Boone - 2011

Brad grew up having real Christmas trees.  

I grew up with a fake tree.  

When we got married I was super excited to start a tradition for us to get a real tree each year.  And that's just what we've done.  And all but one year we've gone to a local Christmas tree farm to cut a tree down.  But last year was different - we started coming to Boone.  You can read about it here. 

Well, we did the exact same thing again this year.  Except we took 2 days off work and spent a long weekend in Boone this time.  It was wonderful.  

This year it didn't snow...so that was a huge bummer (and it drizzled the day we cut down our tree)....but being that there wasn't snow all over the ground we got to do some hiking.  We hiked to Linville Falls, 

went to Grandfather Mountain (and Brad even walked the bridge), 

bought David a sled so he could sled up near Beech Mountain, 

drove the Blue Ridge for a while, 

went shopping in downtown Boon, ate at several really great places, and finally cut down our tree.

We went back to Circle C Christmas tree farm.  It's a lovely little farm and again we found the perfect tree.  Yes, I suppose, you can say I'm a tree snob.  Yes, you can buy these trees in Birmingham.  But....no, you can't cut them down.  

After walking through what seemed like a thousand trees - we finally found the perfect one!  It's almost 9 feet tall - and our ceilings are 9 feet tall.  Perfect, right?

We've decided to try and make this a yearly tradition if our vacation schedule and pocketbook will allow - as this is one of our favorite memories from this Christmas and last.  In fact, when talking about last Christmas the first thing David talked about was our Christmas tree trip (even before our trip to Disney). 

Making memories with my two favorite people is my favorite thing to do.