Two fresh pine trees outside, one planted and one cut, both decorated with white lights and silver stars and well watered. One potted artificial tree with blue lights next to the door. That doesn’t cut it for me, the lover of all things Christmas tree. The inside of the RV was too bare.
But with 2 kitties, lack of floor space, and no extra counter space, what is one to do?
Get a tree anyway.
Welcome little plastic tree, pre-wired and covered with plastic ornaments. Thank you for lighting up our indoor Christmas space. I know the kitties can’t hurt you, though they try, and you can’t (shouldn’t?) break.
So again, welcome. How lovely are your tiny little fake branches and your cheerful glow!
3 trees – tiny in front, tall in the middle, and blue next to the door.
Outdoor Tree Update: The Christmas tree down count is 3 wind events, which equals 3 pick-up-the-tree-and-replace-the-stars outings.
How about you? How many trees do you have? Do you have to pet-proof your Christmas decor? I’d love to hear I am not alone!
There I was. Putzing around while my honey worked up a sweat digging out a fresh little Christmas tree. I couldn’t really help him, one shovel and all.
In our area, we can purchase a tree permit from the forest service and dig or cut a tree up to 15 feet tall. As long as we follow the rules of where and where not, we get to choose whichever tree we love!
The first tree ‘we’ loved was a beauty! Between 5-6 feet tall, symmetrical, gorgeous. Plans were changed and we decided to dig up this pretty baby (by we, I mean he) and immediately plant it in the pasture before the ground froze.
Uhm. 5-6 foot evergreen trees do not come with short and easy-to-remove-from-the-dirt roots. After probably 25 minutes of heavy duty grunt work, we told the tree we love you and grow well and strong and shoveled all the dirt back and tamped it down. The tree would not budge. It loved where it lived.
The results from this attempt made us decide to dig up a smaller tree. MUCH smaller.
We found a lovely, adorable little tree stuck on the side of a hill. It called out to us – “Take me home!”
So my honey started digging. We had expectations for a shorter dig time. This prediction did not account for the rock. We also planned on potting this cutie and enjoying it inside the RV and planting it later in the spring.
Except for the rock. And the huge curvy taproot wrapped around the rock that would have forced us to use a pot the size of a small car in order to cover it with soil. That sort of container does not fit in the RV.
Plan C. Bag up the cute tree which still required 15 or so minutes for extraction, and immediately introduce it to the new home in the pasture.
Our second tree, originally planned as a larger cut tree, then switched to “Let’s dig out 2 trees,” was then maneuvered back into the original plan after the digging marathons. A stately and fragrant tree became our cut tree.
One can never tell what is lurking below the surface. Rocks, roots, acres of soil – depth of stability, secure anchorage, ablility to withstand hurricane force winds or mountains of heavy snow. Baby trees face all sorts of dangerous conditions out in the wild. And each one causes the tree to grow stronger and more resilient, develop even deeper roots, and hang on tight.
I should have taken a picture of that root wrapped rock. As a reminder. But the mushrooms were calling and I didn’t realize the significance of the rock. It’s like that sometimes. Upon later reflection, insights swivel my viewfinder to see what’s truly important.
Sometimes I feel like a baby tree, stuff coming at me from all directions. I bend, shudder, and quake, tossed like a dandelion puff on the wind. But as long as my heart roots are wrapped around the Rock, I am safe and can rest in His care and protection. I can continue to grow and become stronger as I sink my roots deep and wrap them ever tighter around my source of strength.
The Rock.
“Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him. Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow with thankfulness.”
Never fear. Nana had the grands over for a wild and seriously crazy evening of decorating gingerbread cookies. That is not an understatement.
For the past few years, I have decorated gingerbread houses with the grands. But this year, with 3 boys and 1 girl, six years old and younger, I thought gingerbread cookies would be much easier. I was right.
But we still made a big mess, gobbled too many decorations, and spread icing far and wide. One nice thing about decorating cookies instead of houses was that we could eat our work instead of letting it sit around and petrify into cement.
I’m not so sure the parents agreed. But like any good grandparents, we played, made memories, fed them too much sugar, and sent them home.
Here are a few photos from our Gingerbread Party. Notice the series when Gage decides he is GOING to have his plate and cookie (Nana had to decorate his, as he can’t eat cookies yet). Of course when we are all watching his actions, Donavyn chooses that moment to look at the camera instead of eating the icing and candy off of his gingerbread boy.
Tips:
1. Make the cookies in advance. Definitely. I used giant cookie cutters and made 1 girl and 3 boy cookies. The extra dough was used for normal cookies.
2. Sort candy into individual bowls. That way, each child gets the same things to put on their cookies. Or, I mean, the same amount of sugar to eat.
3. Give each child a cookie sheet as a workspace. Escaping candies and sticky knives stayed right where they needed to be.
4. Forget the fancy icing. Just buy a tub of white icing. It spreads so nice and easy. The icing in the gingerbread house kits is horrible and making a glaze icing that doesn’t spread is frustrating.
5. Enlist someone else to take photos. No way could this Nana help everyone, keep Gage from eating stuff, and take photos. Even with assistance, taking pictures of our completed cookies was the hardest part!
6. Have fun! Eventually we will get back to the houses. But for now, keeping it simple makes more sense. And next year, when we have 5, I think I will have to adopt yet another helper for crowd control.
Love, Laughter, and Life 