Trying to recreate a family tradition when my Grandpa Shorty took me with him to cut down and carry home the family Christmas tree, proved more difficult than I thought. Each year my children and I would traipse out to our local tree farm to pick out our Christmas tree, deck it with ribbons and bows as identifiers, then come back to cut it down in time for Christmas. Each year our Christmas tree got taller and wider. Our family tradition culminated in the Christmas my friends and family still refer to as the year of the "Mother Lode Tree".