. Though we feel a little like Scrooge every year, we really like doing the fake tree thing.
But when someone from my dad's church offered to bless us with a Christmas tree this year, we thought it would be fun to give the kids that experience. The day was mild and there was no snow on the ground...perfect!
The tree owners were super sweet and told us to pick out any tree we wanted.
What I remember from picking out a tree as a kid is that it took a long time because everyone had to decide on one and we all wanted it to be the one we picked out, so we'd end up searching with flashlights as the temps continued to drop and our feet became numb. It was mostly fun and adventurous but I do remember it being an event.
This was surprisingly easy and fun. The kids raced around from tree to tree for about 10 minutes and then decided on one they thought was perfect and we were done. Easy!
We've used an artificial tree ever since the Christmas Mike drove all the way back home from my parents (3 hour round trip) to make sure the tree hadn't dried out :) We like leaving the tree up for a long time & not worrying about it.
ReplyDeleteI have never had a real Christmas tree. Kim is allergic to them so it's artificial all the way. Normally, tree goes up on the first Saturday of December and it comes down on January 6, after the Magi have come through.
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