the christmas bush

I have fond memories of all our past Christmas trees. I think I have a story for every tree we have every bought. But the tree I think about the most this time of year is our first tree. Or at least I think it was our first tree. Mike and I were with our good friends the Pace's and the boys decided it was time to get a tree. Well Jamie and I decided to stay behind in our warm little apartments and let the boys go be men and find us a tree. Well Jamie and I being Washington girls were use to these beautiful rich, green, tall nobles and the boys being California boys, well, who knows what they were use to. But Mike brought us home a real treat. Our tree had really long needles and was looking a little thirsty to put it nicely. I think it was wider than it was tall, hence it's name the Christmas bush. Well it was fine, we got it home and put it up, we tried to put ornaments on it but there was little room for that, being that it was so FULL. But we did our best. The boys being newlyweds and still in the thrifty state of mind decided to save themselves the 5 bucks and not have the tree lot attendant shake their tree. What a fool, they thought, why would anyone in their right mind pay $5 to have someone shake their tree...idiots! they thought! They were so proud of themselves and rightfully so they saved $5 on a way over priced tree (we are in Cali at this point, trees are way spendy)! Then the next day the bush seemed to have been the home of a few little friends...our little apartment was filled with little spiders and other little creepy crawly things. The day after Christmas that thing came down and yet for weeks after we were still killing little creepy crawly things!! I love Christmas memories.

Well Monday we went tree "shopping". Now that we are in the Northwest we have beautiful rich green trees to choose from ...yeah! This year we wanted a huge tree to fill our front room. Because tree's in California are so spendy we always ended up with kinda squaty things, pretty, but squaty. Now we can spend the same amount but have a giant tree. So we went to a tree farm down the street. Mike is so picky, we walked up and down the rows for a good 30 minutes, while Jake complained the entire time..."I'm cold!...I'm tired!...Are we almost DONE?!" I would point one out over here and there and Mike would say..."ahh, I'm not sure, let's just look at a few more." He would find one and yet keep looking, then loose the one that he had found and spend another 5 minutes trying to find "the one" again. Anyway we finally picked one and ironically it was a tree in the very front row. It was a tall, beautiful Turkey Fir (yeah I have never heard of it either). I almost felt bad cutting it down, I think that is a sign that tree hugging Oregon is beginning to rub off on me. Well we got it home and first we shook the heck out of it, then we hosed it off, then we stuck it in a bucket of water outside and put a fogger under it (you know those 'bug bomb' things) to kill the creepy crawlers then we left it outside for the night, shook the heck out of it again and then finally brought the poor thing in our house. And now that you have heard the Christmas bush story you understand the purpose for this rigorous ritual. Mike is not a big fan of bugs!

If this tree were even an inch bigger we would have had to cut it down a little. It scraped the ceiling as we put it up right and the star couldn't really go on top, it's sort of in front of the top branch, hanging on for it's dear life.