Ta-daaaaaaaaaa!!!!

I promised a follow-up to the Christmas tree hunting fun and here it is! We FINALLY got around to actually decorating the tree on Saturday night... only a week after we dragged it home from the woods. It DID have lights on it by Wednesday, though, so at least we had that going for us. Now I'm just crossing my fingers, hoping it'll last at least until Christmas. It's drinking water at a rate of almost 2 gallons a day, so that's good for now. But it's also lost quite a few needles, which is bad! We've heard that the trees from the woods will either last forever, or for about a week! We've made it past the one-week mark, so I hope that's a good sign!

So, here's the first stage of getting it into the house. I have to tell you all, this was a pretty funny endeavor. It came about only after about 3 trips in and out of the house to measure the ceiling height, taking a guess as to the actual location of the tree so as to take fullest advantage of the highest possible part of the sloped ceiling. Then we went back and forth on how much to take off the top versus how much to take off the bottom... or both. We ended up hacking about 2 feet off the top (I'm not kidding!), and probably about a foot from the bottom. When we got it inside, Jason had to get out the handsaw and trim a bit more off the top - that's right, it didn't fit. We couldn't take any more off the bottom, though, because we would've lost the good branches, and a LOT of height! So, as you can see in this pciture, the top was looking a little stumpy for a minute there. We just trimmed back some of the new growth on the ends of the branches, though, and it seems to be ok now. In fact, I think it's gorgeous!

It didn't get it's gorgeous-ness, though, until Jason (I love this man) took about an hour or two to string 11 light strings onto the tree. FINALLY, after how ever many Christmases we've shared together, he GOT the "I like a lot of lights" that I utter every year! Well, I got my lights! And, poor guy, he had one small branch toward the top that ended up without any lights, so he had to work in an extra string just for that one! Yep, ELEVEN strings of lights. On, I think, 10 branches! Oh, sweet! You can even see that one last branch that necessitated this last strand of lights... it wasn't even a big branch! Doesn't he look like he's really enjoying himself? I think he'd been up on the stool for about 45 minutes at that point.... better him than me!!!

So, finally, on Saturday, we got the ornaments out and up on the tree. As much as I wasn't sure about this kind of tree versus my usual full and bushy one, it was really fun to tuck ornaments in next to the trunk and over and under all the branches. What wasn't fun was the really pokey nature of these needles. YIKES!!! As if the wait to decorate wasn't bad enough, I then had to finish wrapping all the gifts we're sending out so that I could get a shot of the tree with all the pretty presents under it. Since we then had to pack everything up to send out, this was an important shot. The pokey needles and the wrapping were worth it, though... what a great tree!

And, because it's funny.... here's what it looked like after the shipping packaging! :-D

And, finally, because I bought all my Christmas cards on the post-Christmas sales last year, so no photocards will be going out, I figured I'd share this one with everyone. The Air Station had their fancy-schmancy Christmas party on Friday night, so we got all gussied up, following the dress code pretty closely! The dress code, by the way, specifically said no jeans and no Xtra Tuffs. For those that don't know, these are Xtra Tuffs...

I think there might be a Jeff Foxworthy joke in there about "You might be from Kodiak if..... "
Anyway, I think we did pretty well in throwing aside the fishing gear and pretending we don't live in the country for just a night! (Pay no attention to the fact that there are no ornaments on the tree!!!!

That's all for now, folks! Hope you enjoy the pictures!

Becca