The Christmas Tree.....finale

OK, so how did it all end? Well you will have to read the first two parts of this adventure to understand how we got here.
http://etsthisibelieve.blogspot.com/2011/11/christmas-tree.html begins the story of picking and cutting down the tree. http://etsthisibelieve.blogspot.com/2011/12/christmas-treecontinued.html shares the adventure of us actually getting the MONSTER tree inside the house and setting it up. So now, the rest of the story.

The Christmas was a huge success and as always we had lots of fun watching the kids open their presents.  Over the years we have created numerous holiday traditions for our family that began in that little school house. It is amazing to look back and realize that was SO many years ago. Where did the time go? Where did our little babies go?  All grown up now....that is what happens.  We have pictures but it doesn't seem like there were many.  My kids have asked that I continue to post some of their photos, so in the future I will have to write about those adventures as well......there have always been adventures....there undoubtedly will always be.  That is a good thing.

One of the things we have always tried to do pretty quick after Christmas was to begin the clean up process.  You know! Putting all the decorations away and getting life back to the normalcy of ...well ...I guess the daily grind.  Why did we always do that? I am not sure.....wouldn't it be great for the Christmas spirit to last just a bit longer?  Apparently not! My wife has been the scrooge of Christmas all of these years....now don't take that wrong.  She loves Christmas, and loves watching the kids and loves everything about it. However, she is a bit of a slave driver from time to time. You see, when it is over.....its OVER....no lingering, no procrastinating, not dilly dally around...MOVE IT MOVE IT MOVE IT! (This could be one of my favorite traits about her...otherwise I might sit around and do nothing) Yes, she is the taskmaster! But that is okay.....Christmas is over so.....NEXT!

Next, was always getting the house back to normal before life started back.....meaning New Years Day....all over. THAT became our next family tradition. Packing it all away.  Back then we didn't have as many ornaments or decorations or stars or lights or much else for that matter.....but this year we had the TREE to end all trees! And what happens to most LIVE trees after they have been in your house for a while? That's right....THEY GET DEAD! and drop all their needles. We could have created a small mulch bed underneath this tree. By this time, you just look at the tree wrong and needles would fall off.  I was just imagining how much of a struggle it would be to get it back out of the door again and what a mess we were going to create.

And then it HIT ME.....I had a brilliant idea of how to get the tree out neat and clean. (okay so I thought it was a bright idea at the time) If you look in the corner of the house, we had a wood burning stove....yep you got it.  I was going to cut up the tree in small bits and burn up! This was going to be awesome.

A few pointers one should realize about this process: (that now is engraved in to my head)

1. Wood burning stoves are small...means you have to cut everything up pretty small to get it in the door.
2. PINE is not a great thing to burn in a stove....yes it burns quickly, but apparently the sap is a very bad mess and requires flue cleaning.....not just chimney cleaning in our case.
3. Needles still fall on the floor as you are hacking at the tree.
4. A 13 foot tall tree produces a lot of branches....therefore a lot of fire wood...therefore a lot of heat.
5. It is best, that the day you pick to burn your Christmas tree doesn't happen to turn out to be the hottest day of the winter....yep, I think it was up to the low 70s in Pennsylvania that day....OUTSIDE.

So, branch after branch I cut (dismember: my kids thought it was sacriligious o be cutting the tree....it was like killing Santa or something and they thought I HAD to be doing something illegal) and place the branches (the body parts) in the stove.....and hotter and hotter it got in that house.  I kid you not, it had to be nearly 100 degrees inside that day. Blazing hot sauna type of heat!  We had always put a small black kettle on the top of the stove with water and potpourri in it.  It was great, created beautiful smells while the fire was burning.....however today.....that pot was boiling over......seriously BOILING OVER.  It was a rolling boil on the top of the wood burning stove.  We could have cooked a soup on top of the fireplace!

Little by little the tree disappeared.  Remember I had tied it to the top? Well, it is pretty funny looking to have a tree (near naked except for the top 6 feet that I couldn't reach except with a ladder) swinging....yes swinging from its tether at the ceiling. All done....the rest of the day we went outside to play ...... And cool off! Truthfully, I didnt finish cutting the tree up.  I was too tired and too sweaty to deal with it anymore.  After all I had made a huge HOT mess regardless.  I took the rest of the tree and threw it down in the woods (like a dead body being hidden and never discovered by the authorities) and called it a day.

Memories my friends...make them and never forget them. They are the special moments in our lives.
(The names and places in this story have been changed to protect the innocent....are you kidding? Nope it was me guilty as charged! Merry Christmas my friends.)

The Christmas Tree.....continued

Okay, so if you haven't read it yet, you need to go back and read the first part of this little adventure. http://etsthisibelieve.blogspot.com/2011/11/christmas-tree.html That will give you the background of how in the world we got to this point.....actually I am still not sure even to this day! So we survived the journey of cutting down the tree, loading it onto the car.....correction into the car, and the kids didn't fall out of the back of the wagon while we were driving home.  So far a successful adventure...Let me stress the word ADVENTURE.

