Trees, trees, trees!

I thought I'd steal from Ami's blog and talk about Christmas trees! In my family we have a tradition of getting not fake trees, not cut trees but actual living trees. These trees are potted and live through the season and can be planted after Christmas. It is our little way of helping the environment :) When we lived in El Paso, we had this one tree nursery we went to every year. We'd all go out as a family and pick out the "perfect" tree. We'd argue over which had the right number of branches, the right height, etc... We would eventually find one we could all agree on, my dad would buy it and then one of us would sit in the back of the van to make sure the tree didn't tip over or fall out! Not very safe, I'm sure! But fun for whoever got to do it! When we moved to Sierra Vista, we were a bit lost. We'd been going to the same nursery for YEARS and now we had no where to go. Thankfully, we could usually find a suitable tree at Home Depot or Lowe's. However, as the years went on, it became harder and harder and HARDER to find a potted, living Christmas tree. Since they are not popular, they are hard to find. Every year we lucked out and found one... until this year. We found out that the tree nursery that provides the potted, living trees to Home Depot and Lowe's had burned down!!! We had NO WHERE to find a tree!!! Thus began the Great Tree Search of 2009. Since Tucson affords more options than Sierra Vista the job fell to James and me. James started calling places to see if anyone carried the living trees. It's amazing how few people understood what we were looking for! Nobody seemed to have anything. I met my friend at Starbucks on Wednesday and thought I'd go myself and check our Home Depot. As I was walking to the garden section, a Home Depot employee told me the garden section was closed and asked what I was looking for. I told him I was looking for living Christmas trees, he looked at me like I was insane and pointed toward the huge lot of cut trees. I explained what I was looking for and he said they didn't have anything like that. That's the LAST time I go to Home Depot alone again! ;) So Saturday, James and I ventured out DETERMINED to find a living tree. We went to Civano, a couple Home Depots and Lowe's with NO success. On a last ditch effort we went to the Magic Garden nursery on 22nd and Pantano (plug, plug, plug!) Right away we saw living, potted Christmas trees!!! Yippee! Finally! So then the phone tag began. Keeping with tradition, we wanted to make sure everyone had a say in which tree we got but it was way harder when half of us are in another city! I called Lizzie so she could come help us choose. James called my dad. I called my mom. We sent pics to my mom and Emily. After about an hour of decision making we found the "perfect" tree! Mission Accomplished!!! Now what? We still had to get it to Sierra Vista. So James and I gave up our Saturday night (we really WERE going to go out to the moon that night!) and drove the tree down to SV. I hope that my family enjoys the tree, which Lizzie and I named Herb. Another part of the tradition is we name the tree! Now that was A LOT of work! Since all the pics of that tree are on my phone and I have NO idea how to get those on here, please enjoy pics of the fake tree James and I did at our house a few weeks ago.

Our lovely (and easy!) fake tree :)

I'm with Nicole, I'm not sure if I like the pic better with flash off like this:

Or flash on like this. What do you think?

I hope you enjoyed my ridiculous story of family traditions. It's a pain sometimes but I love our family traditions. I'm looking forward to sharing these traditions with our little one next year :)