Oh Christmas Tree

This year my Christmas has been turned upside down a little. Mark and I are preparing to spend our first Christmas together and combining family traditions has been an adventure in itself. It started with Thanksgiving. We stayed here for Thanksgiving. We spent Thanksgiving Day with my family and then we went down south for the rest of the weekend.
Mark had his first taste of Black Friday this year. He was a good sport and woke up at 3:00 am to wait in a line outside of Mervyns to open at 4. I think he was wondering what the heck he got himself into when I got him up and out the door by 3. It may seem a little crazy but if you ask Mark I'm pretty sure he'd tell you it was fun and definitely entertaining. Plus, we got some awesome deals! I'm sure he'll be the one next year waking me up to hit the Wal-Mart sales.
After we got our shopping done we headed home for a few more hours of sleep. Then we headed down to Aurora for the weekend. We spent the week visiting friends and family and picking out our first Christmas tree.
This was a bit of a struggle for me. I have grown up with an artificial tree most of my life. I love artificial trees. I love setting it up before Thanksgiving and sitting in the front room with all the Christmas lights on and listening to Christmas music. I love that I don't have to water my tree. I don't have to worry if it's getting to dry and if I want I can leave it up for a few weeks after Christmas and not worry about it dying.
So, when mark informed me that he wouldn't be having a fake Christmas tree in his house for Christmas I was a little upset. I only can remember one or two times growing up, where we had a real tree. Everything I tried wouldn't work there was no changing Marks mind. We were going to have a real tree or no tree at all. So I compromised and said that I would go along with it as long as we could go cut down our own.
While we were down south for Thanksgiving, we went with Chase, Nancy, and Chase’s family to cut down our first Christmas tree. Mike and Becky drove down to Aurora too, to cut down a tree also. What an adventure. When we started out on our trip they had me a little worried. Everywhere I looked, all I saw were Joshua Trees not pine trees. I was beginning to worry about the tree we were going to cut down. After my silly city girl comment they assured me that we would be cutting down a pine tree. Finally we reached the top of the mountain and all the beautiful pine trees.
When we got parked the boys began a fire and they also pulled out the Dutch ovens to make a delicious lunch. This was an event. The one time I remember cutting down our own tree. We went up into the mountains cut down a tree and headed home. We didn’t have lunch or a fire.
Mark and I wandered around after lunch looking for the perfect tree. We had are disagreements about what the tree should look like, but then we found it. It was sitting about 11 feet above us. It was the top of a bare tree. The bottom part was completely bare and the top was our perfect Christmas tree. We grabbed one of the guys who was with us and the two guys cut down are tree. After we cut it down Mark had to drag the tree back to where all the trucks were parked. All together I would say we cut down about 15 trees. It was like a min Christmas tree lot.
It was cold but a lot of fun. I'm glad we had the opportunity to cut down are own Christmas tree. The only thing that could have made it better was a little snow.

We came home Saturday night and on Sunday we trimmed the tree and began setting it up. Are good friends Shannan & Erica Came over on Sunday night and helped us set up our tree and all the decorations. It was such a blast. I can honestly say I have grown to love my real Christmas tree. I love how it smells and I like its distinct look. Mark tells me it has personality. What do you think?

I'm defiently excited to share our first Christmas together. We wish everyone a Merry Christmas too!