Last weekend it was time to get our Christmas tree.  Heck, if it was up to Hubs, we’d have our tree in Oct. But since we get a live tree, that just isn’t feasible (thank goodness!).  We didn’t have time to make our annual pilgrimage to the local tree farm- you know that place in the middle of no where you drive to, spend 2 hours walking around and end up selecting the first tree you saw at the bottom of the hill? Yeah- that didn’t fit into our schedule this year, so we went to the picturesque lot right in the Burger King parking lot.

We were looking for a specific type of tree (Concolor Fir) and this lot only had 4 of them. None of them looked that impressive to me- they all looked a little short and not terribly full, but we had to get a tree that day and we didn’t have the time to drive all over God’s green earth to look at another lot. So we picked a tree.

As the Hubs was walking it over to the car, I noticed that the tree towered over him. Given that the Hubs is over 6 feet tall, it started to occur to me that perhaps the tree was larger then I gave it credit for.  The very nice guy who ran the lot offered to trim the trunk for us- so  he, and his awesome chain saw, made quick work out of lopping at least 8 inches off the bottom.  Perfect. On to the car it went and we took our tree home.

The next day it was time to put the tree up.  It became apparent very quickly that all that trimming we did wasn’t nearly enough. Yes, those are branches bending over b/c they have hit my 9 foot high ceiling.

Never mind- that’s not anything that another quick trim can’t fix. On to decorating we go! This is the first year ever that both kids were super psyched to help us decorated AND were actually helpful.  Having kids is finally paying off!

Things were going swimmingly until it was time to put the star on the tree. After we had the kids fight it out cage-match style to figure out who got this honor, it was time for Beaner to put  it on (she’s small, but she’s strong*).  That is, until she completely freaked out over being that high up on the Hub’s shoulders and flat out refused to try to put it up.  We gave Scorch a shot and he maned up and got the star on there.  Only there was a small problem:

Yup..when we gave our tree its haircut, we didn’t take into account the height of the star.  The words that came out of the Hubs mouth when trimming our tree for the 3rd time were neither family friendly or in the holiday spirit.  But we did it!

I give you the Griswold Family Christmas Tree:

Now, let’s all say a quick prayer that 1) no woodland creatures emerge from it and 2) my cats don’t knock it over. Amen.

*Name that movie.