Colorado Christmas Tales part 4

Continuing the Christmas sagas, this is what we started doing in 1986.

I had an artificial tree, I would just get it out of the garage and set it up in the living room, and decorate it. Easy as pie (unless I'm the one cooking, that is).

But not Clyde. Christmas is NOT Christmas if the tree isn't real. But they cost a lot of money...... Well, not so much if you can get a permit from the forest service, and then get to the cutting area in the mountains. So that's what we did.

On the Saturday morning we were going to get the tree, we got all the kids up, fixed a thermos of hot chocolate, loaded up the ax and the saw into the car, and took off.

Luckily for us, it was a nice day, the sun was shining, and I don't remember the temperature, but not too bad. After we got there we had to find a tree. We didn't want to cut one that was too big, so we were looking for one that was about 7-8 feet tall. Gotta tell you that they look a lot shorter out in the open, but we found one.



Everyone got a chance to saw at the trunk. I think the general opinion was that cutting down a tree wasn't as easy as it looks. Here's Eddie taking his turn at sawing.



And here's Clyde hiking in. I know he's hiking in, because he wasn't hauling a tree out. That was another thing, those trees aren't light.




We got the tree tied to the top of the car and took it home. Then we tried to set it up. Remember what I said before about them looking shorter out in the open. We had to cut about 4 feet off the bottom of the tree to get it into the house.

And when we did, we discovered that we had to tie it to the wall. We had adopted these three kittens, shown here playing with the running water in the kitchen sink.



And when we got the tree up, they just loved the jungle gym that we had brought home especially for them!



Needless to say, we had to leave the tree undecorated for several days, until the cats were finished with it. Then we decorated it, and redecorated it, and redecorated it,.......

And the next two years we went back up to the forest to cut down a Christmas tree.
So our kids know where the trees come from and we are looking for one on our property to cut down so G, and M, and CJ and experience the fun of cutting down their Christmas tree!

Stay tuned for part 5.