Well, this weekend was the date of our annual Christmas Tree Hunt! Overall I would say it was successful. We had a group of 13 people pile into 4 vehicles and head up into the mountains to attempt to hunt down 6 Christmas trees :o)
Conditions were good - we were able to drive all the way up to the end of the road without any snow on the road... A little ice and actually lots of dust, but no snow...
Parked the cars, got out, geared up and started hiking. Now the idea was to put the kids in the sled and drag them along the trail. This worked for a while, but what the pictures don't show is that due to some warmer weather, followed by a dry COLD spell, all the snow was frozen solid. So every bump was a major bump (to a 2 & 4 year
old) and everywhere that someone had post-holed last week was a very dangerous ankle breaker of a hole.But off we went, kids in the sled down the trail... Until the kids started complaining bitterly about the extremly bumpy and very tippy sled ride. Time to get them out and have them start walking... Ya right! They both initially found the snow far to icy and slick - even with good tread on your boots, if you don't have any weight behind you they might as well be ice skates :o)
So at this point the only option is to carry both the kids down the trail. We kept trading kids back and forth, switching arms, trying to get them to walk on their own... Eventually Janika discovered that she could actually walk on the snow and had a great time manuvering over the big
holes and letting us know when one of them was small enough that she could step in it with her long legs :o)Joe took several jaunts up the side of the trail into patches of potential Christmas trees while we (mostly Janika) tried to coach him from the road... "That one Daddy! Over that way! No, THAT way! No, that one's too skinny - go over THAT way!" Anyway, he kept returning to the road empty handed and eventually we decided to turn around and head back to the cars since the kids were starting to complain about cold noses and fingers.
Upon arriving back at the cars we started up the Jeep, cranked up the heat, let the little ones warm up, and broke out the camp stove to cook up some hot cocoa before Joe headed out in the other direction to see if he could have more success solo.
Sure enough after not too long he came back with a beautiful tree! Success!Both kids zonked out in the back seat on the way back into North Bend, but we were able to wake them up to enjoy a wonderful dinner with friends back at the North Bend Bar & Grill. Next mission - to get the tree into the house and decorated!