Once we got home we basically dumped it on the front lawn. I realized I wasn't going to get it in the door that night for several reasons.

• 1st: It was a bit longer than expected (duh).
• 2nd: It had begin to get really cold and was misting outside.
• 3rd: It was also pitch dark.
• 4th: I was exhausted from the adventure so far.
• 5th: I had to figure out how in the world I was going to actually set this monster up!
• The 6th and probably the most challenging effort was going to be the actual method of getting the tree in the house.

Our house wasn't like any other ordinary house. (Of course not! Have I ever done anything that was ever ORDINARY? No....Wait maybe the word ordinary should be substituted with easy or sane or maybe realistic or even humanly acceptable.  Yes, I seemed to also do the....let's be nice to me today and say IMAGINATIVE.) Our house was a beautiful 150 year old one room brick school house. Now, you might say one room means ONLY one room.  No, originally the school house had an entry hall in front where you can enter into from the front door. Once you walk in the front door the hall was only five feet deep where you had to turn either left or right.  When the school was functioning, I am told that the boys went left and the girls went right.  At the end of the hall, just after the doors leading into the classroom, on both sides were closets that were only about six feet tall (remember the ceilings were 13') so we used the top of the closets for additional storage.  The closets were accessed from inside the classroom, not the hall. Once you got inside the house, the owner had added a few walls to create a small bedroom, bathroom and divided kitchen. The walls were only about 8' tall and the bathroom had a "lid" on it while the kitchen and bedroom were open above to the main part of the house. Yes, it was also an adventure living there.  My wife and I slept in the "bunk" above the bathroom that was accessed from a ladder in the bedroom while the kids shared the bedroom.

Ok, back to the story at hand now that you understand what predicament I was in.  I got a friend from church to help measure and cut off about 5 foot on the tree.  (And yes, I did cut off the BOTTOM despite what some of you might think of me as being a bit "challenged" at times.) Now to get it in the house. We had to get the 13' tall tree into the front hall, turn quickly (again because the hall was only 5' wide) and then stand it upright in the hall (again because the hall wasn't long enough due to the closets at the end of each hall), and then close the front door, back up, lower the tree and make the next turn.  Yes a lot of needles feel off and yes we had to really tug and pull and slightly bend the giant tree to make each turn.  Did it!

Now the tree was in the house and we needed to stand it up.......hum?  How do we do that? We tried a giant homemade 2x4 base as a tree stand.....didn't work.  My wife was afraid the kids would bump into the tree and then TIMBER! it would fall down and crush all that remained in it's path of trajectory.  Good point.  Okay, so the ceiling plaster was removed during the renovation and the large wood ceiling joists were exposed and perfect for attaching a nail and then securing the top of the tree with rope.  Perfect! The tree was straight and no worries.....humm. There was a few times that the tree actually did SWING from the rope when the kids bumped into it but it didn't fall.

Decorations were another adventure.....we didn't have nearly enough for this behemoth.  I honestly cannot remember what we did to help fill it up.  I know we didn't enough money to go BUY any additional ones.  Well we needed to make a star.  We had just begun this tradition of making a new star each year.  We most certainly needed one here and one that was equal in size to the tree.....of course....proportions mattered...they always mattered.  Another little detail that we (or I) overlooked before beginning this so called ADVENTURE.

We made the star out of newspaper and glue and then painted it bright yellow.  When it was done it sort of looked like a Dr. Seuss starfish sort of thing.  But it was awesome!

So that was the story.....the last bit of this adventure will be continued when I share how we got the tree down and out of the house! Yes.....yet another memorable moment!  Enjoy your tree this year my friends and never forget the adventures you have on your journey of life.

(I will keep looking for better photos of this adventure)

The Christmas Tree

 "We're kicking off our fun old fashion family Christmas by heading out into the country in the old front-wheel drive sleigh to embrace the frosty majesty of the winter landscape and select that most important of Christmas symbols." Clark Griswold.

It is so ridiculously crazy that it has to be just a folk lore, a figment of our imagination, a dream no make that a nightmare......did I really do that? Life imitates art.....er....at least a movie. The Christmas Vacation specifically.

OK, so here is the story that relives all the "dad is out of his rocker" for Christmas moments in our family.  There were no pictures to capture the evidence, but trust me it was true.  You will just have to visualize the moments described.

This took place back in Pennsylvania when the kids were young.  My oldest two boys were about 5 and 3 years old. We had...ok I had...decided to begin a new tradition by going and cutting our Christmas tree down.  All my life I had grown up with an artificial tree and each year I had to "set up" the tree by going down to the basement, digging out the tree from a box and assembling it.  I just wanted something a bit more special and memorable for the kids.

