To tree or not to tree


To tree or not to tree
By Allan Olson
It was another weekend jam-packed with fun and of course, when dealing with children, some frustration as well in my household.
A couple of weeks ago my wife and I were having a very serious discussion about the benefits of a real vs. artifical Christmas tree. During all the years we lived in our three-bedroom mobile home, we had a small, artificial tree, always saying that when we moved into a house that would change. Last year it did change. That was the first Christmas in our new house. I cut down a tree at my parents’ property at the end of deer season and stuck it in the snow at home for another week, planning to put it up after Thanksgiving.
We were excited. Finally, a real tree. That excitement quickly waned as we grew sick-and-tired of the needles falling off, and Abigail always moving the decorations around, knocking more needles off, or someone just brushing too close by the tree or even, it seemed, just breathing on it (halitosis, perhaps?) and more needles fell to the floor. After the kids unwrapped their presents at home last year, we quickly took all the decorations off the tree and I threw the darn thing out the door, not caring that I made an even bigger mess in my haste to get it out.
So we discussed the situation, and discussed it some more. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I was almost to the point of feeling sick about getting a fake tree, so after even more discussion we decided to “shop local” and purchase a tree from an actual tree farm and not just any old tree from the woods.
On Friday we headed to a tree farm in search of this year’s Christmas tree. We sought input from each of the four children on which tree they liked, and why. Of course, none of them picked the same tree – that was no real surprise – but my wife and I didn’t pick the same tree, either. After about 30 minutes of trying to decide, we came to a consensus. The owners of the farm kindly tied it to the top of our van and away we went. Thankfully, it didn’t fall off, like the appliances in my trailer did a couple of years ago!
We got it home safely, brought the tree stand into the house from the garage, and got it set up. Then the kids immediately started pestering us about decorating it. Using a technicality (we needed some hooks to hang the decorations) we were able to put that off until Saturday afternoon.
On Saturday, the kids and I attended a Northstar Geoseekers Christmas party right here in Cass Lake, at Sah Kah Tay Resort. We met with a bunch of other people – most of them have been geocaching a lot longer than we have – and ate lots of food, and even had an early visit from Santa Claus bearing gifts and all. Everybody in attendance received a gift from Santa as well as from other geocachers, as everyone had been asked to bring a gift and food to share.
The kids were thrilled with their gifts. One received a large selection of flashlights – perfect for night geocaching; two each received a multi-tool replete with pliers, ideal for grabbing some of those small, hard-to-reach-with-the-fingers geocaches.
Abigail was the big winner of the family; she received an additional gift from Santa. She was sitting on Santa’s lap and, while I didn’t hear all of the conversation, I heard her say it wasn’t almost Christmas, it was still October! Santa looked confused and everybody was laughing. Later Abigail said she meant November – an honest mistake since Saturday was only December 1. Santa gave her a little stocking and inside was a specially marked “geocoin” chocolate candy with “#1” marked on it. She was the winner of one of the additional prizes that someone generously donated – an ammo box. They are perfect for geocaches, as they are virtually indestructible and can hold lots of little trinkets. At first, she said she was going to use it for toys and keep it in her room. When asked later she said she might want to hide it, and if she did “it would be around Cass Lake for sure.”
That evening we got back to our tree. We finally got it decorated, and the kids were happy because they were able to help. Abigail is still moving decorations around on different branches, but as long as she’s not knocking 10,000 needles on the floor, I’m not going to complain too much. Now that the tree decorated, the kids are bugging mom to set up her ceramic houses.
We stuck to the house on Sunday, despite considerable pestering from Marcus, who really wanted to go geocaching so he could try out the flashlight on his new tool. Mom decided it was time to tackle the laundry room, and that was what we spent our time doing.
This weekend will no doubt be busy again. We have pictures to shoot for a family, more relatives will be staying with us due for a weekend hockey tournament, we have Christmas shopping to finish, and another Christmas party to attend. Tis the season!
Remember to watch out for school buses on the roads, as they are carrying a precious cargo – our children. Also please exercise caution when venturing out on those lakes that have frozen. Thanks for reading, and have a great and safe weekend. For more of my columns visit: http://allan-crazykids.blogspot.com/

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