There's Nothing Quite Like It.

 The smell of a real, live Christmas tree.  This is Madison's and Patrick's first real tree ever.  Can you believe that?  Well, I mean, obviously the Madison part wasn't a surprise, but Patrick?  He's been around for twenty-seven Christmases before this one, and if he's to be believed, he has never once had a real tree.  I can at least vouch for him for the six Christmases we've been married.  Every year before this, we had a fake tree, but I always knew I wanted to go "real" once we had kids.  Or kid and dog.  Actually, now that we "have a kid", I kind of hate the way that phrase sounds.  Like you have a hammer, or a toaster oven, except it's a kid instead.  But I digress.  This post is supposed to be about our Christmas tree!

Originally, my plan was to go to a Christmas tree farm and chop down the tree of our choosing.  Then I started to dread the long ride to the nearest farm, and the long time spent in the cold picking out/cutting down/dragging back our tree.  At first, I pressed on with the plan, mostly out of some strange sense of duty to Madison to "do it right".  Then I realized that Madison would probably be even more miserable than we would if we "did it right".  So off to good ol' Walmart we went. 

Sadly, we are now a zero truck household.  Man, we miss his Ranger.  Since we didn't have a truck to toss the tree into, we had to go with plan B for getting our prize home.  Enter the Explorer.

Pat spent probably ten minutes making sure the tree wouldn't fly off the top.  His new name for the week is Captain Careful. 

At this point, it was about six o'clock.  That's about fifteen minutes late for Madison's typical dinnertime.  We decided I would feed her (sweet potatoes for the first time, which she loved) while Patrick cut a few inches off the base of the tree.  All we had to cut it with was Pat's circular saw, but he got the job done. 

We put Madison in her saucer so I could "help" Patrick with getting the tree in place.  And by "help", I mean make him come through the back door twice because the camera wasn't ready the first time. 

We obviously haven't put the kitchen back to rights yet.  I'll just pretend we left it this way on purpose so Pat could navigate the room more easily while carrying our tree.  Yeah, that's what we were thinking.  I'm so glad we plan ahead for these things.

I'll admit; once it was in its stand, I couldn't help feeling a little...disappointed.  It was just so small!  But I didn't say anything, because we had just spent more than a dollar (meaning a lot of money in our book) on it, and Pat had worked really hard (in the cold) to get it home.

 But then something magical happened.  When Pat started to pull the twine off the tree, it grew before my very eyes.  I know you'll think I'm being facetious here, but I really was surprised by how full and appropriately sized it looked!  I guess when you go five years with cheap (think <$50) fake trees, a real tree like this is bound to surprise you with its...realness. 

  At first, Madison wasn't too sure about what we had going on.  This is the look she gives me when there's a loud noise.  It's her "Mom, is that okay?" look. 

 I assured her that yes, it's safe, and it's our happy Christmas tree!  Then she felt free to explore.

 Immediately after that picture was taken, she announced rather loudly that it was bedtime.  Since we didn't want to decorate the tree without her, it's still very much bare.  Hopefully I'll be back tomorrow with a post on our fully decorated tree!  Until then, I'll just enjoy the sweet smell of Christmas. 

I'd like to know...do you do real or fake trees for Christmas? 
-Kelli