This afternoon my mom and I were looking at some pictures of the trees she had taken last weekend after the snow storm. They made me think of a funny story about George and myself so I thought I'd tell you about it. A few years ago Mom, George, me, Zane, Matt (my bro), Chantile (my sister-in-law), and the kiddos got permits and drove out to Red Lodge to cut us down some Christmas trees. The snow in some places was knee deep. Matt and Chantile set off on a mission of their own to find the perfect tree and mom wanted to stay close to the car with the dog because the snow was to tall for him. Zane was on sled duty with the girls so it was up to me and George to find the perfect tree for us (this was back when we were staying with mom and George shortly after we moved back.) So we set off down the snow packed road looking for a good tree. Let me just preface this story. State law says you can't cut down a tree that is taller than 15 ft. Anyway, moving on, off the road about 50 feet we saw a beautiful tree but the bottom was a little sparse and it was a little tall. George and I guesstimated that is couldn't be more than 20-25 ft. so we decided to fudge on the rule and cut it down anyway. Well by the time we got to the tree we were both up to our thighs in snow...very very cold wet snow. George started sawing at the tree with our hand saw, that's right no power saw for us, we were going old school. After he got tired I took a turn. It was a little harder for me seeing as how George had started cutting it at a comfortable height for him the cut was a little high for me. Finally when the tree fell, after much hard work on both of our parts, we realized that the tree was probably closer to 35 or 40 feet tall, just from were we had cut it down at. Making the entire thing probably 40 or 50 feet... oops. Anyway, we cut the "tip" off of the tree thinking it was about 10-12 ft. When we lugged it back across the deep snow to the road and got it in the truck we headed home, wet socks and all. when we got home we ended up having to cut another 3 ft. off of our 15 foot tree. After the hassle it took to get it up the stairs and string all of the lights George ended up just chopping it up after Christmas, lights and all, and tossing it out the window. Mom just went out and bought new lights after the season when they were on sale. Needless to say, next time we do that we'll take a tape measure our someone with a better internal gauge of height with us.
My friend Jasey is very talented at all things craft related. I wanted to put up a plug for her online shop. I've seen these blocks that she is selling and they are so cute. I'm going to have her make me some for the kids' rooms. I've posted the link here and on my side bar. They are so cute, check them out! 
