Minnesota Bob

On Saturday we decided we needed to suck it up and get a Christmas tree.  After searching on the internet, I found the only remaining tree stand left in Anchorage.  It seems as though people either get fake trees, get trees imported from Oregon at Lowes or Home Depot, spend a million dollars on a tree at Bell's, or go to Minnesota Bob's.

Minnesota Bob is this cute old man who's actually from Anchorage, but at some point moved to Minnesota and started exporting Christmas trees from Minnesota to Alaska.  His son, who helped us put our tree on the car, confirmed that he really does operate the only remaining outdoor tree stand in Anchorage.  It felt good to support a tradition, even if it did seem kind of weird to get a tree from Minnesota.

Also, buying a tree in the Burlington Coat Factory parking lot wasn't exactly festive, but we did get to see an epic fail of a business sign:

Planet Fitness, you may call yourself a judgment free zone,
but I'm judging you plenty for your inability to spell.

When we got to the lot, and after we got over the fact that numerous people contributed to a horrible spelling disaster that is prominently displayed in South Anchorage for all to see, we quickly went to the small trees and found a winner, a Scotch Pine (a kind of tree I've never had!):

Actually, this wasn't THE tree, we ended up picking a different one when we saw the trunk was shaped like an 'S'.
Ours was slightly less Charlie Brown.

I won't tell you how much we paid for the tree, suffice it to say it was enough that I'm seriously considering following in Minnesota Bob's footsteps and start exporting trees from Oregon to Alaska.  I think Bell's may have actually been a little bit cheaper.  Oh well, we supported a tradition and we even met Minnesota Bob himself, who runs the cash register rather than stand in the cold with his sons.  He's no fool. 

Today we brought the tree into the house and got it all decorated: 

Before...

...After!

Once we got the ornaments on the tree (we didn't put them ALL on the tree since we're used to a 6+ foot tree and we bought a 4.5 footer...and I have a ton of ornaments), I took some pictures.  I love how some of them look like jewelry...

Here's one of my snowflakes from Seiffen, Germany.  Mom's still mad she missed out on them when we were there.  I think I got 6 of them for 10 Euro!

Here's a pewter St. Nick from Nuremburg...

And a new ornament from Andy's mom - he looks just like Ripley!

My Oregon rain drop...

This is one of my favorite glass ornaments, I always have to tuck it in because it weighs a ton...

Another new one from Andy's mom - Ripley in a sweater!

My Salzburg egg. We're planning to visit next winter!

Another of my glass ornaments tucked deep in the branches...

Andy's favorite of my ornaments - the nest.  He always finds a safe spot to tuck it away.

In other exciting news, we finally got a good bit of snow last night! I think between 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. we got more snow than we've had all year so far (but still, only about 4 inches or so).  It's supposed to snow off and on for the next week or so.  We need it!

We also went house hunting yesterday! We both really like our realtor, who was recommended by a coworker of mine, and who is extremely knowledgeable about building codes and construction.  This is very important to us up here because we're most likely going to buy an older home based on our budget and we want one that's really well built.  We found a house yesterday that is going to be pretty hard to beat.  I'm not going to post any pictures or details on the blog because I don't want my millions of five followers to swoop in and snatch it up from us in case it ends up being "the one," but I will tell you that last night I had visions of ugly wallpaper and 1970s wood paneling.  One man's "ugly" is another man's "potential" I guess!