A Tale of 32 Christmas Trees

The first ornaments that John and I bought for our first tree.

A bit fuzzy, but this is the girls growing up in an ornament that they made for me.

This is my favorite ornament from Alissa. Notice how cute she is and how she spelled her name at age three. Asslia. To the left you can see both the girls.

Tizzy joins the ornament collection this year. Notice her mama to the right.

I figure that is how many Christmas trees I have decorated over the years. (Not even counting the ones I decorated as a child and teen-age which is a whole new entry in itself) This just deals with the trees since John and I have been married. There actually haven't been 32 separate trees since we did go artificial in later years. Our first Christmas we were invited by some friends of my parents to go out and cut down a tree with them from a friend's woods. With that lovely tree, I vowed that we would never, ever, no not ever have an artificial tree. We bought our first ornaments together, a little Raggedy Ann and Andy that I still love to hang up and I painted our first Santa and Mrs. Claus for that tree. I think I love the memories of our second Christmas tree adventure the best of all, John borrowed a pick up from work and our good friends, Patti and Tom piled in the front of the truck along with John, the driver and a very pregnant me. We went to a place somewhere near Elkhorn and cut down our trees which cost us only $5.00 each. Tom and Patti had to tie theirs up and ours took up a big part of our apartment living room. Why is it that trees always look so little out in the woods? This is the year that we laughed so hard at Tom's favorite tree topper which we fondly called the "eat at Joe's" topper To this day, John and I look for Eat at Joe's decorations that take us back to those good times. Side note here, we have lost touch with Patti and Tom and we miss them!
I don't recall where we got our third tree or if Courtney, then age 10 months would have gone along with us to get it, maybe John picked it up. Our fourth Christmas while we waited for a long overdue Alissa, John went out and got our tree. The best part of that Christmas was that we got to spend it at our house and everyone came to us because of Alissa's pending birth. We really wanted to name her Noelle for her Christmas birthday, but she didn't arrive until Jan. 7 and that was not the proper name for her then.
The next Christmas brought us back to Watertown and those trees are a bit of a blur. I remember one year we had been shopping at Grand Avenue Mall, Courtney tore off her fingertip or maybe just the nail on a candy cabinet, and after a trip to the walk in clinic in Milwaukee we stopped at Stein's for a tree off their lot.
Another Christmas we went to some cut your own place in Jefferson and brought home the true Charlie Brown tree. Branches were sticking out all over the place and it had major bare spots, but we loved that tree. Another year took us to Lurvey's Farms to cut down a tree. All of our trees up until we went artificial were lovely, sappy, and smelled nice, but there comes a time in a married couple's life where the hassle and argument of getting it into the stand and actually having it stand straight needs to stop. No longer is it so much fun. The last year we had a real tree was in our house on Hillside Lane. I think it may have come sandwiched in between artificials becaues I felt the need to go real, bad choice. First, it took forever to get it into the stand. Bah, humbug. I always have to wear gloves to hold the trunk while John mans the stand because I get all itchy from the needles so my patience at that point is thin. We finally got it up and left to do some errands and to let it set up or whatever you do with those real trees. We got back to a tipped over tree with water all over our new white carpet! That was the end of real trees for this lady!
When the girls were little they enjoyed decorating the tree with me and listening to all my stories about the ornaments. Somewhere that stopped and I ended up trimming it myself. John and I would always argue while putting on the lights, too. Bah, Humbug! Then we discovered prelit, yes! The only problem is that our prelit no longer lights up so we are back to stringing lights. After Christmas this year, we are buying yet another prelit artificial at the clearance sales.
There now you know that we did the traditional cutting down and gave our girls that experience. Fun happy memories, but give me prelit!