Both!

Since my kids were young, we’ve made it a tradition to go out to forest service land and cut down a real tree (with a cheap permit), which helps with wildfire mitigation. The trees are usually kind of scrawny and awkward as they’re not grown on a tree farm where they’re all spaced apart and tended to during their growth, but the experience is fun. We put our cheap, lightweight ornaments on that.

Our main tree is a fake one that we can put up earlier.

I have the same SDRE tee from the Diary anniversary tour. Plus, you’ve got a cat and chocolate pie - good life choices all around.

In my teens in the mountains of Colorado there were tons of lightning strikes. One summer, a lightning strike in our driveway took out our garage door openers and a TV.

This past summer, I did a 40+ mi bike ride that covered some very open areas of the CO plains. At my turn-around spot I could tell a storm was moving in quick and thought, “ah well, some sprinkles will feel alright.” Then I rode for about 9 miles in a downpour with lightning crashing around me while on a dirt road with just about nothing else around me (me swearing aloud the whole time). Finally got to some relative safety of some tight rock outcrops with overhangs. I was still outside and not totally safe, but it felt good to get out of that scary situation as much as I could for a bit while the storm passed.