Christmas Tree 2015

Well, the adventure of our Christmas tree this year is one for the books. There are no Christmas tree lots in Sanpete county. Come to find out they all cut them down. We had no problem with that. We thought it might be a fun tradition while we are down here. The permits were just $10 so it was way cheaper than usual. We went first thing in the morning for the permit and it's good we did. The permits sold out in a couple hours After that Brian and I decided to head up some of the canyons and determine a good place to go to cut down trees. The older kids were in school so we headed up Manti canyon. We would drive for a while then stop and look for trees. All we could find were shrubby, bushy trees. After going for a while we decided to turn around...well that didn't go so well. The van slid right into a rut  with the tire bending a weird way. It. was. disaster. No one knew we were up there. It was just me and Brian and Grace. We had no tools. Brian was pushing like crazy and digging with a snow scraper. He would push, we would move a tiny bit, then he would have me change my tire angle and push some more. We were moving inch by inch. Finally, after about an 45 minutes, Brian told me to go forward and we were out of the rut. I was a complete panicked, praying my heart out mess through the ordeal. It was bad. bad. bad. We are not the right kind of people to get stuck in the mountains. Yikes. We figured that people must not be getting their trees in that canyon so we headed up another. Same problem. Slippery roads and bushy, ugly trees...not a fir in sight. We headed across the street to our neighbors. He works for the forest service down here. We asked where to go to get trees. He told us two place. Turns out we had to go higher up. We asked if we could get there without 4 wheel drive and they said that wouldn't be a problem. So we bundled up the kids and headed up. I thought we were going to die. The dirt roads were narrow and slick and Brian had to go fast enough that we not get stuck or slide backwards but slow enough to not slide off the edge of a cliff. I just gripped the door handle and prayed. We finally made it to the lake that our neighbor told us about. There were definitely pine trees and we were excited.

We all bundled up and started walking. About 5 minutes in to this walk, Grace got snow in her boot and about a minute after that she started screaming. Inconsolably crying. She was freezing and didn't want to do what we were doing. There was nothing I could do for her and she was getting heeeaaaavy.

(this is right before the howling began)

We all tried to remain positive amongst the screaming, and I sent Brian and the kids up some ridges to look at some trees while I sat on a stump and tried to help Gracie calm down. She didn't. After 10 minutes or so, they yelled down that they had found a good tree and Brian asked if I wanted to come see it. Ummm, nope, just cut the dang thing down. The kids were excited to yell timber but were apparently so focused on their responsibility of holding the tree while he sawed. What we didn't anticipate was how heavy that tree was going to be. We started walking back me with screaming, lead weighted Grace and Brian with a 40 pound tree. It was not a short distance to the car and we were trudging through snow. Adin was carrying the saw and getting really distracted with dragging the saw through the snow as he walked and was falling further and further behind. All niceness was out the window and kids were getting yelled at over Gracies screams. We were both just trying to get to the car as fast as we could possibly move with our heavy weights. It was no longer what we anticipated. We got to the car and I buckled Grace in her seat, still screaming, turned on the heater and shut the doors so that no one had to hear her scream anymore.

(yes, gracie is screaming in that car)

We were all cold and ready to be done and still had to tie the tree on to the van. About 10 minutes down on the drive, Gracie warmed up and stopped screaming. \It was the same harrowing drive back down. I thought we'd all die for the sake of a tree and no one was really in a good mood anymore. Fun family adventure, right? If we do it next year, we will have chains for the van and a babysitter for Grace...for sure!

Well, if that wasn't enough of adventure, it gets worse...much worse. We got down the kids fighting and complaining. They got yelled. They really wanted to decorate the tree that night. We should have just called it a night at that point, but were trying to do it all. We went up to set up the tree in the stand and immediately notice that the tree wasn't exactly straight. In fact it was really more like a C shape. I watched as Brian fiddled with the tree stand like he does ever year. Getting the trunk exactly straight in the stand and tightening everything up. I thought surely he was going to make some adjustments at some point because the tree was tipped very precariously and leaning into the wall. He stood up and looked at it and his jaw dropped. With the bottom of the trunk perfectly straight the tree was curved sharply into the wall at the top. It was horrendous.

 That was the final straw for Brian. I found it kind of humorous at this point. Not as humorous as I find it now, but enough to chuckle a little. Brian was just mad. He called around to find out if anyone was getting tree shipments...nope. He called his cousin. She knew of a family in their ward that got a few trees and sold them from their garage. That sounded not so good. I told Brian to give me the day with the tree the next day and that I would find a way to make it work, and if I didn't we would drive to a home depot somewhere and get a different tree. The next day, I started by trimming the bottom of the tree down so that it looked more even and uniform. It still wouldn't stand up in the stand though. Next I built screwed an anchor into the wall and used fishing line to anchor the tree to the wall. I didn't want it tipping over. It already had trouble staying up and their were no ornaments. After I got it anchored, I spend a verrrrry long time on the ground readjusting the trunk so that the top of the tree looked straight. When the top of the tree looked straight the trunk was going into the stand at a sharp angle, without the anchor it would have just tipped over. Then I used the pavers you can see above to weight down the tree stand and help anchor it. It looked pretty good. I was please, but the problem now was that there one side of the tree was horrible and was clearly the side that needed to face the wall. The other side was good everywhere but one big whole on the bottom. I looked at it and decided that we should trim off the bottom layer of branches and that would eliminate the whole but then we should probably cut the trunk down a little too. I waited for Brian to get home from work to see if he agreed with the idea. He did and we measured the amount of trunk we should remove. Brian sawed and we put it back up...dun dun dun. We took off too much. Our tree was standing but it was now about 5 feet tall. Argh! Blasted tree. So, we decided to put the stand up on cinderblocks to get our height back. It worked and looked good. Now if that isn't one for the books, I don't want to know what is.

Pretty, good if I do say so myself. Future note to selves, If a tree is growing on a steep hill and looks totally straight, it isn't.