Good-bye to Christmas

Today we stripped down the two Christmas trees, and my husband will carry them outside when he returns from his business trip. Many years we leave the tree up for the kids' birthdays in January and early February (such as for my daughter's camping birthday last year), but this year my daughter will have a birthday "beach party", so the tree has got to go by next weekend.

It's always a bit sad to see them go. This year it was physically painful as well, since both the blue spruce and the other one (it was different from the other Norwegian Firs on the lot) were both very prickly. But the worst of it is done now. Just a bit more boxing up to do.  So sad.  They were both in very good shape.  I sometimes wish we could keep the tree in the Living Room year round.

Since I haven't yet, I wanted to post photos of our trees this year. I think they were the prettiest we've ever had.  Too bad the lights don't show up well in the photos.  The 13' tree in the Living Room:

The 5' tree in the Family Room:

And then we even enjoyed a third tree this year...  When we arrived at our snowy cabin after Christmas, the previous guests had thrown their tree into the yard, so we pulled it back inside and enjoyed it during our stay.  My son & I made snowflakes out of paper towels and hung them with some string we had salvaged with the tree.  It was cute, wouldn't you say?