Bad Decisions

Sam is in 4th grade. That means Sam gets a permit to cut a Christmas tree, courtesy of the National Parks Service! For free! He was very excited. The rest of us have the memory of previous year's tree cuttings to temper our excitement. Sam would not be deterred. 

Bad Decision #1

Letting our nine year old convince us to go get a free tree.

We did find some new tire chains on Craigslist for $40, so we bought them before we headed up (making the tree totally not free).  Which leads to the next bad decision.

Bad Decision #2 

Not putting the chains on when we turned off the main road.

As we continued into the mountain Michael kept commenting on how great our van was handling the snow and I just clutched the arm rest. (Michael's note: It was!)

Bad Decision #3

We just kept going.

Further and further up the road we went. The road started to get pretty steep and there was a lack of places to turn around. So we decided to do a careful U-turn and head back down the mountain. The careful U-turn was much more difficult on a slick mountain road than in town. Thankfully we didn't slide off the mountain, thanks to a giant berm of snow, which our front end was now buried in.

Bad Decision #4

See #2. We now could not get the snow chains on the second wheel and we didn't bring a shovel. 

Ten minutes later, as Michael is attempting to put chains on a buried tire, two forest service personnel showed up. They offered us a shovel and we started digging. Another person going up the road, which we were sideways across, stopped to offer help. He had a winch in his truck. He hooked the winch to his truck and to our van. We were now completely blocking the entire road! It was awesome. He slowly started inching us out while Ethan, the forest service employees, and I pushed the van into a downhill position. Despite my severe embarrassment, we did manage to start heading downhill. Michael drove down the hill with the three younger kids and after I found Ethan, we followed on foot and met up in the large, easily accessible pull out we had driven past.

We marveled at the beautiful snow. The kids loved that on the top layer you could see each individual snowflake.

This is a bad close up of the snow. It was quite beautiful in person, but alas my photography is lacking. By this point, happily, we were past the majority of the of our mistakes. Now it was time to find a perfect tree.  Ethan hiked up to then followed the ridge as it climbed above the path. Michael hiked far up the trail.

Meanwhile everyone else was giving up.

Ethan finally found the perfect tree (or the least-sad looking one) and deemed it good. Michael had the saw though, so I went to find him. I got the saw and Michael, but climbing to the ridge was a futile task.

Sam kept going up and then falling back down. He persevered, though, and finally made the climb. Michael climbed part way and then threw the bow saw to Ethan. Despite all expectations to the contrary, nobody was harmed.

The boys worked together, cut down the tree, and managed to slide themselves and the tree to the path.

As Michael tied to tree to the van the kids pulled out the sleds and enjoyed a few runs on a very fast track (no pictures).

We finally made it to the van and poured hot chocolate for all the peoples. And it was good.

We got home only a mere two hours behind schedule and had a whole 20 minutes to untie the tree, shed our winter clothes, get three people showered, get everyone cleaned up and changed, make our food contributions and high tail it to the family dinner. We managed to make it only 15 minutes late. We will call it our Christmas Tree Miracle.