Our $6,000 Christmas Tree

Before you see our $6,000 tree, take a moment to conjure up what that would look like...remember, $6,000 for a tree!

Drum roll, please...

Ta Da!

Isn't this even more exquisite and breathtaking than you ever dreamed up?!  :)

It even came flocked!!  Flocked straight from nature itself!  That has to count for something!

It think it's safe to say that this year's tree will be the most expensive tree we ever own...at least, let's hope it is!

Each year my dear husband and a few of his good guy friends head up the mountain the night before the big annual Christmas tree hunt to scout the course and make sure that the snow isn't too deep to travel the next morning.

To their delight, they found an abundance of snow and managed to get stuck several times but always managed to dig out.

As the story was told to me, it sounds as if one of the "stuck" moments required all of our Jeep's V-8 (and then some).  Although at the time everything seemed OK, the moment my husband began to speed up onto the highway to come home (at 1:30 am) the Jeep did anything but that.

The engine blew.  Thankfully, with AAA he was able to have our Jeep towed in the middle of the night to a shop and dropped off back home (by 3:45 am).

Good thing my in-laws have a 4-wheel drive vehicle that can hold us all for the annual Christmas tree hunt...it would have been sad to miss this much anticipated adventure this year.

Normally after purchasing a tree pass at the ranger station, we are able to go and pick out any tree that suits our fancy on the mountain side for the wonderful price of $10.  Each year we marvel at all the money was save by doing it this way instead of a tree lot.

However, after talking to the car shop about the damage to our engine, it turns out that our tree this year will cost us well over $6,000 if you include the damage to our Jeep, (hard to swallow when our 11 year old car is not even worth that much).

Thank goodness this tree is one of the most beautiful ones we've found in all our years of tree hunting...(a few years they've resembled much less than a mangy Charley Brown Christmas tree -- some more so than we would like to admit).

My husband had to traverse a hillside in snow deep as his hips in some places.

Meanwhile, some of the other ladies and myself entertained the kids and served hot chocolate with candy canes to dip in it.  It was cold and snowy but so beautiful which made it all well worth it.

                Here's T and J reclining on their "snowfa" after enjoying candy canes dipped in hot chocolate.

Mr. P decided that he is not in any way a snow bunny and wanted NOTHING to do with snow or the clothes that are required for such.

Back to the car!

So, he tucked himself away in the car with where the temp hovered around a balmy 79 degrees.  (And where he also ingested an entire pack of gram crackers!)

There's no way this child is suffering out there when he's got all the comforts of home right here (and then some!)!

I guess if we add up all our years of $10 Christmas trees and all the future years of $10 Christmas trees, some day it may just add up to breaking even.

After all that, my sweet husband came down with the stomach flu.

What a week we've had.