Our Griswold Family Christmas Tree

This year we did something different. We decided to head out to Linvilla Orchards and cut down a fresh tree so that we could enjoy it longer. What a wonderful idea, right? Not so fast...

In my mind it was perfect...Linvilla is a beautiful place that has a shop with homemade foods, caroling, hay rides out to the Christmas tree farm, roasted marshmallows over the fire... doesn't that sound nice? Well that's not quite the way it worked out in real life.

Looking ahead at our weekends, we realized that the only possible day that we could get our tree was Saturday, December 5th. Perfect... we'd have that wonderful smell in our house for a full 3 weeks before Christmas. I took a look at the weather forecast the day before, and it said that Saturday would be cold and sunny during the day and snow at night. Sounds great!

But of course, we woke up Saturday morning to cold rain. Boo. But I tried to look on the bright side... it wasn't raining that hard and it wasn't that cold, so we could still go! Not only that, but what other crazy people would be cutting down their Christmas tree in the rain?? We'd be sure to get the perfect tree!

Again, I was looking on the bright side.

As Bob, Carter, and I drove around the corner to pick up my sister, Kacy, and her husband, Ryan, the real complaining began. Whenever you get Bob and Ryan together {which is quite often} you can usually count on {more than a few} sarcastic comments...

"It's raining."
"How far is this place?"
"You girls think everything is 20 minutes away."
"Who in their right mind would get a tree today?"
"Who's idea was this?" {this comment included death stares in my direction}

Kacy and I just kept singing "It's the most wonderful time of the year..." after every complaint or comment for the entire 20 minute ride there. When we got to Linvilla, we bundled up and headed, via hayride, to the Christmas tree farm to pick out the perfect tree.

I was right... it wasn't crowded, lol.


I took us about 45 minutes to find our trees. Kacy and Ryan found theirs first...
Then we found ours about 3 trees down... {we didn't want to pull Carter out of his stroller in the freezing rain for this picture, so it's just Bob and I}Of course, as we were waiting for our hay ride back to the car, it started snowing. Really? I mean why couldn't it have started snowing on our hay ride to find a tree???

Anyway, I thought our tree was on the small side. Until we got it home, that is.

As I look at the pictures now, I can see just how big both trees really are. I mean, Bob is 6' and Ryan is 6'3 and both trees are much taller than both of them! Oops. I guess when you're in the middle of a forest of Christmas trees, the only real comparison is... well, other trees.

As we brought our tree in the house and Ryan and Bob put it in the stand {after cutting about 2 feet off the bottom} this is what it looked like...

Our Griswold Family Christmas Tree

As you can see hear, I couldn't stop laughing. And, if you look closely out the window, you can see it snowing =)

After cutting nearly every. single. branch. of our tree, and then decorating it with lights and ornaments, this is the result....I love it. It was worth the entire trip.