Just after the Christmas parades we packed up and heading to Blowing Rock for our 12th annual Christmas tree cutting weekend. In the past we have jokingly referred to our efforts as a kin to Chevy Chase’s Christmas Vacation but this year bore more resemblance than any other year to date and not necessarily in the best way. Now the trip went off without a hitch, while we didn’t have any snow we had our wintery weather in the form of freezing rain and chilly temps. We still enjoyed several hours in the indoor pool, and we still tromped up the mountain at C Circle Farms to get our Christmas tree – all uneventfully. The problem, it turned out, was that our tree was too big. They told us to pick any tree and they would cut it down to size, so we did – I swear we chose a 20 foot tree (the number keeps climbing every time we tell this story) and cut it down to 8 feet. The only thing we didn’t consider is that an 8 foot tree that was formerly a 20 foot tree has a very large trunk and is a very heavy tree. We should have taken a clue watching four grown twenty something men struggle to push it through the netting and tie it to our car. We should have been concerned when JJ nor I could barely carry it into the house, but no, we just assumed we got the best end of the deal. Well the tree didn’t like our 10 foot max stand, nor did it apparently ever intend on standing straight so to make a long story short, the tree is sitting outside (after falling down three times and nearly crushing poor Connor who was tugging on ornaments), we’ve lost a good many of our ornaments (anything that was breakable, crushable, bendable, etc) and we now have a slightly awkward looking tree from Home Depot.

Even still we had a grand time at the Chetola Lodge, we loved the train in the kid’s playroom, I forced the kids to take many pictures, none of which seemed suitable for our Christmas card (so folks are getting a collage of halfway decent photos this year) and we really enjoyed yet another year of memories – and glad we can laugh at our crazy adventures in spite of it all.