My First Real Christmas Tree Adventure

This year we are celebrating Christmas in Whitefish with the Dustin side of the family. In their house, they set up a real Christmas tree. For as long as I can remember, my family has had an artificial tree. As I recall, it was always a lot of fun to spread out the limbs and a battle as to who place the top piece on the tree...

Anyways, we arrived late Saturday evening and first thing after breakfast Sunday morning, Grandma, Uncle Cameron, Perry, the boys and I set out to find "the perfect Christmas tree." I've never been tree hunting before, but I can imagine it's a lot easier without snow....

 Hunter and JP enjoyed riding in sleds while us big people walked. 

 The house is situated at the top of a hill, the drive way up to the house was a lot of fun for the boys to sled down. 

 The first one we found looked like a beauty until Perry pulled back the little tree next to it and found one side of our "perfect" tree was a little lacking in branches.

 We trekked through the woods, with the boys on sleds, before looping around to the road again. Along the way I flipped Hunter off his sled in an attempt to catch up to the rest of the group, but with no luck. He was stuck in a shrub crying because his mitten fell off. 

 Eventually he calmed down enough for us to get the mitten back on and to catch up with everyone else. While Perry and Grandma continued their search for the tree, Uncle Cameron sent JP down the road on the sled, and though I attempted to do the same with Hunter, he was still a bit upset. Instead of going to the bottom of the road, he and I turned around and headed back up the road in search of Perry and Grandma. Of course we passed them and had to turn around again. At one point, I was left with both Hunter and JP on the road, while everyone else was in the woods so I trekked them in on foot (since pulling two sleds and watching out for the camera was impossible to do). Unfortunately the snow was fairly deep and hard for them to get around in....JP found himself "swimming" up snow mounds, which slowed us down even more.  Eventually we made it back to the road and decided to go back and get the first tree we looked at...AND after some arguing as to where it was located (because no one would listen to me, Miss Compass) we finally found it.

 Perry and Hunter took the first few saws at it...

 And then JP took a few saws at it as well.

 Cameron and Grandma also had their turns sawing down the Christmas tree. 

 I also took my turn and attempted to saw the rest down. I'm pretty sure I was close, but not enough to knock it over...

Once it finally was chopped down, Perry and Cameron hauled it up to the shop to dry out a bit, while Grandma and I toted the boys back to the house to warm up. 

I'm not sure what I expected when we set out to chop down our own tree, but I'm glad the weather was PERFECT!