O Christmas Tree

Yesterday, we decided to search for a Christmas tree. A little early, yes, but we will go back to the US for Christmas and we wanted to enjoy our Christmas decorations for a few weeks.  We have seen artificial trees at a few places, but I kind of wanted a real one. So, we headed to a nursery we were familiar with to see if they had any in stock. Side note - in Hungarian, plant nurseries are called fa iskola, or tree school. I love that.  We arrived at the nursery and found someone that spoke a little English. He led us to a place where there were several rows of trees. But, they were tiny. Like, 3-4 feet tiny. Not exactly what I had in mind.  In the moment, we were trying to get all the information we could and I asked the stupid American question of the day..."Is this normal?"

 In addition to the small size, the trees gave a new definition to "live tree". They all had their root balls still attached. What??? What is that about?? We proceeded to ask the next stupid question of the day.  "What if we just want to throw it away after Christmas?" The nice salesmen were very patient with our ignorance. Apparently here, or at least at that nursery (we have yet to verify this with anyone else), people don't throw the trees away. What a waste that is. Instead, you plant them in a pot until Christmas, and then afterwards you can plant them in your garden. Next year, you can dig it back up and use it again! 2 for the price of one!

At that moment, I was ready to leave and go get a fake one, but Larry thought we should have the full Hungarian Christmas tree experience. So, we picked out the tallest one (about 4 feet). The nice men potted it for us and got it all ready (which doubled the price, maybe we got the special ignorant American deal). They shoved the poor tree in the back of my SUV and off we went.

We got home and had to use a dolly to get it up the stairs. It is super heavy.

We found a little spot for it and let the kids decorate it. They had loads of fun. Cade really appreciates that I have placed all of these shiny balls out for his enjoyment. He is a brilliant child, already experimenting to see which ones bounce, which ones roll, and which ones shatter.  

 It certainly won't win any "most beautiful tree" contests, but it has character. And we laughed. And we made memories. And that is more important than having a 10 foot tree.