The Tree!!

This weekend we went up the road a few miles to find our tree.  We had decided to get quite a tall one since this year we have tall ceilings.  The boys were very excited.  We tromped through the woods, we tromped up the hills, we tromped along trails.

Some of us made snow angels (or perhaps snow rascals?).

The boys got up to our old tricks of shaking snow off trees onto those below.

We checked out many (many!) trees.

 And then, just when we were about to go back to our first "potential" tree we had spotted, S spotted "the one".  We had been looking for a Douglas Fir and he found a beautiful one.

They cut.  We carried.  We spent some time trying to figure out just how we were going to get this tree into the house.  We spent some more time trying to get it to stand up straight without falling over (it was waaaaay too big for our tree stand -which is MIA anyway).  So...after spending hours yesterday trying to get this tree up here are our hard-learned tips.

Don't - Spend hours holding it up while trying to screw "legs" onto the bottom to stabilize it.  You will have sore arms and everyone will be grouchy each time the tree moves slightly.

Don't - Designate more than one person to give directions for straightening the tree -  more grouchiness!

Don't - Get such a big tree. (Oh, I'm just kidding about that one)

DO - Put a brace up high on the second level and brace the trunk of the tree right to a wall!!  Then all will be well and those "legs" you screwed on to brace the tree will all of a sudden work like a charm.

And now it is up and ready for decorations - our biggest tree ever.  Now we just need to make a whole lot of decorations (these, these,and these for starters) since we normally only decorate a 7 foot tree. ;-)