"Little Full... Lotta Sap!"

"This tree is a symbol of the spirit of the Gilcreast family Christmas..."


We had SO much fun at our squadron tree-cutting party on Saturday. We were out in the woods, it was a gorgeous day, we had a fire and grilled hot dogs, etc., there was awesome hot cocoa to drink (thanks to my friend, Rocky), and lots of great people were there. We even brought Hank along and let him run around off the leash. He thought he had died and gone to heaven. When we first got there we just hung out around the fire and ate and talked for a while...



Here are my friends Rocky and Lana. It was pretty cold that day - we were all bundled up. Rocky's little dog was so cold and shivering that Lana put him inside her coat for a while to warm him up. He loved it!


Later we all wandered off and started looking for trees. You could pretty much pick any tree you wanted as long as it wasn't more than 20 feet tall and had a trunk less than 6 inches in diameter. Oh, and you weren't allowed to cut down a really huge tree and lop off the top of it. We also had to buy a tree-cutting pass from the forest service for $5. Phil, Jackson, and I wandered around near our campsite at first, but we didn't find any that we liked. Since these are real forest trees and not Christmas tree lot trees, they were a little more sparse and oddly shaped. So we ended up getting in our truck and driving deeper into the woods to walk around and look. We eventually found two that we really liked.


The first one came down really easily. Phil didn't even use a chainsaw - just a good, old-fashioned hand saw. I was very proud of his lumberjack-like manliness.


Here is Phil dragging the first tree through the woods back to the truck...

The second one (I wanted two trees this year, since they were basically free and we have two rooms to put them in) was a little tougher to cut down. It was smaller, but the trunk had a big knot in it that Phil had to chop through. He did it, though!

Here are Jackson and Hank just hanging out waiting for us to finish loading the trees into the truck...


Once we started loading the trees into the truck, we realized that we might have gone a bit overboard. They totally did not look that big just hanging out in the forest!! We were cracking up while Phil was stuffing them in the back of the truck to haul them back to the campsite. We put the biggest one in our friend's truck for the ride home.


Here is Lana with the tree that she and her family cut down. We were all dying laughing at how see-through it was. It's really hard to tell how the tree actually looks until you get it out of the forest and by itself.


Okay, then we get home and reality sets in. The bigger tree is almost 15 feet tall and the smaller one is about 10 feet. AAGGHH!! Next year we're totally bringing a tape measure with us. We had a real Clark Griswold moment when we got the big tree into our great room. The top was smushed against our vaulted ceiling and even with the twine holding the branches in, it took up way too much space. I was laughing so hard! After sawing about 3 feet off of the bottom of the tree and pruning back some of the branches, we managed to make it work in our room. It is still totally huge, though! I do love it, though, even if it was really hard to decorate. We had to hack off about 2 feet from the smaller tree, too, but it looks really pretty right in the middle of our front window.


So, all in all, it was a really fun, successful trip! Thank goodness I have such a wonderful, patient husband who is happily willing to accommodate my love of holiday decorating. He never complained once the whole day. Thank you, Phil! :)
(And thank you, Fremont-Winema National Forest for growing such beautiful trees!)
*disclaimer: The pictures don't do the trees justice. They are so much prettier in person with the little white lights glowing and everything.