O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree!

One of the greatest joys of the Christmas season is cutting down the 'ol evergreen tree.  My family always had a real tree growing up and I will settle for no less.  We love love love having a real Christmas tree, and we especially love chopping it down ourselves, which is exactly what we did yesterday.

But not only did we chop it down - we got to hike through the northern woods of Minnesota to find it!

Here's the deal: the National Forest Service sells permits for $5 (yep, $5!) to let you cut down your own Christmas tree in the Superior National Forest.  How amazing is that???  We discovered this gem of an opportunity last year and knew we had to do it again this year with Caleb.  So we pulled out a map of the Forest, threw a saw in the trunk and journeyed even further north to find our blessed evergreen tree.

Then we hiked through a winter wonderland in the silence of the woods, watched the trees sway under the heavy snow on their branches, and listened to our son coo with excitement as he discovered his wintery surroundings.

Bliss.

And then we hauled it home, strung it with lights and ornaments, and voila!  A lovely glow and the scent of pine have enveloped our home.  And Caleb is enamored with the tree, meaning that he excitedly crawls toward it anytime he catches a glimpse of it :)

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree, thy leaves are so unchanging!

And of course, as we decorated the tree, the final touch was the Afro Angel.  This was an ornament I made in Sunday School as a kid and although my sisters have made fun of it throughout the years, she has survived, and because I'm either too lazy or too nostalgic to get a real Christmas tree angel, this saintly seraph tops our tree every year.

The tree is lit, the carols are playing, and the tiny (or not so tiny) baby is cooing as we rejoice in the baby that came to save the world.  It's Christmastime, and we are eternally grateful for the true reason for the season.