How much are your student loans?

Last year little princess talked us into a live Christmas tree. See we had live Christmas trees up until the point we bought our first house. We had a rule back then... if you didn't use something at least once every six months, you couldn't keep it. We moved frequently and had no storage space. This made most holiday decorations against the rule. Hence, no artificial Christmas tree.

Finally, we bought a house and we began to collect stuff. Hell, I now have stuff I may (or may not) use once every six years. The artificial Christmas tree was fabulous when the kids were little. We used to nail it to the floor and tie it to a hook in the ceiling. No Christmas tree of ours was gonna fall on our kids. And if I was busy, I could just leave it up until Easter and hang plastic eggs on it.

Many Christmas season's have come and gone. Big Daddy and I find ourselves growing weary of the yearly chore of dragging the boxes and totes from the nether regions of storage (sometimes called the garage even though there hasn't been a car in it for more than 15 years). Then there's the fight to assemble and fluff the fake tree, untangle the lights, throw away the lights that worked when we put them away but don't now.

We've discussed this distain more with each passing year. Then, the children are mostly adults now and the joy they once felt for this yearly ritual is fading... or at least it was until last year.

Little princess begged for a live tree. She came up the dozens of reasons we should and as most parents come to realize, sometimes its easier to give in than listen to the whine coming from your child's mouth. We had a live tree last year.

This year she started around November. "We should totally cut down our own tree this year," she joyfully whined (over and over). "That would be freakin awesome."

Big Daddy and I now know why our parents all went to the two foot, pre-lit, artificial Christmas tree on the table the moment we left home. Because they could.

Sunday morning we mustered the children for the adventure. At 10:30 am we attempted to wake them. Big Princess wanted to know why she had to go. "Because its a damn family event and you will go and be happy about it. Now get up." Little princess wanted to know why we had to go at the crack of dawn. "Because it will be the crack of noon before you're ready to leave the house. Now get up."

So we load up (at noon, like I predicted) and drive 30 minutes to the "Tree Farm," which is the size of 3 small residential lots. We're handed a saw and a wagon and told to go pick one out. The girls took turns trying to pull each other in the wagon. We wandered up and down the rows trying to find the perfect tree. But, hey, this is Texas and Charlie Brown had a better selection.

Then suddenly, my 22 year old Big Princess looked at her father and said, "How do you think they got all these trees to grow in staight lines like this?"