I grew up putting up our Christmas tree piece by piece in the warmth of our home. Every color-coded branch slipped into it's spot until the tree was whole. Then we'd spend a good chunk of time fluffing it out before putting up the ornaments. I have fond memories of getting the tree decorated just so!
Our first home together was a tiny apartment in married student housing in college. Even if we could have found room to cram a tree in our living room, real trees weren't allowed. When we moved to our second apartment a few months before Maverick was born, it was just a few weeks before Christmas. I barely decorated that year, just putting up a few lights and our tiny artificial tree. Maverick's first Christmas we decided it was time to cut down our first real tree! We froze our buns off and Mark cut that thing down by hand. It was so fun to start a new family tradition!
The next year we got smarter and brought an electric saw with. Mav had fun running through the rows of trees while Mark chopped it down. Last year was Jaxon's first Christmas and our first year in Minnesota so we had to track down a new tree farm. Jax slept the whole time and Maverick helped finish cutting the tree down.
This year I convinced Mark we should grab our tree before Thanksgiving because we had a string of warmer days earlier this month. He agreed to go, left work early, only for me to realize we were 3 days too early for the farm to open. I was so disappointed! After the long Thanksgiving weekend we trekked out to the farm to snag one. We went at the warmest point in the day but it was still only mid-twenties. Brr! The kids were in full winter gear minus we couldn't find Jaxon's gloves and only one of Mav's. Needless to say they were not happy to be so cold!
We walked out to find that most of the good lookin trees were already claimed. It took going to four different sections and a wagon ride to finally find one that would fit in our house! By this point both boys had been wailing for awhile so we snapped a few pictures and walked back as quickly as we could. We got plenty of looks because both kids were losing it and all we could do was laugh! I love this tradition but this year had me reconsidering for a few minutes. Here's to next year, maybe only one of us will have a meltdown!
Are you team artificial tree or do you chop your own down?
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