Christmas Vacation

Have you ever seen the movie Christmas Vacation with Chevy Chase? I know you have. Well it's a classic around our house and we watch it all year round not only at Christmas time. Well we pretty much lived out a scene from Christmas Vacation getting our Christmas tree. We get a real tree every year. :o)

One evening this past week I got all the chickens together and my mom and I took them to get our Christmas trees. Well. We were gonna go to the big and fancy Christmas tree farms were you get to ride a hay-truck while sipping hot cocoa wearing ugly sweaters and singing cheesy Christmas carols. But we decided against that.

We decided to "rough it" just like in the movie. We decided to do it yourself kinda Christmas tree at this guy's farm. Your price is better. Only it had been raining a lot so the mud was pretty much up to our knees. The guy who owned the farm was really weird and when we got to the farm there were nothing but tiny little baby trees. Except wayyyy in the back, where the swamp was. That's where we found the GIANT trees. Now I wasn't prepared for this at all. The chickens were loving it, stomping around in the swamp screaming and laughing while I try to figure out what kind of tree I could get that would either be a mini tree or a GIANT tree.

The guy on the farm seemed like a character from the movie. He would say things like yep, goin' out of business so-as most people took the average size trees. o_O

Well I found one finally and we drug it through and got it up on the top of the van.

Then we got it home. Now this is where the movie really comes in. Remember the part when he opened the tree up and it knocked everything over and broke out the windows? Yeah. I didn't break the windows but it sure did knock things around. Funny how that tree looked so small next to those giant ones. Hmmm. I had to cut it's head off. It was way big for the nice little corner I had planned for it.

Ok so no biggie, I spend about an hour trying to figure out where I'm gonna put ol' Bertha. She's a big'en. I finally figure it out when WE see a G.I.A.N.T. praying mantis flying out of the tree. :| :| :| Just like in the movie with the squirrel. But even worse. I would have loved for a squirrel to come out. I ran around the house dry-heaving almost puking on myself screaming. I hate those things. I mean it turned it's head around and starred at me.

IT LOOKED RIGHT AT ME!

I ran around screaming for help. Luckily I had the chickens with me. And of those chickens was my nephew who is 10. Sassy's aunt and I were pregnant at the same time and Sassy and nephew are only 2 months apart. :) Anywhoo he gets a glove on and goes in and picks the thing up and takes it across the courtyard to the trees.

*puke* *pass-out*

I really almost did those^ things. But we survived the Griswoldesque tree-getting events. And my sweet nephew reveled in the fact that I called him my hero all night. I mean he really REVELED in it. ;-)

Just for kicks: