The year of the tree

My favorite Christmas Tree is the Fraser Fir. They are beautiful. They smell lovely. The needles don't poke you as you decorate the tree. The limbs are strong enough to hold ornaments rather than collapsing and sending ornaments to the ground. They just are THE perfect Christmas tree.

They don't grow in Alabama. {Sad face}.

Yes....you can just go to Home Depot or Lowe's and buy one.

Well, not us Herrington people.

We have to pick our out tree from a farm and cut it down. It's a tradition. We started this the year David was born and will continue it until...well, forever, hopefully.

Brad knows I've always wanted a Fraser Fir, but since they don't grow in Alabama we've always gotten a lame Leland Cypress or the other Christmas tree type that grows in Alabama. Now, I love Leland Cypress's....we even have one in our yard and it's beautiful....but it's NOT a Christmas tree. It's a yard tree.

Unfortunately, to go to a choose and cut tree farm you have to go to an elevation of 3,000 feet. Hmmm. It turns out we had a free weekend in December and our favorite little North Carolina city is exactly an elevation of 3,000 feet.

We drove up there this past weekend. It was a quick trip - up on Friday night, back on Sunday. But it was probably one of my favorite trips ever.

We arrived in Boone, NC Saturday at lunch time and ate at our favorite little BBQ joint there. We had a small snowball fight in the parking lot.

Then we went to our favorite hotel and caught the SEC Championship game (while I took a little nap).

After the game we went to dinner at Chili's and had a snowball fight in the parking lot there. This is where I pelted Brad in the neck and got the snow all down his shirt. This is also where David pelted me in the eye. This is where I body slammed David into the snow. Ok, just kidding about the body slam.

Clearly we are tourists...everyone that saw us throwing snowballs in the parking lots just laughed at us.

Sunday we woke up, ate breakfast at the hotel and left for the Christmas tree farm.

We headed towards the one that was recommended and realized we couldn't make it up the mountain (there was a LOT of snow and ice everywhere). A 2-wheel drive, rear wheel drive truck doesn't make it up curvy, hilly, icy mountain roads very well.

So, we sat in a parking lot for about 20 minutes. I called 7 different tree farms until we found one that said we could make it up to it in our truck. We still got stuck once we got to the farm, but they were able to help us get out.

This tree farm was perfect. From the little warmed barn with hot chocolate to the beautiful trees to the gorgeous wreaths to the snow drifts that David played in, the snow angels he made, hills that he rolled down and the snow that he ate. Many snowballs were thrown here too. It was perfect. Completely perfect. Oh, and cold. Really cold.

They gave us a PVC pole that was marked to tell us how tall the tree we were choosing was (see it in David's hands below). When we had the perfect tree we waved the little PVC pole in the air and within about 1 minute one of the employees rode up on his 4-wheeler with a chain saw to cut it down for us.

If you look closely you can see the 4-wheeler in the picture carrying our tree down the hill to the barn....

This is definitely one of my favorite weekends with my two boys. Ever. It will be remembered.