Adventures in Christmas Tree Land

We had one hum dinger of a time getting our Christmas tree this year! We weren't sure if we were going to cut one down, or use the sad pathetic artificial one we have in storage. Just so y'all know, I don't have anything personal against artificial trees. In fact I have seen some incredibly beautiful ones, just not at my house. I do prefer a real tree to the artificial, as a personal preference. Well we got a call from the primary president in our ward asking us if we wanted to go up to Cohasset and cut down a tree. Apparently her sister's husband's family owns a ton of acreage up there and they wanted to give away some of the Christmas trees that are growing on the land. Well, we thought, woo-whooo! We didn't know if there would be snow up there or what, so I dressed my kids like there would be. Turned out there wasn't any snow in sight, just rain, rain, rain, rain, and more rain. When we got to the place we were told to meet the sister's husband, his name was Cliff. I've never met anyone named Cliff before, he was a real nice guy. Anyhow, Cliff fired up his F-150 with our family of 6 crammed inside. He smacked that puppy into four wheel drive, and we were off! We went up hills, and down hills, and finally stopped at a place that Cliff deemed appropriate for Christmas tree finding, and also, he was afraid to take the truck any further on the slick, thick, oozing, muddy logging road we were traveling on. I was carrying Lily in my arms with a blanket over her, and holding onto Eliza's hand as we hiked into the forest. You would think that being in the forest, with all those trees for protection, we wouldn't have gotten so wet. You'd be wrong though, we were soaked. Luckily Lily kept the front of me dry though! Just kidding, but she did sleep through the whole experience. So anyways, there we were in the middle of nature, hiking up a huge hill in search of the perfect Christmas tree. Cliff was leading the way, with Ethan, Bonnie, and Brett right behind him. Eliza, Lily, and I were left to fend for ourselves. After walking all the way to the top of this extremely large hill through extremely thick underbrush, we come to a clearing at the top. I think that the others were planning on going down the other side of the hill and up the next one. Well, by then, I was going to be pretty happy with any old branch, or Charlie Brown tree we could find. It was pretty tough going through all that underbrush with one arm carrying my baby (granted she doesn't weigh much), and helping an almost 3 year old climb over fallen trees and other debris because she doesn't want you to carry her! "NO mama, ony Ziaza do it!" It was at that moment when I spotted it...the perfect tree! The one we were going to take home! I walked right over to it, and realized it had a big hole in the middle. So we cut down the one next to it, which turned out to be the perfect tree for us! After we cut the tree, we started back to the car. I was prepared for a long and hard hike back through the underbrush dragging our newly felled tree. Imagine my surprise when we walked about 50 feet, crossed one fallen tree, and came to the road! WHAT!!! I could have walked up the road and found our tree! Well, then we walked down the hill, on the road to the truck. Eliza couldn't be stopped, and I saw it coming, but there was nothing I could do to stop her. She started running down the hill, and just like I as her mother knew it, she did a total face plant into the muddy road. I wish I could have taken her picture in the mud like that, but I wasn't fast enough. It was a classic fall, one of those that you see happen in slow motion. She wasn't hurt, thank goodness, and we all climbed back into the truck. Cliff started to retrace our route into the forest, but we kept sliding back down the steep muddy hill. This probably would have been terrifying in itself, but there was a small drop off on the other side of the road that kept getting closer and closer every time we slipped. We backed down the hill three times in an attempt to get better traction. Finally Brett got into the back of the truck, and with much prayer, we finally made it out! Then we took the tree home, and put it in our garage to dry off. When we brought the tree into the house, I thought, "Wow, this sure looked smaller in nature!" We found our spot for the tree in our house and put it up. We got the lights on the tree, and the kids did all the decorating. After all our hard work, we stood back to admire our handy work, and that's when the tree started to tip over. Then it fell all the way over. The stand had been full of water that was now all over our carpet, and ornaments were broken (though not as many as you would think). So we tried and tried to get that stupid tree to stand up, and we just couldn't do it! Brett finally came in from the garage with a 3x3 foot piece of plywood and bolted the stand to it. That worked to stabilize the tree mostly, but we ended up drilling a hole in the bottom of the tree so we could put a spike in it to hold it still in the stand! What an ordeal!!! But now it is up and beautiful and perfect just like a Christmas tree should be! Here we are in the forest, I wish you could see how hard it was raining. Here is Lily all snugly and warm and dry and very asleep on my shoulder. That girl can sleep through anything! Poor Eliza! She was so mad because her hands got dirty when she fell down. This is right after her face plant in the mud!