Home Situation / Fresh Christmas Tree

Just cut down tree and checking out the kill. The old man in the back is not my dad, he owned the farm. Nice man, lots of nose hair.

To give you an update on our home situation, we have been approved for a new home since August of this year. We have spent a number of months looking too. Nothing has jumped out to say, "this is the place." We figure since home prices have gone up so high, we are going to get the home we want and not settle for something else. It is also tough with the markets pulling off, that if we wait six more months prices will become more reasonable again.

Jolyn is the Primary President here in our ward and so we have this debate of pull her away from her calling, so we look around the neighborhood as well as else where. Mom and Dad have offered their home, which is in our price range, but I struggle with that because I don't know if this house would ever feel like mine. I do not want to by a house and then feel like it belongs to someone else. So that is the home conundrum we are caught in. We spent some time in the temple on Tuesday looking for direction and we both felt strong to be patient and the correct answer will present it self when it is ready.

Loading the tree into the truck.

Since it is looking like we will spend another Christmas in my parents basement, we decided that we needed infuse Christmas more this year in our lives. Instead of setting up the fake tree again, we wanted an experience and most of all the "smell" of a tree. We were going to Evanston and hike around the mountain to cut down a tree, but duty calls us to Vernal so we had to change our plans. We found a local tree farm, walked a good acer till we found our tree. Actually we found three trees we liked, we marked each area with a stick or set of rocks and then drove the truck to each location.  Jolyn and I would jump out of the truck, look at the tree, then drive to the next one. (The truth was, it was getting too cold and I failed to wear a hat.  All my body heat leaves my bald head. burrrr!)

We finally settled on this big plumb bushy tree.  I cut it down, then loaded it into the truck.  The tree standing there before we cut it down, didn't look that big, yet it filled my entire truck bed.  After we drove it home and put it up, it was obvious a bigger tree then what our eyes had observed.  We plan to decorate it tomorrow on Thanksgiving day.  And boy does the house smell so good!

The kids were very excited, they were bouncing around, poking and teasing one another.  I told the kids that when we arrived home that they had to go through the tree looking for spiders.  "We can't have any spiders or chipmunks in the house with us."  After the moans  calmed down, Emily exclaimed that the wind while driving the tree home on the freeway, cleaned all of the spiders out for us.  That was perfect logic and I couldn't come back with a good enough response to tease any further.