Thornhill Tree Farm

I haven't been to a real Christmas Tree Farm since I was a kid. I've been dying to go back to one, and had extra incentive this year since it's our first real Christmas in our new house and a real tree was a must ("new" is relative in that we are coming up on our one-year December 17th move-in anniversary, and by "real" I'm referring to the fact that on December 25th last year our house was full of unopened moving boxes and not feeling very holiday-like). 

So anyway, back to the Christmas Tree Farm. I searched the internet and found that the Thornhill Christmas Tree Farm was located about an hour east of us. An hour is a bit of a drive, especially with a two-year-old who isn't permitted to use any technology in the car, but I figured we could make a day out of it. Multiple sing-alongs and book readings later, we made it to the farm! 

This smile was worth every minute of the drive! Parker adores being outside, and loved seeing the "Parker sized trees" as well as the biiiiig ones. 

Parker was less thrilled to be posing. Such is life. 

The farm offered a few different kinds of trees to cut down, as well as pre-cut ones that were brought in, and farm-grown ones in pots that can be planted in a yard post-holidays (a neat idea for perhaps another year!). 

They also had a snack shed, petting zoo, train and... corn bin! 

Parker can't get enough of these things!

 After checking out the animals, we began the search for our tree!

The farm cuts, hauls, shakes, bags and secures the trees to the cars, but Parker pretended to saw while we were waiting for our guy.

He also got infinite amounts of joy from picking up the sprays (like sticks, but better).

Our tree cutter snapped a family photo in front of our tree before he went to work.

Then out came the chainsaw! The little engineer in Parker was fascinated by the tree cutting, and subsequent falling down. 

Then it was hauled off to be prepared for us to take home!

All these services were included. I found comfort in the tree shaking (no desire to recreate the living room scene from National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation here) and Parker loved the bagging. 

So much that one of the sweet employees bagged him up his own set of sprays - a little mini tree. 

If you're in the Tennessee Valley area, we totally recommend Thornhill Tree Farm. The prices were very reasonable ($7 per foot) and everyone we encountered was super friendly and helpful. 

It's the most wonderful time of the year!