Christmas Tree Hunt

Ever since I can remember, our family has made a super big deal of picking out our Christmas tree.  It usually involves visiting 3-4 Christmas tree lots, of course selecting our favorite tree at each place, followed by a discussion over which tree we should actually purchase while eating Krispy Kreme donuts and drinking hot chocolate, then returning to chosen lot to purchase the agreed upon tree.  All the while, hoping someone else has not decided our favorite tree was also their favorite tree.  It definitely is a process, but a fun one that has a lot of meaning for our family. 

Since I've been married (and living in Atlanta),  Jonathan and I continued that tradition and added our own twists.  Knowing that we'd probably end up purchasing our tree at Lowes or Home Depot (because they're SO much less expensive there), we'd still visit the "Big John's" lots - but our game was to find the biggest tree and try to guess how much they'd be.  Seriously, I think we found some that were upwards of $500.  CRAZY!  And since Krispy Kreme's seemed to hard to come by in Buckhead, we settled for Dunkin Donuts.  I'm so thankful that I have a husband that humors my family's sometimes drawn-out traditions and is willing to adapt them to our family's traditions too.

That being said, this year - was a Christmas Tree Hunt like none other... My ENTIRE family went together - including "significant others"! We had 9 people traipsing in and out of the cars (in the freezing cold) to 3 different Christmas tree lots. Granted, we did select 2 trees - one for our house and one for my mom's. Then further morphed our tradition to accomodate a 2 yr old and did the hot chocolate & donuts at the house. Such fun! I especially liked when the "men" were attempting to hold up the 12 foot tree just so we could take a look... whew! it was heavy, I think. It was also super nice to have all the boys to help Jonathan get the tree in the stand and up in the living room. I held the door for them on the way in and made sure their hot chocolate was poured. :)


All in all, we had a good evening and a fun time together. Here are some pictures from our hunt. I'll have to get some pictures of it all decorated and post it in another blog.

 Just a side comment, this can't be very safe...