It’s only been in the last year that we’ve started having a real Christmas tree in the house, but we try to take it a little seriously. We go to the farm, cut a tree down ourselves, haul it home on our own car, and decorate it ourselves. It takes all day, and it feels pretty good.

This is part of our 100 Things in 2018 challenge. Make sure to click on the photos!

This year we got a bit of a late start for the season, and went shopping on December 8. We tromped around the big fields at Thorntons’ Treeland, but we couldn’t find the right tree in right height. They were either too conical and full (Becky calls these “LEGO trees”), or nice and sparse but too short. Then we spotted the perfect one. It was already cut, right up front when you first arrive, and was marked up probably twice because it was so beautiful. I had doubts about how tall it was, but I couldn’t deny its beauty. So we brought it home.

What followed was a comedy of errors, with two separate trips to the store, two sawings of the trunk, my tallest ladder fully extended, and about 10 attempts to get the lights distributed just right, but we think the end result was worth it. It turns out I was wrong about the height; next year we can fit one 5 feet taller if we give up our entire living room.