O Christmas Tree

This past Saturday the roomates, some friends, and I headed out to cut down our Christmas tree! It was a day o' fun.

There's this family who live on a farm in the mountains. I used to go to church with them and they're awesome. Their main source of income is selling Christmas trees in December (the dad also does school field trips during the year). Back when I first moved to the area, I would work at the farm during the December weekends to make some extra cash and it was a blast!

To start the morning out, we had breakfast at a nearby yummy restaurant (breakfast burritos anyone?) When we got to the farm, we were greeted with sunshine and brisk, cold air. Ahhhhhhh!!! Love it. We went over to say hi to Farmer Rob (the dad) and his son, Tim (who helps with the trees). The next few hours were filled with walking through rows and rows, trying to find the perfect tree, taking pictures on a porch swing up on a hill, cutting down a doug fir, doing some Christmas shopping in the general store (where the mom Terry was working), buying cider/hot chocolate, sitting by the fire, listening to the Christmas music, watching families and kids run around, feeding the animals (goats, etc).

Just when we thought the day couldn't get any better, Farmer Rob came over and struck up a convo with some of the guys in our crew. They got on the subject of firewood, and Rob said he had a TON up the hill. He offered to drive some of us to have a look. 5 of us jumped at the offer. So we piled into his "man-machine" (kind of like a ghetto golf cart) and drove up past the hay ride about to take off (yes, there were hay rides too), the pond, the horses...we felt so special. Check us out with Farmer Rob!

And THEN just when we thought the day couldn't get any better, Tim invited us all up to their house to jump on their trampoline and swing on their giant swing. We used to do that when we were workers on the farm, so it was so sweet to invite us up there even though we weren't working. We swung and jumped to our heart's content. We kept saying to each other, "This is the best day EVER." The sky was blue, the air was crisp, we were surrounded by redwood trees, we were with good friends, we were on a flippin' farm!

A little later, the boys came up to the fun area (after chopping wood and loading up their truck). Two of the guys got on the trampoline and broke it! It split right in the middle. They felt SO bad. We went and told Farmer Rob and Tim and they both cracked up and then quickly said, "Are you all alright?" We just broke their trampoline and they could have cared less. Rob said it was over 10 years old and he was kind of glad we broke it because they were "done with that part of their lives". =) Man, they are good peeps. We are going to donate money to the farm since they won't let us buy a new one for them.

We loaded the tree on top of our car and said adieu to the farm. We then headed home and decorated that bad boy. He looks great! He makes our living room look so Christmas-y. Here are some pixs of the day.