Sunday, November 25, 2007

Christmas Tree Hunting


Andy isn't sentimental about much...but one thing that is a definite rule in our home is that our Christmas tree has to be real and freshly cut. Since we've been married, we've gone to Holloway's Christmas Tree Farm in Nipomo the weekend after Thanksgiving for our tree. A few years ago, I convinced Andy to just go to Home Depot and pick out one of the "parking lot" trees...being from L.A., that's what we always did...and I will never live that down. Not only did we pay WAY more for a smaller, ganglier tree...but it started to wilt and dry out super quickly.

So, we packed up the family (dogs and all) on Saturday afternoon and headed to the Farm for the fourth annual Gibson Christmas Tree Hunt.


We trudged around the Farm for an hour scrutinizing every tree for size, shape, height, and spacing (you need room to hang ornaments!). Sadly, every tree I thought was just perfect...was like 12 feet tall. Scale is so hard when you're outside amongst hundreds of other trees and no roof or walls to give you an idea of size.

Yippee! Isn't this so much fun?!

Sporting my new hat from Aunt Shelley.

Andy "supervising" the tree cutting. I have grand visions of Henry working at the tree farm when he's in high school someday. The workers are all teenagers who yield the mighty power of the chainsaw and tote your tree back on a tractor. So cool! Beats Burger King any day!

The transformation. It's smaller than our usual trees. Typically, we end up having to cut off like a foot from the top because it won't fit in the living room, so this one seems really tiny to me.

It's so fun to start family traditions now that we have Henry. We've always tried to do special things during the holidays as a couple, but it's so much more neat to do it with a new little one!

9 comments:

joy said...

i agree that it's way more fun with kids. your tree looks so pretty. i can't believe it's decorated already! i commented on some other blogs that we have our tree, but it's just sitting in the living room without lights and ornaments. not sure when that will get done, but we have our tree.

Jeannett said...

Yea...once again, another Andy thing. He's pretty hard core about getting Christmas stuff up the weekend after Thanksgiving. We didn't get the outside lights up yet and he's all bummed about it. I think he plans on finishing it up tomorrow night. I guess that he figures it's a lot of work so it might as well be up as long as possible.

Carrie Haughey said...

oh!! do you know of any other tree farms around here? I am like Andy and MUST cut the tree down... even if it's only going to be a little 3-4 footer. Kyle doesn't care one way or the other... But I don't know where to go!

Jeannett said...

Holloway's is the only one I know of...it's not that far...Nipomo is only like 20 miles from SLO...their website should have a map.

Marcia Fiedorowicz said...

Now that we are in TX, I too have become a cut your own tree fanatic. At our farm, you have to cut your own with a handsaw. Such wonderful memories from last year!! We are heading out on Saturday to get ours. Granted, ours won't look anywhere close to the Martha Stewart Tree you have decorated (I let the kids do all the decorating). And, on an exciting note, I have the same tree topper! I also have her in the red dress, too!

Henry used to look like a nice combination of the two of you... however, the older he gets, the more he looks like Gibby!

XooX

Cham F. said...

Love that double chin!

Jeannett said...

Marci-They have handsaws if you want to do the cutting yourself...but we always opt for the high school kids to do it for us. Lazy I guess. Tink is a little crooked this year...Andy needs to straighten out the top of the tree with a wooden dowel or something...its not strong enough to stay straight with the topper. :(

Carrie Haughey said...

so, random... I googled Lance to see if there were any article about his homecoming that I had missed. Guess who's blog was at the top of the list? yup, yours! crazy, thought you might want to know.

lindsey said...

thats so funny that you think your tree looks small! it looks huge to me! it tales up all of our front window!