I love the holidays and all the family traditions associated. Not just with Christmas, but with every holiday. I am not a huge decoration person as far as any holiday goes, but we do have some fun traditions. 

But as our family spreads out, our traditions are changing a little bit. This year I am grateful to have everyone home for Christmas. We’ll only be together for just a few days, but it’s enough to make my mom heart happy. 

Because everyone is home this week, I took the opportunity to go to work with my husband today so that all the kids could spend the afternoon together. Their assignment: Get a Christmas tree. My kids love real Christmas trees. I am not a huge fan simply because of the mess created. 

Bringing it in creates a watery mess from the snow that we can’t get knocked off. Carrying it out, even though it’s only in the house a week or less, the needles are all starting to fall off, so there’s a trail of needles all the way out the door. If I had a fake tree I’d probably like it better, but I love that the kids love the real tree. 

We have a ton of pine trees on our property, so they went trekking out through the snow to find a good one. They realized, not at the time, that trees are much larger than they appear outside. I think maybe if they had thought about it, they’d have realized that the trunk of the tree was much larger than normal, but no one seemed to notice. 

My husband and I got home to the most bushy Christmas tree I think we have ever had, as tall as the living room (and they had cut off about2 feet to get it to fit in). And as wide as the furniture when it’s sitting directly in the middle of the living room floor.

It was an impressive sight… I’m not sure exactly what we’re going to do with the tree, we may have to cut 2 sides of branches off to kind of get it to fit in the corner of the room. My kids think maybe we should just leave it right in the middle of the living room. I’m not sure if we have too much other choice!

But sitting here looking at this enormous tree makes me smile. I know they all worked together and had fun picking and packing the tree in the house. I’m sure they were all surprised by the size once they got it in, but there was no turning back at that point. The picture doesn’t do it justice, but it really is the most bushy, beautiful tree we have ever had.