No More Charlie Brown Christmas Trees!

For years living at mom and dad's house, dad would choose our Christmas tree based on business needs. Meaning, which trees do I need to thin out to allow the better trees more room to grow? So, our Christmas tree would be a tree that was crowding a better tree and we would have a skinny tree with only a few limbs or a fat unshapely tree with many open gaps. You would think living on a tree farm, we would have only the best trees cut for our Christmas, but, you need to know how practical and resourceful my father was!

Now that dad is winding down the tree farm in his retirement, he has allowed us our choice of Christmas trees for the last few years. Two years ago, we took advantage of our vaulted ceilings and got a 15 foot Christmas tree. It was beautiful but painful. Jeff could not lift it by himself, and we had to set it up next to the balcony in order to get it straight, decorate the top, etc and then scoot it to it's position by the window. We then spent the next few weeks paranoid it was going to come crashing down, breaking all ornaments and catching fire from the fireplace. Last year, we settled for a 12 footer and this year about the same. We drove to the farm on a snowy day a couple weeks ago with Tom and picked our trees. Tom's is definitely a "nubby," fat tree and we are excited to see how it fills his entire living room tomorrow when we celebrate Mary Esther's 40th Birthday on the Winter Solstace.

Will's first ornament from Auntie Kristin in 2006:



Thanks mom and dad for the beautiful tree!!! Merry Christmas to all!