Last year we went to Walls Family Farm to cut down our tree.  It was neat and nice!  They took us on a "hayride" out to the where they were currently cutting trees.  We picked out the one that we wanted, cut it down, then went to the middle aisle where they came back to pick us up.  When we got back they shook it for us and baled (sp?) it for us.  It was a hair over 4 ft, and we were charged for 5 ft.  At $5 per foot, that adds up.  And this was one of the smallest trees we could find, by the way.

This year, our plans were to do the same thing.  The first day that we were going to go it was raining, so the plans changed.  They are only open on weekends, so then we were going to go on Friday, but had other plans and couldn't fit it all in - again change of plans.

We knew how badly the kids wanted to cut the tree down, but honestly, it crossed my mind to buy a tree and just plop it up.  The tradition that we had started was neat, though, and we thoroughly enjoyed it and reminisced over it all year.

Then the fridge went out!  And we started calculating the costs of that.  All of a sudden $25 seemed like a whole lot more!!

Mama had a little meltdown about money! LOL  Daddy comforted her and Mama said "I'd just rather pull some sticks up from our yard and call it a tree".  Big P (Daddy) said "we could do that!"  And so our imaginations started churning. 

We live on 10 acres and a lot of the back part of our property is treed.  We went inside and told the kids our plans.  They were excited!!  Who would have known?  We geared up for a trip to the back and headed out.  L.10mo.B. was on my back in the Ergo.  He loved it.

And so we trekked out there.  It's been over a year probably since I've been that far back on the property.  It was a WONDERFUL walk.  The weather is unbelievable right now in Texas!!




Mama and L.10m.B. are lagging behind to get great pics!!

So, after some searching I spotted the tree I wanted and we headed towards it.  It took a little navigating to get to it, but we made it.

And so the instruction for cutting it down began.



After dragging the tree back to the path, we decided to look around some more.  I saw where the fence was down in the back.  We saw the kids "hide out" which is basically an empty spot in the middle of a circle of trees.  We talked about the improvements they could make on it by taking some of our old chairs, a table, and stuff out there.  They did that at our previous house and spent hours out there at a time.  They would take games, food, all kinds of stuff out there and just play, talk, and dream!

We even found the site where we want to build our home in a couple of years.  It's behind our current mobile home.  We will need to burn a lot of brush and a couple of trees down (they are dead) to clear it out.

And then we headed back.  It was an awesome time.  It didn't cost us $25!  In fact, it cost us nothing and we had so much more fun than the year before.  I guess we know where we'll be getting our Christmas trees from now on.