Picking up the Christmas Tree

My Dad and I were given the job of going to pick out our Christmas tree for the season. This is the first time since I was in middle school that we've been allowed to pick out the tree all by ourselves. The reason we've been banned from Christmas tree shopping without my mom is because one year, we spent $80 on a tree! Don't ask my why or how that happened, but for some reason it was extremely hard that year to find good Christmas trees. Trust me we looked. I remember a lot of them being short and small. And if you know my mom, well she is very picky about her tree. So Dad and I searched all over to find the perfect tree that year. We ended up buying the tree from a nursery in Orland, I believe. We had a beautiful tree that year, but were in big big trouble when mom found out how much money we had spent. :)

Well...today we set out again - not to repeat history. We found ourselves at Costco and guess what you get to pick your tree, but it's all bundled up, so there's no real way to tell what it looks like.

To make the situation slightly more complex, we had our 2 dogs with us in our car. Yes our car. My little honda civic from high school which has now become the dog-mobile. And.....of course we bought food (including dog food) from Costco. If you know my dog, Sally, well then you know that you can't leave food in the back of the car (we usually have the seats down when the dogs are with us) and drive or else she will tear through anything to get to it.

I'm picturing in my head, a tree tied atop our car going 35mph on the freeway, while I am sitting in the passenger seat trying to hold onto my little dog, who is struggling the entire time to get to the back seat where all the good stuff is.




Well, Dad is smart enough to say hey - let's just put the seats up, so Sally can't get to the food. I picked out the tallest tree I could find at Costco, it's still only 7-8 ft. Dad and I tied the tree to the top of the car with 2 pieces of twine (pictured above). And we started the drive home.



As we're driving you can here clunk-clunk, every time we go over a bump. It was the roof denting in and then popping out from the weight of the tree. We took back roads home & made it successfully!



Ta-Da...tree, car, and dogs all home in one piece!

Now let's just hope it's a pretty tree when we cut it open otherwise Dad & I won't ever be allowed to pick out a tree together again :(