The Upgraded Christmas Tree

Our First Christmas Tree in all its glory
(stop laughing! Its called living within your means :)

Our tree this year
(it does not look that crazy, the flash just picks up the silver of the fir needles)

We decided to hang in Houston this year for Christmas. 1. to finish up Ike repairs, 2. Ike killed out travel budget and 3. I am becoming a Texas weenie and I am pretty sure if I am exposed to -20 temperatures my thinning blood might freeze and I will die.

This year we actually splurged and got a real tree (of course a fir tree since we live on fir tree). Unlike our childhood escapades of trudging through crotch-deep snow in ten degree weather wondering if your lower extremities would need to be amputated before Dad found the “perfect tree”, we headed down to Houston Garden Center, located a mile from our house and picked a pre-cut one off the lot and some guy even carried it to the truck (much easier, less painful).

This is the first real tree we have had since our first Christmas married and its 1. larger, 2. less prickly, and 3.doesn’t look like its been violently tortured. But every tree there is a good story. Our first Christmas tree made Charlie Brown’s tree look like it belonged on Rockefeller Center ….

Jared and I were married in September of 03 during our senior year at college. Like all college kids we were broke (of course most were broke because they were buying beer…we were buying health insurance). We went home to visit my parents and talked about getting a real tree, but could not fork out the $25.00, plus our attic apartment has no room for a kitchen table, let alone a tree.

Before leaving my dad suggested we go out to the farm pasture and cut one down (part of his woody invasive management program). We searched the pastures at dusk, finding a small red cedar that would suffice. We cut him down, and tied him to the back of our 94 achivea and started the 3 hour trek back to our apartment in Ames. We stopped in Waterloo only to find that our securing skills lacked and our precious little tree had been dragged down I-20 for unknown miles. We franticly tied it back to the trunk as the winter winds pierced through layers of clothing…..and the guy in the nice SUV next to us watched, laughing hysterically.

It made its way to Ames in the sub zero temperatures, hooked to a car not much more valuable than the tree itself. We quickly put it in water (in a juice jug because tree stands cost as much as the tree), but between its miles of contact with the frozen pavement and being ripped from the clutches of its native habitat, the damage had been done.

Its sad branches were brown and flimsy, but were enough to hold the two ornaments we owned. Jared pouted all that week that our tree sucked. So five years later I granted Jared the privilege of a “real Christmas tree”. So far it has survived both kids, is still green and smells soooo good!