Christmas Tree Hunting

This year for Christmas, Jeff put all of my blog posts from our first year of marriage into a beautiful book. He spent hours and hours organizing all of the pictures and text into 200 pages. I was SO excited when I opened it and then Jeff hit me with the magnificent news that he plans to make a new book for every year we are married. BEST PRESENT EVER!! And for that reason, I really need to keep up with my blogging so it will all go into the beautiful books. I am currently wayyy behind so I am going to backtrack to November 21^st, when Jeff and I went with our friends Matt and Jared up to Uinta National Forest to chop down our Christmas tree.

A couple of weeks beforehand, I went with Matt and Jeff to wait in line at 5am for one of the limited number of permits. Last year the husbands went and froze their butts off waiting in line early in the morning, but this year Jared couldn’t make it so I went in his place. Luckily, the guys say it was much colder last year so I got off easy.

We drove up to the forest on Saturday morning. Last year everyone went, but this year Becca and Brynne couldn’t make it. It really wasn’t the same without them, but both Jared and Matt managed to pick out big beautiful trees without the help of their wives. We hadn’t had much snow at all yet so we didn’t bother bringing the snowmobiles like we did last year. On the way up there, we saw a TON of dead deer on the side of the road! It was insane! I counted 13! It was really sad and kinda scary! It really looked like someone had just gone on a rampage the night before trying to hit as many deer as possible and some of them were HUGE! We had a much better sighting when we were almost there. A bald eagle! It was so cool! It was on the side of the road and when we got close, it flew right in front of us and landed on a tree on the other side of the road.

We got to the right area, found a place to park, and hiked up into the trees. Matt found a great one really fast and then helped everyone else. Jared found one next. Jeff and I had a much harder time. We hiked all over, but the only good ones we found were the kind that were off limits (there are two different kinds of trees and only one is okay too cut down). And I was running out of steam. Pregnancy has taken a toll on my endurance. Luckily, Matt stepped in and helped Jeff find a perfect one while I lagged behind.

Our tree was pretty little compared to the other two – just the right size for our apartment and for my buff husband to carry down the mountain on his shoulder! Matt’s and Jared’s were both so big and heavy, they got a really good workout dragging them all the way back to the car in the snow! Jeff was the first back to the car with our tree. He was pretty tired, but he went and helped the other two on the final stretch. It was pretty funny and really impressive to watch the three of them running dragging Jared’s giant tree between them. All I did was give encouragement and pass out hot chocolate when they finally made it to the car. The guys did a very impressive job of getting all three trees strapped to the top of our Jeep. I helped for about two minutes before I wimped out and got in the car to warm up my numb hands.

On the way home, we stopped at Dairy Keen: Home of the Train for burgers. Delicious!

Matt and his tree

Jared and his tree. Look at that monster!

Our cute little tree

My burly lumberjack husband

Success! All three trees on top of the car! If you look closely, you can see me relaxing in the passenger seat while these guys do all the work.

We got home just in time for the BYU football game. Jeff rode his bike down to the stadium while I stayed home to write a paper. Of course, I didn't write the paper. I decorated instead.

So pretty! We put our wreath on the inside of the door so we could enjoy it. We never have any visitors to see it anyway!