No more artificial tree

Brooke and Ethan walking along in the mud.

Liam was pretty interested in the chainsaw. Elisa was having a flashback to her teen years and going to the old haunted houses. She let out quite a scream when he started it up.


Poor candy cane will be fossilized in the mud of Campbell's tree farm.

Ethan decided to venture off a bit on his own. No I am not a bad parent, I could see him the whole time, and it was only maybe 20 feet. As he was wondering around he turned and supposing it to be his dad was shocked to see that it was a complete stranger. He let out a quick cry and came running back to his daddy.


12 years ago Brooke and I went to SLC to get a fake tree with her Aunt Linda. The tree has served our family well these last few years. But for the second year in a row we didn't use the artificial tree. Since this was the second year in a row without putting it up, I decide we were going to give it away. As hard as it was we gave away a piece of our family, and gained a lot more storage space in the garage.

We all packed into the family van and headed out to get the Christmas tree at a u-pick, they cut tree farm. It had been wet during the past week so the ground was a mud hole, and it wasn't even raining. The boys were completely covered. Ethan tripped and his candy cane that he had just got was plastered in the mud. While carrying the tree back to the car we kept slipping and sliding. We finally got home and began to put up the tree.

After many hours of fighting the crooked cut on the bottom of the tree, a curved tree trunk at the base of the tree, and a broken tree stand I finally managed to take the tree back outside, re-cut the tree base, and put it into a new stand. It was a long afternoon. But we made it! By the time I got it up I had some serious doubts and thought maybe I should have just kept the fake tree. Once the tree was up the kids had fun putting on the ornaments and we have a beautiful tree to show for it, so maybe it was worth it.