A Griswold am I, pt 1

Yesterday was pretty much taken up with getting the Christmas tree and decorations in gear. As per usual, a number of mishaps befell us.

10:00AM Natalie and I were all excited to wrap up the new ornaments (bird and butterfly) that Natalie had picked out for Mary during our rare cameo at the mall. She selected a lovely blue wrapping paper with sparkly snowflakes and we did as fine a wrapping job as a 5-year old and a ham handed dad (I had trouble tying the bow) can do. While grabbing scissors from the ground floor, I took a couple of boxes of Xmas stuff from the attic downstairs, without really looking at them.

11:00AM Mary, annoyed that I took kids upstairs when we could have been taking Xmas picture in the "good light" (photographer speak), declares it's time to get tree. Off we go to tree farm, where all is mighty picturesque in the snow and we ride in an ATV through streams and gullies, but all the live trees are pretty scrawny. One of the pre-cut ones is OK, and we grab it out from beneath this other family, who are sizing it up, on a "we were there first" basis.

Feet are cold. There are horses in the snow, to delight of kids. Men are loading hay into barn. One declares need to take his wife to work, but he'll be back in an hour, a prospect with dubious economics. Two 12- year old boys in overalls by the barn are discussing the fine points of physics, with a youthful openmindedness that CEOs would love to rekindle: "Imagine if, instead of going down, things went up!"

Tree on car. Home for naptime.

Next time: searching for the white lights.