Time for the Trees to Come Down

One of the downsides to building a new house: Nothing has been done to the yard.
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I guess that could be considered a positive as well.
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Oh well . . . we're gradually making it our own, and enjoying the process. Aaron and I love taking on little projects. Our next project is to fence our backyard. Unfortunately we had a bit of a tree problem, and Aaron and I couldn't take care of it on our own! : )
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In 2 weekends we (with the help of our wonderful friends and family) took down 8 trees. 3 of them were dead. The other 5 were on the fence line. Most of them were rather small, but we had a couple of mammoths!
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Last weekend we had a tree cutting party, complete with 5 fellas, 4 ladies and 10 children! We had a houseful! : ) The weather was great (maybe a bit windy for tree cutting) and I can't believe how fast those trees came down!

Here's my brother getting his climbers into one of the big ones. It's nerve wracking to have your little brother climbing up a tree like that, esp. on a windy day. I told him that if he fell out of that tree and died, I'd kill him. I am happy to say, that wasn't necessary : )
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Here's the full view . . . it's a tall one. Unfortunately, we didn't have enough guys pulling on it to start with and it started falling the wrong direction. Yikes . . . our neighbors wouldn't have been very happy about that one! Thankfully with the help of a few more guys, we didn't smash any one's roof!
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Thanks to my awesome camera, I got a good good stop motion view of this one:

There is just something so satisfying about the sound of a tree falling . . . the crack of the wood, the thud when it hits the ground. It was tempting to call out "timber!" a couple of times.

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I'm thankful that tree cutting is over with . . . now on to cutting up wood, burning brush, building gardens and fencing!