Real or Artificial?

Your Christmas tree: Real or artificial? - Canadian Living
In this article link above, Frankie Flowers debates the benefits of artificial and living Christmas trees.  Which do you prefer?

After years of artificial Christmas trees, this year we are seriously considering having a real tree.  I just love the fragrance of a real tree and the added bonus is I don't have to store the tree for 11 months out of the year.  Yes, that means having to go out and buy a tree yearly or go to a tree farm where we can cut our own, which we did do a couple times.

One year in particular, my husband and I, our kids and my sister and her husband went to Porcupine Hills, permits in hand to share the experience of cutting our own tree.  We had done it previously and thought we'd invite my sister and brother-in-law along for the trip.  

So, we got up in the hills of Southwestern Alberta.  The hills had a generous amount of snow and even people in four wheel drives were getting stuck.  Well, you just have to drive reasonably, we all said.  No sooner said then we were stuck.  There was no budging the truck we were in.  It's funny now to look back on but at the moment it wasn't so much so.  As the afternoon slipped by and our efforts to extricate the truck were proving futile, we thought we'd lost our chance to even get a tree too.  Luckily some very nice men came along and pulled us out.  A bit more humbled for the experience, we selected our trees and hastened on home lest we get in trouble in the snow again.

I'll have to ask the kids if they remember that trip.  It was rather funny to recall now.  That's one of the blessings of the season ... memories with loved ones and times spent together.  Hopefully along the way, we'll have a little adventure to remember that we can share and ... ahem...elaborate upon.