Free Christmas Tree

Grace is a fourth grader this year. Every fourth grader gets a pass to get into national parks free during their fourth grade year. Included with that, the National Forest Service offers a free permit to cut a Christmas tree with the package. Grace gets a free Christmas tree! The only criteria was that we needed to pick up the permit, drive to a national forest, hope we didn't get stuck on the snowy forest service roads, find a tree that didn't look absolutely pathetic, cut it down, tie it to the car, strip out of our soaking wet clothes and then drive home.  Her free tree took about four hours and a quarter tank of gas.

The mountains were gorgeous, we did not come close to getting stuck, and it was even snowing a little. Sam enjoyed catching the first snowflakes of the season on his tongue.

After hiking up and down step terrain looking for a tree, Grace lost her will to live. I pointed out getting wet wasn't going to make her any more comfortable. She thought laying down was worth the damp underpants.

Ethan is...

Libby is..honestly, I don't know what they were doing. Probably being grumpy I was taking their pictures.

We finally found the least shrub-like tree in the forest. Michael suggested the one further up the hill, that we had just come down from, looked better.  I said, "I don't care what tree comes home with us. No one's married to this tree. We can hike back up, if you want."  At which point, Ethan took off his ring and proposed to his soul mate "Doug". The kids were pretty much done looking for trees.

Michael bowed to the inevitable, and started sawing.

Ethan drug it back down the hill, with some motherly help getting it across the creek.

As Michael finished tying the tree off, I passed out the hot cider. It was deemed good.  The tree was deemed almost adequate.