Christmas Tree 2008!

Click the picture for a bigger version, and to go to the album with the rest of the pictures from today!

It’s been a busy couple of weeks here at the Jenny and Jonathan household. We’ve been bouncing all over the place doing Thanksgiving stuff, working on stuff for the house, and being generally busy. Today was great fun, though.

We had decided a while ago to go out this weekend to get our Christmas tree. We were unable to get a big tree last Christmas because we had just finished the living room a week or so before Christmas Day, so we were both eagerly anticipating this Christmas when we could get a big tree again.

We woke up early and got our gloves and work clothes on (getting pine sap out of GoreTex is an awful, evil, painful thing, so we opted for clothing and weather gear that we didn’t mind getting a little beat-up). It was really cold here today, so extra layers were the rule. We first drove up to my parents’ house to pick up their tree saw (we use it once a year, so this makes sense), then headed north to the Butler area to our traditional tree farm. It was busy, but not too crowded yet. We looked at a number of trees before we found the “right” one. We lucked-out this year, too–two years ago when we went, it was a giant mud pit. In fact, I still have mud on my work coat and boots from that year that just won’t come out. This year, everything was mercifully frozen, so it was easy to walk around and then to drag our chosen tree up a hill, down a hill, and then up a hill, and then down another hill to get it to the bundling station. After bundling, it’s a cinch to throw it up on the subie and tie it down. We paid $20 for what looks like 7’+ tall blue spruce is excellent shape. It is, of course, slightly lopsided–but what would a REAL tree be without some REAL lopsided-ness? 🙂

After leaving the tree place, we went to Dingbats near the 422 interchange to get some lunch. It was only about 12:30 or so, so it was still pretty early in the day. This was the plan, after all–we had more stuff we wanted to do at home!

On the way home, I decided to take 356 all the way to near Leechburg, and then come in on Markle Road into Lower Burrell on the way home. Shortly after the Freeport Bridge, as we wound up the hills, I noticed that the car suddenly went into serious AWD mode and we shifted a little sideways. Now, we had been getting some snow after we started home from the tree place, and by this time there was just a dusting over the ground. However, it looks like there had been some melting in a few spots that caused really bad icing. In fact, shortly after we hit that spot (and consequently slowed down a bunch), we came to a spot where traffic was completely stopped. A truck eventually came down in the opposite direction, and was telling everyone that there was a big accident and that the road was probably going to be stopped in our direction for another 20-30 minutes. He pointed at a side road up ahead of us and told us if we knew the shortcut that way, that would be the way to go. Well, most people were turning around, but Jenny and I decided to be adventurous and take the shortcut. It ended up that the road comes out at the Bonfire Shortcut, which then runs into the road we wanted to be on to get home, so that was an easy shortcut! We had to take it slow the whole way home, though–there were patches of ice everywhere, and of course the idiot drivers who apparently thought it was only a dusting of snow (at least until they got to the icy parts). We almost got smacked twice on the way home while waiting at stoplights. Fortunately, there was enough melt around the stoplight areas that the two dorks who thought they were driving on clean pavement had enough time to skid on the ice until they hit the melt, whereupon they skidded to an abrupt halt. It would have been comical if we weren’t the ones their car was aimed towards at the time.

After we got home and unloaded the tree, we did some more decorating. I got the wreaths up on almost all of the windows (attic window still left to do). I also got our fun little battery candles ready to go. Then Jenny wanted to bake cookies. Now, our oven is in pretty bad shape right now (I can’t wait until our new one gets here on the 18th!). It doesn’t do a great job of maintaining temperature. For short bake times of cookies, though, I thought we might be OK. We made them together and had a great time. One batch turned out over-browned, one batch needed some more time, and one batch was just about right. Yahoo. At least they were easy to watch. Mmm. Cookies.

Now I’m waiting for the pictures to download off of the camera, and then I’ll get them uploaded to our site here. Then I’m off to the basement to work with a new dovetailing jig that I was able to buy yesterday. Once it is set up and ready to go, I need to finish work on our hall table. I’m hoping to finish most of that this weekend. It’s just about ready to be glued-up.

jonathan