Christmas Trees

Saturday was the Annual Christmas Tree Cut in the forest. It’s been a longstanding tradition for us, but I was quite concerned this year because I had kidlets going in all sorts of directions all day long, and I didn’t know if cutting a tree was going to be able to be in the picture for such busy, crazy December Saturday. The night before, Dr. Peds and I discussed what the strategy for Saturday Kidlet Transportation would be. Yes, it really was so crazy that we actually had to have a two parent strategy. We figured out that YaYa would actually be home most of the day, so we decided to just bring her to cut the tree.

She initially was most definitely not thrilled, but we did persuade her to go. She’s always kind of wanted to be an only child. This was a great opportunity to try it out!!! In the end she declared it was just too weird to be cutting down trees without the cacophony of siblings. Plus she had to haul the tree all the way out of the forest herself.

We thought we were making great tree choices, but in the end, they might have been a bit scrawnier than we thought. That’s OK I don’t really mind a simple, scrawny Christmas tree. Some families were really having good luck and pulled out amazing, thick trees. One lady passed us and I heard her say to her husband, “Isn’t it fun to see all the different tree choices people make?” HA!

I carried the ax out of the forest. On the way out I had called well behind the two trees and my family, and I passed the most adorable, even scrawnier baby tree that I just had to bring home with me. Since I had the ax, I decided I might as well chop it down! The trunk only had a diameter of about one inch. After about 237 chops with the super heavy ax, I had a small baby tree of my own to carry through the forest! It was actually my first time to chop a tree down by myself! I was quite excited. Dr. Peds and YaYa just shook their heads, “THAT’S why it took you so long!” they said, as they strapped the bigger trees to the car.

It was a great day for cutting trees. The weather was warm, but not too warm. There is so much snow everywhere, and the forest looked beautiful. YaYa might not be able to cut down trees with us in the future, so it was a lot of fun to have her all alone this year.