Cutting our Christmas Tree

Ok.. so cutting a Christmas tree has been a tradition in the Bennett family for over 20 yrs. I was told in order to marry into the family I had to keep the tradition going. Of course, I said anything to get the man of my dreams and now 5 yrs later I still love the "experience" of cutting a tree. I just don't love the time it takes to put lights on every year. I would be happy with an artificial pre-lit tree but that would never fly with my sweet husband.

So a couple years ago we agreed that if we were to continue the tradition he alone would be in charge of the lights every year. He does a great job wrapping every branch and doesn't complain even though it usually takes several hours to complete. Last year was the first year in our new home and we have a 20 foot ceiling where we put our tree. Brad of course wanted to get the tallest tree possible, last year that was about 14 ft and this year it was 16 1/2 ft. It took him over 12 hours to put 3500 lights on our tree this year! Yikes! We had one partial strand burn out and he hasn't found the energy to get back on the ladder to fix them or add another strand. Hopefully, all lights will be functioning by Christmas. :)

Here are some fun pics from our adventure cutting the tree this year. We always go cut our tree with Brad's family the Friday after Thanksgiving. Usually, there is snow but this year we were lacking; we had to carry our tree out rather than drag it. It made for some fun hiking back to the truck. (FYI -If you click on the pictures you can see the larger version.)

Here are Monica and Chris' kids Lily, Emma, Alison & William and us with our dog Abby.

Here are the "boys" (Dave (Megan's hubby), Will, Paul (dad), Brad & Chris(Monica's hubby))
and the "girls" (Brad's sisters Nicole, Monica, me, Karen (mom), Megan and Monica's kids Lily, Emma and Alison)

Just some fun pics of the day..... not sure what Brad is doing?? Alison and Lily are having a staring contest... Emma just wanted to be in the picture!

I had this post written over a week ago but wanted to post pics of the final product.. so here is the fully decorated tree and mantel.

On Monday night Brad was working late and my sweet brother had dropped off a 16ft ladder (I had requested a 12 ft but he felt the 16ft would work best... until he came into the house and realized how GIGANTIC the ladder was!) Anyway, I only had 4 hours from when I got home from work to use this ladder before my brother would be picking it up the next morning. Originally, my mom was going to come up to help but something came up and she was unable to make it. I called around to find someone who could come over to help. Those that came were so kind to drop what they were doing and come over for 30-45min, before heading back to their families for FHE.

First I needed help to get the ladder into the house.. our neighbor Porter came over to assist me- we only hit the railing once.. oops! Then our friend Tasha and her son TJ came over to help decorate. She loved climbing up and down the ladder trying to scare me since I was balancing on the top attempting to get the star to stay put! TJ just laughed at us and would hand us beads to hang. Sonia also came over and helped with the ornaments. When she had to leave, I was left with Brad to finish -there was a Jazz game on so trying to get him to focus was not an easy task. I tried to get the final touches complete on my own but have been moving ornaments around all week to try and make it look balanced.

It has been an eventful couple weeks, filled with lots of memories!