O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree

For the past five years, we've been using a fake tree every Christmas. And for the past five years, all I hear every December is "I want a real tree, but James won't let me have one." (Even though I've told him every year that if he wants a real tree, to simply go out and buy one).


Our tree has to not only pass Tim's 10-point visual inspection, it also has to pass the pine smell test. (12/11/05)

This year, I wasn't going to hear that line one more time, so I didn't even bother bringing the fake tree down from storage. No, this year we're getting a real tree. In fact we decided to get one from Peltzer Pines Christmas Tree Farm in Orange, where you can buy trees so fresh that they cut it down right before your very eyes.

Picking one out that we could agree on was a challenge, but we finally found the right tree.


This is the tree! (12/11/05)

So we paid for it, and within five minutes that baby was strapped to the Envoy and ready to go home.


The manly tree cutter guy is about to hoist it on the Envoy and tie it up for the short ride home. (12/11/05)

Decorating it was another matter. After plugging in all our lights, we realized that a couple of strands weren't working any longer. So what did we do? We pulled off the LED lights that we had just put on the house a few nights earlier (Tim wasn't really happy with them anyway, since he thought they were too small to be house lights).


Fully decorated! Now all we need are the presents underneath! (12/11/05)

Finally, several hours later we have our freshly-cut, fully-decorated naturally-pine-scented tree.