The Traditional Lack of Tradition

In my family, we don't like to do things just because. We like to try new things. So, from one holiday to the next, there's no guarantee what we'll be doing or where or with whom. This makes for some fun times and some funny times.

For example:
Last Christmas, we decided to try out the Disney Christmas experience. As Christmas Day rolled around, we were with the mouse himself! It was a long, fun day. This picture was taken shortly after midnight.
On the other hand, last year for St. Patrick's day, the kids decided the world was not green enough, and they got into the food coloring while making dinner. We ended up with green mashed potatoes and green milk. Trust me on this one: you do NOT want to see the picture.

[no picture - you're welcome]

So, in keeping with our non-traditional tradition, this year we decided to hunt down a tree farm and go cut our own Christmas tree. It was so much fun wandering around the tidy little forest. For the most part, the tree types were intermingled, and so it was easy to compare the different variations.
There were clumps of all one kind of tree here and there, and we ended up in one of these because we were looking for a different type of tree: one we couldn't find on a tree lot at home.

These are blue ice trees. They're super fragrant and pretty nifty looking, too. In this picture, we're just starting to try to decide which one we want. See the tall tree behind Jim? That's the one!

We took turns with the saw, but Jimmy got to finish off the final cuts.

And here are my proud little tree hunters.

The tree is home and up in the family room. Right now it only has white lights on it, and because of the way the branches grow, as you move around, it makes the lights look like they're twinkling. Check it out:

We're going to decorate it in silver so that it looks like an ice tree. I'll put up more photos later.

Merry Christmas!

(PS. If you go to my Facebook page, you can see all the pictures from yesterday's experience.)