traditions rock!

There's always a lot of discussion this time of year about traditions.  Family traditions and personal traditions abound around Christmas.  I love traditions.  I'm a traditional gal.  My mother built traditions around us.  There was a tradition for everything from what we ate to when we ate, how we got our tree, what we sang to our tree, who put what on the tree....it goes on and on.  Marrying my JR was a shock because he was tradition 'light' I guess you'd say.  The only tradition he had was that he eats Ham at major holidays. Ham???? that's it????  I quickly realized that if there was going to be any traditions in our home they would need to come from me.  So, I started with traditions from my childhood, some worked, some didn't (stolen anyone?).  Getting a Christmas tree turned into one of the meetings of the minds for the two of us.  Both of us love live, fresh trees and the hunt for the perrrrfect tree.  Over the years we've had quite a few adventures getting our trees.  One time we actually had to thaw three absolutely frozen trees in our garage (with little space heaters) and then spray one with fire retardant so it could be at the church. Looong story short.  There was an ice storm the night before, the missionaries wanted a tree for someone they were visiting, we wanted a tree for ourselves and I was in charge of the tree for the church, so we cut down 3 ice laden, HEAVY trees and thawed them in our garage.  It was messy, crazy and totally fun!  oh, and we got them from JR's tree farm...we went there for years!
So, now that we live in N.  We have a new tree place.  It's called Jorgensen's family tree farm.

WE love this little family business

Every year we hunt, peck and nitpick until we find the perfect tree.  Then, I try to get JR & Peekaboo to cooperate long enough to get a good photo (note:  JR's saying Christmas tree over, and over and over, and over again)

aaah, finally 20 photos later!

Then, I try to sing to the tree, while JOHN cuts down the tree!

Then, we schlep it down the hill

where the kind people of the tree farm shake the tree out and then bind it

WE then have hot cocoa and cookies and browse their items for sale...the pickin's were slim this year but we did get Mistletoe!!  Ha ha ha ha!!

Did I mention we got a Grand Fir this year?  Usually we end up with  Douglas Fir, they're prolific and inexpensive (relatively) but this year we found a Grand Fir that was just our size.  I gotta say it's the best smelling tree we've had in a looooong time!  Yum!

So, back home we go to set up out treasure.  This year peekaboo was tall enough to help set up our beauty and so she got to cut the twine on the tree--- drum roll please!

Isn't it a gorgeous Tree?