Christmas Tree Hunt

We had big plans today to find our Christmas tree. After school, of course. What we didn't count on was the time adding up for all our errands:

• a bag of spinach for dinner (and snacks for the ride home)
  
• a new pressure switch for the well
• a saw for cutting down the tree
• a Christmas Tree Permit (and a forest ranger wanting to chat for 15 minutes +)
• a sled to take to school and a new tube sled for pulling behind the four wheeler
• H-Bomb having to go potty Right Now.

And then it was 4:00 and the sun was already sinking behind the mountains. And it was cold. But, we really want a tree!!, so we went anyway.

We heard about a place to get a tree~close to town! trees close to the road! they got a fabulous one!~ from two different people, so we decided to go there.

It's a little slice of National Forest, sandwiched between two sections of private property. The road was plowed, but we didn't see much "close to the road." There was a road heading off the main road, but it wasn't plowed, and although there was a set of tracks, there's really just too much snow to try it in the truck.


We stopped the truck anyway, got the boys out, piled them on the new sled and took off. Slowly. The snow was a good 12" deep, we hadn't brought snow shoes, and the sled just sank into the snow with two boys on it. They got frustrated when they got snow in their faces. We got frustrated trudging through the foot of snow pulling a heavy sled.

We didn't see any good trees.

Sawed Off fell off the sled, landing on his face. We decided to head back to the truck and eat cookies and wait for Daddy.

Daddy came back empty-handed, so we'll try again tomorrow. (school is out at 1:00 tomorrow! plenty of time!)

At least we were rewarded with this glorious sunset all the way home.