We've had an atritificial Christmas tree for for all of our married life. On top of that, there are years where we don't even put up the tree. I know, a lot of you won't understand that, but since there's just the two of us, we don't need a tree to celebtrate the holiday. We usually don't have anybody over during the holidays, so theres no tree, no lights... just a wreath on the front door (and we're pretty sure that the rabbits don't miss a tree either).

But, the last few times when we've had to put the tree up, it's been a chore, and after 20 years... it's seen better days.

So, since we're putting up a tree this year, we decided to get a new one. We've seen ads for this online store, that has a warehouse in Barrington, that's open to the public only on weekends, so we took a drive to Tree Classics

The place was packed... the company took a cornetr of their warehouse and setup one of each style of tree, some of them at the different heights offered, and you can just wander through the "forest" and check out what you like. If you find something, you flag down a worker with a clipboard, who fills out a form, and you got to a cubicle to pay. Then you go to the dock doors and guys wil help you take your tree to your vehicle.

We chose a realtive thin (or at least on the thin side) tree that was 9 feet tall that would look great in house, not thinking about how big the box was. Thank god we had Carol's Grand Vitara... we had to put the passenger front seat down to get the box to fit. Thank God the rear seats are split, because I was able to sit back there. And then, we didn't think about how heavy the box was. Carol crushed her thumbnail as we tried to get the box out of the truck.

So.. it's in the garage... have no idea where we're going to store this thing... it's so much biger and heavier than we thought it could be.