In Which We Find A Tree

Today the kiddos and I spent a leisurely morning together, and then after our respite care worker arrived Eden and I headed out to find ourselves a Christmas tree.  This will be her first Christmas home, and I wanted to do things right, so we headed out to one of the U-Cut places in town, grabbed a saw, a kneeling pad and a cart, and after a quick hay ride, trekked out into the lot to find ourselves a tree.

And we found a tree.  Boy howdy did we find a tree.

So we have twelve foot ceilings in our living room, and we needed something tall.  Eden fell in love with this gorgeous ten footer noble fir, which we both agreed was quite the best tree on the lot.  What I quickly discovered, however, as the hand saw bit into the trunk, was that the reason why this gorgeous tree was still standing so close to the beginning of the lot was that it was, to put it delicately, big boned.  It had a trunk that was probably eight inches thick, and I'm pretty sure had a heartwood of solid iron.

Half an hour later, I was drenched in sweat and had made it only about a third of the way through the trunk.  Eden was looking on in increasing concern and making helpful comments like "Mommy, you okay?  You face really red."  Finally after forty minutes or so of sawing away at this thing and getting nowhere I gave up and recruited one of the gentlemen who worked there, who took the tree down with a chainsaw in about forty seconds.  I admit I had a feeling of satisfaction when it keeled over, like the tree had been taunting me or something and had now gotten its just desserts.  I realize how petty and silly it is to want revenge on a tree, but logic has very little to do with many of my impulses.

Anyway, so we hauled it home and one of our neighbors was kind enough to help me get it through the door.  Unfortunately in the drama of getting this massive tree off the lot I'd forgotten to ask them to drill a hole in the bottom for our stand, which is one of the "pin" types often used for trees this size.  So our awesome neighbor came to the rescue again and we drilled our own hole.

So the tree is up now and it's really starting to feel like the holiday season in here.  The house smells wonderful.  But because the bottom of the tree wasn't cut straight across, while it's stable and isn't going anywhere it looks like our tree drank a bit too much eggnog and now has to lean against the wall for support.  This has the same effect that crooked picture frames have on me, and I'm convinced I will go slowly insane over the course of the month.  Oh well.  Eden had a blast, and Connor was enchanted the minute we strung the lights, so I'll be okay.  Given our eccentric family, it's not surprising we have a tree that's a bit eccentric too, right?

I have to go out and get another couple string of lights tomorrow, as four strings wouldn't cover it this year (told you this tree was big boned), and we need to string some more cranberries too, but we at least got the parts of the tree covered that need a ladder.  We'll save putting the ornaments on for when Jer gets home.  I was missing him a lot today; doing Christmas things inevitably makes me think about family, and it's just not the same without him here.

Also I bet he could have cut down the dang tree.

~Jess