My house (our house) is pretty much Christmas-ified! We stayed up until midnight last night decorating our tree, hanging lights, getting out tacky ornaments, drinking hot chocolate, singing along to Christmas music and other general holiday merry-making.
…Well, I did all of this (besides hanging the lights.) Brian was blogging. (Did you know that he has a blog?! I am not allowed to tell you how to find it. Don’t worry, it is just about computer stuff, so unless you need a good nap…) (I love you, sweetie, and your blog!)
My friend Colleen was kind enough to email me pictures of our trek into the western Idaho wilderness on Sunday to hack down a tree!
Do you know where your Christmas tree came from? I do because I saw it growing in the forest before we chopped it down. I feel a little guilty about it (aren’t we supposed to be teaching our children to PLANT trees?!), but
a) We are thinning out the forest, which is good for the other trees
and
b) We planted a ton of Arborvitae this year, which I think makes up for it.
…and c) It smells fresh and delicious!!
On Sunday morning, we met at Colleen’s house and began our drive out into the forest. Did you know that Boise is called the City of Trees? Well, for some reason, you have to drive almost an hour outside the city of trees to find a forest. Odd. It was a beautiful drive, though, and it was nice to go with people who knew their way around so that they could point out landmarks.
When Brian and I go places around here, we tend to say, “Huh…what is that river?” “I don’t know.” “Maybe the Boise River?” “Who knows.” and continue on our way.
We had a list of rules from the forest service that made it a little daunting to find a place to stop for trees. So many feet from a perennial creek (what does that mean??!!), so many feet from a road, not on this road or this road, find trees in a clump, no more than 12 feet tall, etc.
I will credit Colleen for finding a good spot on a dirt road to pull over with some promising trees nearby. We got the (whining) babies out and headed off-road for their first hike in the woods!
Mika and Brian went ahead to scope out some good ones.
In the wild! 
This is it!
Some family shots.
It is unfortunate that Joseph looks not his best in this one above, because it would have been perfect for a Christmas card!
This picture cracks me up because
1) Joseph has a pink binky that I found in my coat pocket- left over from the girl I used to nanny for in Seattle. Like 2 years ago. Yuck. It was the only one that we could find…
2) It looks like I am just holding on to Brian’s arm to be cute and cozy. Really, I was hanging most of my body weight onto him because we were standing on a steep incline, and I was trying not to fall off.
Dragging our “kill” back to the truck.
Joseph’s first encounter with a whole carrot.
He loved it!
Gnawing on a carrot is hard work!
I took some video as well that I will try to post later, along with the finished product. Our very own Charlie Brown Western Idaho Christmas tree…
PS The good news is Joseph’s tubes are working. The bad news is he had green pus coming out of his ears all weekend. I tried really hard not to look. I love the kid, but YUCK!!
1 comment:
Very cool! I cannot wait to see all the decorations! Such great early memories for you and your family. Joseph is fortunate to have such great and caring parents.
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