A ‘Real’ Christmas Pine Virgin

Since the early years of my life on this planet, I have never experienced the joy, the euphoria of having a real Christmas tree in my house during the holidays.  Like a pre-heroin addict that has no clue, I didn’t understand the allure of having a real tree exposing my visual and nasal capacity to the realistic experiences that a box of plastic-molded aluminum and a cylinder of a Walmart pine scented candles couldn’t replace.

We were advised to visit Mayne’s farm in Buckeystown, Maryland by numerous friends.  Without distraction, we scheduled a date to visit Mayne’s and pickup our first real tree since we have been together, a nostalgic 12 years of artificial pine’ness that has lasted us up to this point.

Up to now, I was convinced that there was no need to set yet another “tradition” into place with the Charles’ family and was totally comfortable with the artificial tree ‘ceremonies’ performed each year.  With my selfishness set aside, I was willing to be flexible and try at least one additional change to our regime…

It was early November, the date was set.  There is very little that is planned in the Charles’ household without at least a three to four week deadline time frame.  At this point, I was still not convinced that this is something that I wanted to do (like I had ANY choice in what I wanted to do at this point).

We decided that Sunday December 7th was going to be our day because it was only three weeks away from Christmas and that it shouldn’t be too crowded when we got the tree.  Oh, were  we misguided in our thoughts.  It was extremely busy and very muddy as we had just received six inches of snow in the area from an early morning system  that had passed through.  The mud had caused an unbelievable traffic jam on the farm of 4X4 trucks slipping through the mud and people in a mass chaos trying to get back to their vehicles.

It took us a couple of minutes to park our car in the middle of a mud field that would have made a farm full of pigs ecstatic  and then we were off for the Christmas tree ‘nook’  (What the hell do you call a field of Christmas trees?  A nook..  A christ-mi?  A boog-ville?   A treefarm?)

Once we made it past the broo-ha-ha (and YES that is a technical term – Broo-Ha-Ha) of the tractor and trailer ride we were at our final destination and something that was the epitome of my Charles’ family desire.  To get the best looking Christmas tree in the bunch…

Well, we had a great time (other than Mia crying the ENTIRE time back to the car after we cut the tree out of the field and carried it back to the comfort of our ‘homeville’)

The place was a MUD-PIT!!  Seriously, I’m not joking..  N0..  seriously..  Woodstock people would’ve walked away blushing…  No..  Really..

There are a couple of pics that I wanted to post about this..

So, what’s my personal opinion about this?  I was soo freaking stressed out about this little adventure..  Dare I say more stressed than having an upper GI at my doctor’s office.

Once we got past the insanity of getting into Mayne’s farm and then once we were in the car heading out I finally felt my normal Christmas holiday meds kicking in and stabilizing out everything.

So what’s my overall opinion about Mayne’s,  a real Christmas tree, and what I would do next year…

• Next YEAR – I’ll be heading back to Mayne’s farm to get our family’s X-mas tree…  Screw the mud this year, it was an overall awesome experience!!!  (and something that was FREAKISH in nature and would not normally happen)
• As Amy said to me, “Think about it this way, you will never forget your first experience getting a live Christmas tree [because of all of the mud]!” — and this is certainly true.  I’ll never forget this day
• Next year, I might not bring the girls with me  (Just kidding!)  [Actually..   I might take a couple sedatives before we leave the house...  lol]

With this said, we got the tree home to the house and  off the top of the explorer and I did the first annual bitching about how much I would need to trim off the tree to make it fit in the great room.  Surprisingly, there was not much trimming needed and then the tree was quickly stood upright in the house to begin it’s three weeks of dehydrating.

I am a big proponent of doing things BIG!  So, of course, our trees must have a massive amount of lights.  My whole goal is that when you walk by the tree and are looking at it, it MUST appear to be twinkling.  A LOT..

Well, little did I know, (As I have NEVER had a real tree), that it would take a little bit more lights that our old artificial tree.  When the tree was finished with the lights, I had placed 3000 lights on the tree!  While for some people, this feat may seem a little “Griswold-ian”  (Keep up with me here okay..  Clark Griswold?!?  Oh Whatever)  We BOTH like it!

Here are a couple of pictures from the overall event leading up to the fully decorated tree….

The Mud-Mobile @ home....

The Corn Stalks that I backed through....

The Tree ready to Go!

The Partial Family Pic!! It's Hannah taking this picture!!! lol!

The lights going up...

The lights are up! All 3000 of them!!

The Pickle is ON THE TREE!! WOOT!!!

The finished project!! Ahh! 'She's a beaut' Clark!!'