Christmas Tree Adventure

Yesterday Ladd and I decided to forget Home Depot and go cut down a "REAL" tree in the wonderful mountains. So at 1:30 in the afternoon(after putting it off all morning, and not even eating lunch), we were off to the Rangers station to get a permit. We didnt think to look at the weather conditions or bring any food with us, we were just determined to find our Christmas tree.

The lady at the station told us that the road to the trees was icy and that we needed chains. We went anyways :) 15 miles up the pass, we got to our exit and to the icy road...we went about a foot up the road and turned around. We drove up some other roads and hiked in a ways and turned around. The kids were still happy at this point and enjoying being in the snow(not to mention the 20 degree weather)

We drove to the next exit and I told Ladd I was not hiking anymore, he went hiking into the forest for about 10 minutes while I envisioned him never coming back (by the way, it was snowing pretty hard at this point)and being one of those long lost hikers who didnt know what they were doing. (the kind you see on the news and you say, "duh, what were they thinking")

Ladd came back and told me he found some good trees, so off we all were into the woods. 10 minutes of bushwacking later, we got to these trees and they were not the perfect tree I was looking for. Our kids were still happy at this point except for Isabelle on the way back who was starting to lose her patience.

So back to the car we went and we were ready to throw in the towel when I told Ladd to stop and check out an area that I thought would be good and "ah hah" there it was!

We thought the hard part was over.....

This tree was HUGE! But it was the perfect tree. Miles hiked up the little hill with the saw and down our tree came. (did I mention it was snowing?) and "freakin freezing" as Miles put it.

Tying the tree down

The kids are done with the "Ultimate family experience"

1 hr later, our tree was on the car and tied down and Ladds hands were almost frozen off. The tree started on it's journey... What we didn't know was how bad the snow was affecting the roads while we were having the ultimate family experience - About 2 hours later(because of a jacknifed semi).....hungry kids....screaming Isabelle, Sarahs needing to go pee the WHOLE time... we made it home.(with a bird nest that we discovered while taking the tree inside the house!)

The birds nest

We finally got it in the house

The finished product