"Tree Farms" and Other Adventures

Sunday morning, we had to check out of our hotel and come home from our fun anniversary getaway. Sadness.

Our plan for the day was to leave French Lick, drive up to the south side of Indianapolis, visit a Christmas tree farm I'd scoped out online, get our tree for the year, swing by my sister's house to say hi to her, and then come home.

The best laid plans, though, right?

We left French Lick and headed north, past this one quick detour:

Details. :)

And shortly after we left Sonic, it began to rain. We'd read that there was, you know, a 100% chance of rain, but reports can be wrong, right?

Wrong.

It wasn't raining very hard, and there was ANOTHER tree farm on the north side of Indianapolis {that we went to on our first anniversary, actually} so I thought maybe after we stopped and talked to my sister for a while, it would all have evaporated, and we could go to that farm on the way home.

Well, it only started raining harder, so we went for plan B:

And then the day {weather-wise} just went downhill from there, all the way home:

Apparently the weather report actually was wrong, but not in the way I hoped. Rather than being wrong in rain = no rain, it was wrong in that rain = SNOW.

So we came home, unloaded the car, unpacked, and tried to formulate a plan for what we should do about our tree.

Interesting tree farm fact: most are only open on the weekends. I didn't want to wait a whole extra week for a tree. Interesting central Indiana tree farm fact: There aren't many. In our county and several surrounding counties there are absolutely no tree farms. {Guess we should start one!!} So the closest farm open during the week was 45 minutes away. Ryan did have Monday off work, so we considered going that afternoon when it opened, but I told Ryan I couldn't justify driving 45 minutes each way and spending the extra time on the farm to pay more than we could afford for a tree. {I remembered that particular farm was pretty pricey. We got our first live tree there right after our wedding.}

Soooooooooooooooooo...

...NEW TRADITION!!!!

Why, yes! That is a supermarket behind us!

We decided to head to a grocery store and scope out their live trees, lined up against the building, under the protection of an awning.

Now if you even THINK for one minute that sacrificing a trip to a real tree farm for our tree meant we were going to sacrifice a photo shoot, you have another thing coming. I don't care if I am at the grocery store. We are making memories here, people, and I am taking pictures.

Apparently some shoppers gave me some strange looks. Guess who does not even care? ME!

 Some trees were out where you could see them and some were bound up in netting. And another fun fact about buying trees at this store was that all trees were the same price, regardless of size. So as I'm sure you can imagine, Ryan decided if we had the pick of the litter, we were getting the biggest tree there. {We have vaulted ceilings in our living area, so we could handle a much bigger tree than we've ever been able to before.}

His choice.

I guarded it while he went inside to pay:

 NO ONE was getting that tree on my watch. Not happening.

And then it was time to load 'er up!

Next week I'll show you the decorating festivities.

But in the meantime, this tree, y'all. It is HUGE. It looks like a nice skinny tree in that netting, but when we unloaded it, that thing is crazy huge. 8 1/2 feet tall, full and wide, and we named it Griswold, for obvious reasons.

Ole' Grizzy is a good fit in our new living room. In our old house, he would have taken up the WHOLE house! Ha!

But what we learned is that while going to a tree farm is fun and exciting, grocery stores are more our budget, and clearly I can make the adventure just as much fun! I think that was the lesson I loved the most out of the whole thing. Traditions are traditions because they are yours, not because they match Pinterest suggestions. We like choosing a live tree and decorating it together. We did that. So we didn't drive a long way and pay twice the price this year. We still made memories and had fun! Win!!!!!