My Igloo Life: Cutting Down Our Tree.

I have a wonderful childhood memory of my family bundling up in our winter coats to go out into the woods in search of the perfect Christmas tree. It definitely was not the woods, however. That's just not my mom's style. I'm sure it was Christmas tree farm, but as a kid everything seemed bigger and better.

Ahhh, the magic of childhood.

The first year that TC and I were married we bypassed the whole Christmas tree thing. It sucked.

Last year we went to the local hardware store and bought a beautiful tree from the parking lot.

This year, we stepped up our game and went to a real live Christmas tree farm.

Sitting just outside of town, this place is a family's working farm. We pulled into their driveway and drove around back to park behind the barn. It was perfectly adorable and just as picturesque as I hoped it would be.

As soon as we stepped out of the car we were greeted with the lovely cock-a-doodle-doo from a very large rooster.

Sharing the barn, but across the fence, were lots of what I thought were llamas. But now that I think about it, they may very well have been alpacas. I'm not much for farm animal identification, so please don't quote me on any of this. The point is, there were lots of adorable animals that added to my Norman Rockwell vision.

So, the mom came out of the barn and explained that we could walk around where ever we wanted. She said when we found our tree to drag it to the "road" and her husband would be by on the tractor to pick it up. Then her teenage son handed TC a big saw.

And off we went.

It was really cold so we were bundled up in our warmest hats, coats and mitts. Canadians don't wear gloves. Nor do we wear mittens. We wear mitts. Yes, adults too.

We found the perfect tree almost immediately but we kept walking because we weren't ready to be done with our adventure. Plus, we needed to be sure that a really prefect tree wasn't just a few rows over.

Eventually, the tractor came by and we had to laugh and tell the farmer that although we were clear across his farm the tree we wanted was way back by the barn and that we hadn't actually cut anything down yet. He chuckled and seemed to understand that we were just out there exploring and enjoying ourselves.

While he turned the tractor around TC and I headed back to our prefect tree. We headed straight for it and TC wasted no time making use of that shiny saw and cutting it down. He was so speedy I barely got the photo.