A Team Week 219: It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

With Thanksgiving behind us, the boys were ready to start decorating for Christmas.  On Monday, their eagerness for the winter holiday was enhanced by a snow storm to start out the week, providing Asher his first Snow Day from school for the year.  The boys were both thrilled by this event and Avery especially was happy to have his big brother join him at daycare for the day.

When I picked the boys up from daycare that day, they were both excited to show me how they had been able to build snowmen indoors that day.  Here is Avery with his mini snowman...

...and Asher with his.

As the week progressed, the boys' desire to kick of the Christmas season only intensified.  While we usually get a Christmas tree over Thanksgiving weekend, the rainy weather this year prevented us for doing so.  Thus, we still did not have a tree and were therefore not prepared yet to decorate indoors.  Thus, the boys kept begging Eric if they could start putting up the outdoor decorations.  Finally on Tuesday evening, Eric told him that they could put up a few of our lawn decorations, which went something like this...

Boys: (Excited) Questions, Questions, Questions...
Eric: If you ask me one more question I am not doing this.
Asher: But can I ask you a question?

By Thursday, the boys' Christmas spirit had rubbed off on me and I too was ready to get the season underway.  I turned on the Alabama Christmas album (THE Klingenmaier Family Favorite) and was immediately transported back to my childhood home sitting in the glow of the Christmas Tree with my family members and this traditional album spinning on the record player.  At that point it was officially Christmas Time.

The next day was Friday, which meant it was also my day off of work.  After enjoying a lazy morning at home, Avery asked me if we could go to the Dollar store and find a Christmas craft to paint.  I told him that we could as long as he was willing to run some other errands with me as well.  He agreed and we left on our little shopping outing before having to return to get pick up Asher from school.

Quote of the morning: Avery (concerned): Mommy, I did a bad accident...that I did on purpose... (It turned out that he had played on my computer for a second when I was in a different room and brought up an unexpected window.  It was no big deal, but knowing he shouldn't have been touching my computer obviously caused him a little (*humorous to me*) panic.)

Avery checking out the toys at Target that morning and dreaming of his Santa List and Christmas Morning.

That afternoon, Eric took off early from work for a family outing.  Wanting to continue our family tradition of cutting down our own tree, we headed west to Richardson's Tree Farm in Illinois.  We arrived there in the mid afternoon and needed to attempt to move quickly (something my pregnant body just doesn't do) to find a tree before the sun went down.

We had been at this tree farm once before when Asher was a baby and remembered that they had a fun wagon ride out to the trees and free hot chocoalte, so we had thought that this would be a fun-filled experience for the boys and since it was forecasted to rain all weekend we wanted to do it that day.  We really had NO idea what we were in for however!  At the tree farm, we found that they do not have the wagon service during the week.  Thus, we were given directions at the main area to the trees and told that we could walk or drive.  Since it was not exactly a short walk and I am not able to walk more than short distances these days we opted to drive, but we were warned that due to the snow earlier in the week and the warmer temperatures it was quite muddy out there.  The lady we spoke with said that we needed to make sure we stayed on the plowed drives and then we should be find, but that someone had already gotten stuck earlier that day by trying to go off the beaten path.

We headed back to our van to drive to the trees and quickly realized just how muddy it was as all of our boots were already caked in mud just from walking through the parking lot.  When we got to the van, the boys climbed in before we could stop them and ask them to remove their boots, bring the mud inside and all over the carpets of my vehicle! :(  We attempted to contain the mess by having them sit on the floor of the van as we made our way out to the trees (not on any actual public roads), but unfortunately my carpets were already in need of a serious scrubbing.

We drove to the actual tree farm and then tried to get close to the area that supposedly contained the type of tree we were looking for (Frasier Firs).  The roads/trails back there were horrendous though!  After a day/week of people driving on them, it was basically impossible to know which were the "safe", "plowed" roads and which were just formed by visitor traffic.  We played it safe and found a location to park that was as close to the firs as we were willing to get.  Then we piled out of the van and began our search.

This search quickly proved to be MUCH more of a challenge than we had anticipated.  The tree selection at this Tree Farm was pretty awful (at least for the type of tree we wanted).  All of the trees that were in the 6'-8' height range looked more like Charlie Brown trees and seemingly averaged about 6 branches each.   That, combined with the fact that they were charging $75 for any of these trees, quickly told us we may not find what we were looking for.  If the trees were $20-$30 I maybe could have convinced myself that I could 'make do' with one of these embarrassments of a Christmas Tree, but for that price there was no way I was going to cut one down unless we actually found a tree that was deserving of the honor.

The look on Eric's face n the picture is a pretty good description of our thoughts on Richardson's Frasier Fir selection.

We walked around the farm for over an hour and were not able to find anything that we liked, but thankfully it was not a complete bust as we did get to enjoy a nice sunset and some good family time outdoors together.

As darkness approached and we gave up on our search, we realized that we had wandered pretty far from our van.  By that point, my back was really started to hurt, so Eric offered to go get the van and pick up the boys and I.  We thought we could see our van in the distance, but that turned out to be another van and ours was even further away.  By the time I realized this, Eric was already out of range and since my phone had died I had no way of contacting him.  As the boys and I waited for his return, I began to worry that he would not be able to make it to the area that we were at without getting stuck in the mud.  After waiting (and worrying) for awhile, the boys and I began to make our way in Eric's direction, but shortly after we did so he came down the road we were on (working hard to keep the van's tires out of the muddy ruts) and picked us up.  We piled into the van (making sure to take off our boots right away this time) and then attempted to make our way out of the farm.

