Great Memory!

It is starting to feel like Christmas! Last year it didn't feel like Christmas to me until I went home, saw my family and got into some serious snow. Since we got dumped on yesterday, it is already starting to feel like Christmas! I love this time of year.

One of my roommates from USU just reminded me of my favorite college Christmas tree story. I lived in this house for about three years when I was at USU. I loved living there, and all of my roommates were very fun! We did many crazy things together, and this is just one...

I think it must have been four years ago. I used to walk down this steep hill by the frat houses every day to get home from school/work. One day in December I remember seeing this Christmas tree laying by the dumpsters at one of the frat houses. I had a great idea! If they weren't going to use their tree, maybe they wouldn't mind if I did. I told one of my roommates about the idea, and then we just waited for the perfect moment.

After a rousing basketball game one night, my roommate Audra and I decided that the time had arrived. We wanted to act quickly so the garbage man wouldn't get to the tree before we did. We stayed up late, until we were quite certain that most of the basketball spectators had made their way home. We went up the hill and found that our tree was still there! We quickly grabbed it and started dragging it home. It was no small tree, and we both had to really pull to get it down the hill to our little house. There was a large cut in the snow in our wake because we were dragging the trunk. We made the trip home fun by taking back alleys and unusual turns, just so that someone following us might be thrown off!

When we made it back to our place I ran and got the little tree stand we had used the year before and we pulled the tree into the house (snow and all) and started setting it up. As soon as we got the tree upright we realized why the frat house threw it away. They had taken the TOP of the tree, and we had just dragged the BOTTOM down to our house! ( : We laughed so hard! There were many branches, just none that went past 4 feet high! Audra and I are schemers, so we came up with a great idea.

We decided to get some black thread to see if we could tie our tree into a better shape! We took the top branches and tied them all together. Of course they sunk a bit, they were a bit heavy. Then we had what looked like a ball on top of the bottom of a tree. Next we took some of the outer, lower branches and tied the up a bit. The end result was that our Christmas tree looked more like a Christmas bush. We didn't really dare touch the tree after that for fear that we would snap some of the thread and our tree would lose its shape. It was kind of cool to hang a few ornaments 'inside' of our tree on the thread! It was simply decorated that year because it couldn't handle much weight.

Oh, what a great tree that was! We got plenty of queries and comments about it! I think that four of us even took 'roommate pictures' by that tree. Even after being topped and dragged through the streets, that great little tree survived Christmas.

If anyone is topping their tree this year, let me know!