Kicking Off Our Fun, Old-Fashioned, Family Christmas

It must be December because suddenly I am about four blog posts behind and it's only the 7th.  Not to mention the entire month of November...perhaps I'll just let that one go. Oh, except this one little thing: Stomper earned his wolf in cub scouts!  Yay Stomper!  Okay.  Consider November covered.

So...I think I'll begin by reporting on our now-traditional trek up to Bear Lake with our dear Burnetts to hunt the ever-elusive and oh-so-wily Christmas Tree.  We almost didn't make it this year due to scheduling issues but we finally decided that the trip was more important than our childrens' education and took off on Thursday afternoon instead of Friday and returning by Saturday afternoon to the events we couldn't miss.  Turns out it's pretty fun to miss a day or two of school and I foresee that becoming a part of our tradition in the future.  The more time with the Burnetts, the merrier!!

All of our kids got along really well - it was kind of sweet to watch their older daughter, who is actually Bitty's age, glom on to Stomper a bit.  She was fascinated with him and spent a lot of time trying to get him to interact with her.  She also had plenty of time with Bitty, including several rounds of a form of chess that they invented, sometimes along the way.  It was cute.  Almost as cute as the two two-year-olds romping around together.  At one point Mary had them playing a sort of hide-and-seek and watching them attempt to keep their eyes closed was hilarious.  Bundle couldn't manage to close her eyes without scrunching up the rest of her face too. Adorable.

You probably don't remember our adventures from last year with the stuck car and the rescue efforts of both snowmobile-drivers and beer-drinkers alike, but I can't deny that it was so nice to have an incident-free tree hunt.  We headed up in the afternoon on Friday and found ourselves a real beaut.  That morning Troy and Steve took a few hours to go get our permits as well as deliver some thank-you beers to last year's rescuers, which I thought was nice of them.  I was so glad that the daddies had some time together - Troy's been needing himself some Steve-time in a big way.  So that was good.  Then the tree hunt itself went off without a hitch, except a few meltdowns here and there on the part of a kid or two, but that seems to happen no matter where we are on a daily basis.

I will say that it seems like every time we go on this vacation we learn new things to make the next year even better.  For example, last year we learned to always keep tire chains in the car, among other things.  This year we learned that if the grownups are going to have a movie night we definitely need to bring our own movies because the ones up there are just not that great, sorry to say.  Make note: The Wedding Date is possibly the lamest romcom I've ever seen.  Sorry to offend any fans out there.  Also, you should  not bring any lunch meat that might possibly be spoiled.  Luckily, I was the only sufferer of the effects of that one, and it wasn't too bad, so I won't complain.  Much.  Other than those little moments we had a great weekend and ended up with a tree that I just absolutely love. We only had to cut off 3 1/2 feet off the bottom for it to barely fit in our living room.

Hmmm.  I just read over last year's post and it's kind of funny how similar some things are in this year's post to last year's. In fact, I was just about to start typing an additional note about the weekend when I read exactly what I wanted to say in last year's post, so I'm just going to copy and paste that paragraph, because I feel the same way now as I did then, apparently:

One of the best parts of the trip for me is going to sound like it should have really been the worst, but it wasn't.  That would be the drive to and from the cabin.  Even though we have our new mini van which comfortably holds us all, there's no way it could have made it to the cabin in the deep snow, so we took our jeep.  Now, the whole reason we bought the van is because three car seats don't fit in the back of the jeep.  So we put Stomper in front (don't worry, no airbags) in his booster and me in the back squashed between the two girls.  It was so tight back there that my shoulders are still sore from the carseats pushing in on me.  See? Not sounding too fun, right?  Well, it's not a situation I want to find myself in too often, but having my own little family all captive together all squashed up just makes me happy.  You know, those times when no one is asking for stuff, you have nothing you're trying to get done like the dishes or homework, you're just being together and enjoying the drive. Love it.  Thanks, Burnetts, for another fabulous Tree Trek weekend.