Our "Tree"-mendous Adventure

This afternoon we started a really fun new Christmas tradition!  We travelled out to a place called Evan's Whispering Pines where we were able to cut down our own Christmas tree.  The whole experience was awesome - I'm so glad we decided to try it out!  The first thing we did was take a hayride across the street to the tree farm. 

Here we are waiting for the tractor to come pick us up!

Here is Uncle Alec, Grandpa Allen, and Garrett (in the car seat!) on our hayride!

And here is Grandma Allen, Uncle Dillon, Tori, and me!

And here is Uncle Dillon, Tori, me and Jared!

Next we rounded up a saw and tree cart and went in search of our perfect Christmas tree!

Uncle Aaz and Tori had a great time on our hunt!!!

It was a bit chilly, so Dillon decided to see if hiding in a tree would warm him up!

It took us a bit, but we finally found our tree!  Tori had so much fun helping Jared cut it down!

The rest of us had fun watching Jared show off his expert sawing skills!

I'm so glad we got a video of the big moment - timber!!!

Then we loaded our tree onto our cart - Tori was a big helper!

It took everyone to get it back!!!

While Jared, Grandpa Allen, Garrett, and I were waiting for the tractor to take us back across the street with our tree, Uncle Dillon, Uncle Alec, and Grandma Allen took Tori to the small petting zoo-ish area.  She had a great time meeting all the animals!!!

Here we are with our fabulous tree all ready for the ride home!

Once we got home, we were so excited that we got our tree in the tree stand right away so we could get the lights on.  This is when we started to realize that we may have overlooked something with our tree.  The front side was beautiful and full.  the back side was pretty bare- making our tree more heavy on one side than the other.  It ended up tipping over 3 times within the first hour or so at our house.  At that point we were really frustrated.  Then Grandma Allen came up with a fabulous solution- we tied weights onto a cord and used them to hold up our tree. 

It looks a bit ghetto, but our tree hasn't fallen over since! Next year we are definitely going to get a better balanced tree! Even with our tree falling over repeatedly, it was such a great day and such a fun new tradition!  I am so glad that we could share it with Grandma and Grandpa Allen, Uncle Alec, and Uncle Dillon!!!