Eric was able to successfully direct the van to the end of the road we were on, but then to get out of the farm we needed to turn right, go up a slight hill and then turn right again.  It was at this point that we were not so lucky and the van got stuck deep in the mud.  After a few unsuccessful attempts to get the van out of the mud, Eric headed out to find some help.  A short time later someone came from the farm with a truck to pull us out from behind.  It took some work, but eventually he was able to get us free.  Unfortunately though, we still needed to make it up the slight hill and across the road to make the right turn before we were home free.  It quickly became apparent that this would not be easy and the guy instructed us to drive off the road on the free snow, and back up as far as we could so that we could pick up a little speed to make it up the hill.  We did as we were instructed and were happily able to make it up the hill.  When Eric attempted to cross the road to turn right, however, trouble struck again and we were again stuck deep in the mud.

By now, it was completely dark out and unlike the last time our helper would need to pull us out from the front, meaning he needed to attach the pull chain to the axel beneath the van rather than simply attaching to our trailer hitch.  Nevertheless the guy was willing to get down and dirty to get the job done.  He got the van hooked up and then pulled us from the front out of the mud and all the way back to the main road.  Since he was in front of us this time though, his attempts to free us kicked up a layer of mud which covered much of the entire front-end of my van!  In the almost five years that we have had it, it has NEVER looked so awful!  The mud was all over my windshield, hood, front bumper and caked into the front grill of the van.  Not good.  :(

In times such as these, there are two ways that your mood can go.  1: You can loose it and become either very upset or very depressed by the circumstances, or 2: You can appreciate the ridiculousness of the situation and just chalk it up to memories made.  In surprisingly good spirits that evening, Eric, the boys and I chose the latter and simply decided it was and would likely forever be our most memorable Christmas Tree hunt ever: The year that everything went wrong and we didn't even bring home a tree!

When we'd headed out originally on the hunt, we'd promised the boys we would get them a cup of hot chocolate when we returned to pay for our tree.  While we didn't get a tree, the boys didn't forget about the cocoa.  Thus, Eric went into the shop to get them each a cup while the boys and I waited in the van (not wanting to get their boots back on them and pick up any more mud).  In the meantime, Asher decided he needed to go to the bathroom.  I was about to get out with him and Avery when Eric returned with the cocoa (in cups without lids because apparently the free cocoa doesn't come with lids...great news for our already filthy van).  I updated Eric on the situation and since it was dark out, there was almost no one around and we were ready to get out of there, we decided to just let Asher pee right outside the van into the muddy parking lot (figuring it really won't make anything worse at that point).  Once that was finished, we finally got into the van and left Richardson's Tree Farm for good (forever).

As we made our way home, we wanted to get something to eat.  We really were in no shape to sit down at a restaurant, but as we drove past the Bristol Diner (a cute little restaurant I'd noticed in the past), we decided to keep the memories coming and give it a shot.  We made our way inside, quickly noticing that we were the only once there under the age of 60-70, and got a table.  The experience turned out to be pretty good.  The food wasn't amazing, but it was decent and a fun atmosphere and a fitting continuation of our afternoon together.  After we finished up, we got back into the van and headed into Kenosha with one last stop to make before going home: The car wash!

A week or two prior to this a Rocket Car Wash opened close to our home and the boys have been very interested in it.  Thus, we figured we would take the van there so that the boys could experience going through it for the first time.  When we pulled up to the window, there were two young girls working.  We told them that we had been stuck in the mud and needed a good wash.  One of the girls peeked out at the van and asked if she could come out and inspect it in person.  Upon doing so, she said that there was too much mud on the van and that she could not let us go through because the car wash uses brushes and she could not guarantee that there would be no rocks in the mud which would scratch our van.  Instead, we were told to go to a no-touch wash so we headed across the street to Kwik Trip and went through.  When we came out the other side, the van was still quite dirty so Eric just went inside the station and told them our van had not gotten clean, giving us another free wash.  Even then the van was not 100% mud-free but we decided it was good enough and headed home (over a month later with one or two additional car washes, there is still mud in the front grill of my van!).  We arrived home well after bedtime and immediately got the boys settled and set for bed.

The next day we headed off to Lowes to finally get ourselves a tree.  After a little deliberation we found one that we agreed on and then let the boys "cut" it down with their ninja skills.

Video: Ninja Tree Cutting

FB Post: Yesterday we went on a family adventure to go and cut down our Christmas tree. Adventure it was. We came home with a van covered in mud inside and out, a book-load of memories made, and no tree. Today we headed over to Lowe’s to finally get our tree and rather than using the saw we’d brought the day before the boys “cut” it down with their sweet ninja moves! #christmasmemories

That night we brought the tree into the house but much to the boys' dismay we had to let the branches fall before we could decorate it.  On Sunday morning though, I got to work putting on the lights and then that night we pulled the ornaments from the attic and basement and began to fill the tree.

Video: Lighting the Tree

Video: Tree Decorating

It is tradition for us (me) to watch the Rudolph movie while we decorate the tree.  As we prepared to put up the ornaments I dug out the DVD case only to find that it was empty!  Since the show couldn't go on without it, Eric and I looked to see if we could find it online.  Shortly after I found what I thought was it on YouTube and we pulled it up on the TV.  At first it seemed like the typical movie, but then about 5-10 minutes into the show there were some strange scenes with a fairy godmother or something talking to Rudolph about his special powers.  It was weird to say the least but after that the movie went back to normal.  The next day I tried to find the video again so that I could watch it more closely and see what the scenes were actually saying but by then it was too late and YOuTube and taken the video down.  I guess we will never know...but I can't say I mind!  Other than that, the tree decorating went off without a hitch and by the end of the night we had a beautiful tree lighting up our living room for the remainder of the Christmas Season and rounding out A Team Week 219.