At the time, we lived out in the country in a one room school house that was built over 150 years ago.  It was a pretty cool place as it was positioned next to a huge animal reserve surrounded by hills and a small creek running nearby. The old house was made of all brick and yes there still was a working bell on top.  The ceilings were over 13' high with three very large windows on each side of the house.  Most of the heat was generated from a wood burning stove that could quickly heat up the entire house. I remember telling the kids that they needed to bring in firewood each day before I got home from work because if they didn't......we would all freeze that night! The kids would bring in one log at a time (that was all they could carry...it was too heavy) and fill up the fire box ready for the night.

We had never done the "cutting down the tree thing" before but had seen a sign up near the house where there was a large property (private residence) where they had a huge yard with trees to cut down. I didn't know they were only open on weekends, but I was so busy with work and time was limited.  So I decided to run up to the place with my two boys and cut down a tree.....after all, how tough could that be....right? When we started this adventure, it was still daylight outside....but nightfall was coming quickly....time was limited.

At the time, we drove an old green station wagon fondly referred to as the MOBILE COMMAND UNIT.  It was terrible....army green, no air conditioning, back windows didn't even roll down, not even a radio.  It was simply our troop transport for the Thompson family.  Anyway, with the two boys loaded up in the ugly green sleigh and a hand saw ready for cutting down our first tree....off we go. We get to the location, parked down at the bottom of the hill near the entrance.....there was nobody in sight....hum....should have been the first clue. No matter, I was bound to make this event happen.  The boys and I marched up the hill and knocked on the door.  The nice lady at the door said they were closed except for the weekends.  I begged to allow us to cut down our tree.....with two little boys standing next to me all bundled up how could she deny us.  She allowed us to cut our tree...just not one that had been tagged already and there was a netting machine down at the bottom of the hill.  Unfortunately nobody other than herself was at home so she couldn't help us. We were on our own.

No worries....we can do this! So we went back down the hill near the car and began looking for the perfect tree. The night was coming on .... and oh great....it started misting.  So not only was it cold, but the rain was making it worse outside. We knew we wanted a big tree because of the ceiling height.....it just had to be the RIGHT tree. We started looking nearby the car, but they weren't very big.  We moved through the forest of trees looking for the right one....each one we came to the boys would chime out together, "How about this one, Daddy?", nope....not big enough..."yeah, your right Daddy, we need a bigger one." Onward we marched through the maze of trees until finally we were pretty far up the hill.  We found the perfect tree, it was a perfect shape, filled out everywhere and most certainly it looked like it was big enough. I couldn't tell very well how big it was because I didn't have a measuring guide and now it was dark and the rain began to turn to freezing rain as the temperature had dropped once the sun went down.

Rusty Griswold: Dad, this tree won't fit in our back yard. Clark: It's not going in the yard, Russ. It's going in the living room.
So the sawing began...our first REAL tree....the ground was wet now and it was cold.....not easy cutting this tree down...it had a huge trunk. But finally it fell...and now to get it down the hill to the car.  The kids weren't much helping carrying the tree.....5 and 3 years old....what did you expect!  Man, were we that far away from the bottom of the hill....it seemed like forever dragging the tree through this forested labyrinth. man is it cold. but, with much struggle and much grunting.

Ok, lets see if we can run it through the netter....by the way I have never used one of these before. First to try and pick this massive thing up and put it on an 18" wide table that is 1/3 rd the size of the tree.....oh yeah, now beginning to be covered in frozen rain drops. We line it up after much struggle and much much grunting.....we get maybe 4 foot of the base in the netter when we realize it ain't goin in any further. I am standing on the table top tugging at the base of the tree, slipping all the time on the slick table top......defeated...."Lets pull it out and just put it in the car," I say to the kids. Easier said than done.....you know those netters were design ed to go one way....not the other.

Finally we got it out of the netter and begin to put it on the car.....yes, I was going to tie it on top.....wait....with who's help?  My oldest was probably only 2 1/2 feet tall.....how was he going to reach the top of the car.......yes, again with much struggle and much much much grunting I finally gave up on the task of tying it to the roof of our faithful MOBILE COMMAND UNIT.

So, in the back of the wagon.  I lower the back seat. I lower the tail gate.  I tug the tree in the back. easier said than done.....I have to lift it up on the tailgate, climb inside from the front and then pull, pull and pull some more until it is all the way in..........okay.....in a far as it would go.....up the the back of the front seat.  With nothing inside the car to tie the tree to, I go around to survey how much is remaining outside of the command unit.........ahhhhhh......you got it......I managed to get all 6 feet of the tree  in the wagon....with only a mere 12 more feet hanging out......yes....you can add..... 18' of tree......13' tall ceilings....in a 6 foot MOBILE COMMAND UNIT with only two little boys hanging on to the tree preventing it from falling out as we eased down the road homeward bound.  The boys had been given strict instructions that if they let go and let the tree fall out of the car that there would be disastrous consequences. so, with much struggle and much much much much grunting....they held onto the tree.

We made it home.....all of us.....in one piece.  You will have to stayed tuned for Part II of the Christmas tree story of how we got it in the house the next evening......coming soon!

Enjoy my friends.