How was your Thanksgiving weekend? Ours was wonderful and completely jam-packed. It was one of those weekends when you do so much stuff you're exhausted afterwards, but wouldn't change a thing. Well, Eric decided that this year instead of buying a tree at a lot we would buy a cheap $10 permit and go cut a tree ourselves. I was hugely on board. So was Aspen. Oakley, I'm not so sure (see his head drooped?). He doesn't like being in the car for very long.
Being from western Oregon, I didn't even know people bought trees from lots until I moved to Utah after high school. I just thought everyone went to a tree farm and cut their own, or just cut one on their property. I remember the year we went down to the edge of our property growing up and cut a beautiful pine tree right there.
So we took our trip up to the mountains and had nothing else planned for the day, just in case. We figured this being our first time cutting our own tree, well, we had no idea how the day was going to go.
We drove out to a town called Idaho City (which I have a past with. A very tainted past) and then beyond, basically following the other truck drivers who were obviously scouting out a prime location for cutting a tree.
We finally found a spot and got the kids out of the truck that we borrowed from Eric's dad. We walked around in the snow for about 20 minutes debating which tree to cut. We were looking for an ideal tree, full and even, and then realized that out in the wild those don't exist that often. Then I thought to myself how cool it would be to find an imperfect tree, one that really did look just that: wild.
We eventually agreed to one that wasn't too tall and not too far from the truck, and Eric asked me to pass him the axe.

I just assumed Eric would be cutting down the tree with a saw, but I felt even more lumberjack-y when I saw him use that axe!

After the deed was done.

Once we hauled the tree back to the truck we let the kids play around in the snow for a bit. Who knows when we'll be seeing it in the valley! Here's Oaks with a bit of it.
The trip took about twice as long as we thought, but it was a lot of fun and I love looking at our crooked, imperfect, beautiful tree. Merry Christmas!