O Tenenbaum!

(continuing on catching you up on our holiday season - in reverse chronology)

We meant to get ourselves a Christmas tree on the 11th, so we'd have it for a nice long while to pretty up the house. But, when that day came along, we were greeted with an onslaught of what the weathermen euphemistically refer to as "wintry mix": rain, sleet, snow all shifting back and forth. Hardly a nice day for tramping across a tree farm, Brynna in tow, trying to find the right tree to saw down and throw onto the car. Plus, it now is dark by around 4 pm, so trying to find one in the light of day during the ensuing week was impossible.

Which brought us to the 18th. Not quite as late as, say, Christmas Eve, but still a little sad. We were stymied in our attempts to find a cut-your-own tree farm. We had good luck last year, but it simply was not to be this time. Either because it was late in the season, or because the economics weren't worth it, or because they just were taking a break, we couldn't find a cut-your-own place nearer than an hour away that still had trees.

So, we ended up much closer to home: at the YMCA of all places, choosing from their pre-cut Balsams trucked in from Colebrook, NH (i.e., the north hinterlands). I actually have few qualms about pre-cut trees: I myself sold them as a Boy Scout for years and years. And we found quite a nice one, actually.

Seeing as Brynna is unlikely to ever be a Boy Scout herself, I guess it'll be up to me to teach her the proper way to tie a bowline (and fifteen other useful knots).

Brynna was also enthusiastic this year about helping to decorate the tree - particularly with her own hand-made decorations.