Jule hilsen fra Familien Larsen

'tis the season

I made a movie like this in the middle of the night, the lighting was great. It had a feeling of cold weather, as it was just great. but the movie turned totally black when I imported onto the computer. So I re-did it in the daylight. Now I contemplating to re-do it again, with pictures into a slideshow.... We'll just have to wait and see if that happens.

Ohhhh, Christmas Tree

'tis the season for a Christmas tree.

We took ourselves a trip out in the country, and we found ourselves a very nice tree on a tree farm, Carrol's Country Christmas Trees.

We were greeted by a nice young guy named Jared. He gave us a little tree saw, and told us to find the tree we wanted, and he would cut it down, unless we wanted to do so ourselves. We walked the whole tree farm, until we found ourselves the tree we wanted. We walked the whole farm to see if they had at least one nice Noble. That's the kind we have had for all the years our families have been..... meaning... both Lea Anne's parents and mine have had NOBLE's throughout our childhood....
But they did not have any .... well, they had some, but they were not nice enough to pay about $40 for, especially since we had a card for one free tree, given to us from our friends Larry and Diana Walker. We figured, we might just get a DOUGLAS here, and we can buy a NOBLE somewhere else if we don't like it.


Here is the tree we finally decided on. Our Christmas tree 2008.


Look how happy we were when had decided on our tree.

Sam in cutting action.

He was a trooper until the tree fell.

The joy lasted until the tree was placed in the stand. How could our beautiful 9' tree become THIS???

I can guarantee you that we don't have a 9' ceiling!!

If you look closely, you may be able to see that I put a two inch block under the tree to get it higher, but that it is still about a foot to the ceiling.

And I did measure it twice!! I even joked with Lea Anne how silly it was of me to measure height on the exact same spot we were to place it, as our ceiling is the same all over.


I put a little two inch block in the bottom of the stand to elevate the tree.
notice how few branches there is at the bottom of our tree....

I filled in with branches to fill it out... a trick I learned from my dad.... he always made the trees much fuller. Our trees always looked perfect.

I think I will add one more branch before I call it good, and we can start decorating it. Good activity for a snow day.

Did I mention... Sam was too effective in cutting the tree... TIMBER! First take.

If the camera guy is not ready when the tree is going down.... well, then a second take have to be taken....

TIMBER! !
Second take......


(We call it: "To do a Jeanette" in our house.... We love you, Jeanette)

Arborist in action.

Here is the first picture from the tree removal party that was at our Bishops house yesterday, Saturday December 6th, 2008.

I took about 70 more pictures and movie clips that morning. A selection of those will appear on this blog, but the rest can be found at

http://picasaweb.google.com/norwayfamily/TakingDownBishopsTree#

The pictures on the Picasa site is in a small format, but if you like to have a larger picture, let me know, and I will send it in a larger format to you.

This is about an hour into the event. The other guys started about 10 AM, but I came at about 11 AM.

Until I can get the movie of the tree top removal in place here... here is a link to it.

http://picasaweb.google.com/norwayfamily/TakingDownBishopsTree#5277011932655488834

I could have a couple of movies where the guys are taking turn using sledgehammers to wedge the wood to fireplace size pieces, and it may come, but for now, I will put in a link to where Peter Bergeson breaks apart a huge log with his bare hands all by himself. Those logs WERE REALLY HEAVY, I NEED TO MENTION IT AGAIN! I carried or rolled more than half of those logs by myself to the guys that split them.

http://picasaweb.google.com/norwayfamily/TakingDownBishopsTree#5277014015881528898

OK, guys... here is a link to where you did a great job splitting the logs.

Neil and James http://picasaweb.google.com/norwayfamily/TakingDownBishopsTree#5277013372022958258