Kids and the City

Tree Getting

“We’re going to go waaaaaay up into the woods and cut down our Christmas Tree this year,” my husband told our wide-eyed children when they asked us where our tree would come from.

“Like, hike in and pick out any tree we want?” they asked.

“Oh yeah guys, any tree we want,” their Daddy answered.

“How will we get it home?” said Katie.

“How will we get it to the car?” said Wyatt.

“Can I cut it down?” said McRae.

After reassuring Katie that it would not fall off the roof of our car, and explaining to Wyatt that we’d all help drag it from it’s living location to our vehicle, and letting McRae know that he could help as much as he wanted in the actual “cutting” down of the tree, it turns out it didn’t really matter.

It didn’t matter because this year, we got our tree at the grocery store.

You heard it right, the grocery store.

If I have learned anything since becoming a mother, it is that one must be flexible during the holidays.  Sometimes there isn’t enough time to buy a parks permit, outfit everyone in snow shoes, pack a picnic lunch complete with hand warmers for everyone and travel into the wilderness to pick out the perfect Christmas Tree.  Sometimes the middle of December creeps upon you and there are little choices in where the tree actually comes from.

And does it really matter?

I don’t think so.

What matters is that we, as a family, picked out our tree the first available moment of unscheduled time we had (when both parents were present to help).

So out into the rainy night we travelled, all the way to the grocery store!  There were candy canes and hot cocoa and cider and even helpers wearing Santa hats!  There were tons of pretty trees to choose from and wouldn’t you know it?  We bought the first one we saw (we aren’t very picky about our trees - well, maybe I am a little picky, but in this case I just wanted to get a nice tree with no bald spots).  Which is a good thing, because it figures that it would start raining buckets the minute we decided to go get our tree.  We didn’t have time to be choosy.

How happy am I with our Christmas Tree this year?

 Very, it’s perfect.

Did we have a good experience?

Yup.

I’ll admit that I am looking forward to strapping on my snow shoes and venturing into the woods to get our next one.  But if life gets too busy, like it did this year, there’s always the local grocery store!

*Cross posted at Third Time’s a Charm?

Carrie is a stay-at-home mother of three and wife to one busy firefighter. You can read more of Carrie’s mothering meanderings at her personal blog, Third Time’s a Charm?, or send questions, topics or suggestions to carrieb{at}seattlemomblogs.com.