Christmas Tree Farming

Liz: I didn't know there were such things as Christmas Tree farms

Kurt: Where did you think stores got their Christmas Trees from?

Liz:  I just thought they went out into the woods and cut some down, like in Christmas Vacation.


Needless to say, we got our Christmas Tree this weekend.  From a Christmas Tree Farm.  In Pennsylvania.   We got a saw, rode a tractor out to where the Blue Spruce trees were, picked one out, cut it down, drug it out to the road, loaded it on the trailer, and watched Kurt and his dad strap it to the top of our Minivan.  Then we drove home to MD, cut a couple feet off the bottom (I thought we had taller ceilings...oops), got it set up in the living room, and then watched as the kids decorated it.  Something I learned along the way - Blue Spruce are spikey!!  They are pretty though.  Overall it was a fun experience and now I can say that I've cut down my own Christmas Tree.

The map that tells you where the different trees are

One of the trailers that took people out to the various tree lots (if you didn't want to walk)

What a Christmas Tree farm looks like

An 11 year old with a saw, and a 4 year old... what could possibly go wrong

Dragging the spikey tree back out to the road

She actually saws better than I do

Unloading the trailer

The final product.  We decided to keep it simple and only used our "special" ornaments this year.

Weekend Fun

Well, our "active family Saturday" didn't quite work out this weekend.  Micaela has all next week off and convinced Grandma to let her spend the week up in PA.  So instead of getting up and doing our outside activity, we got up, loaded up the car, and drove to Hagerstown, MD which, in addition to a great outlet mall, actually has a really good German restaurant.  Kurt and I enjoyed gluhwein and krystalweizen with our jagerschnitzel and bratwurst and the kids enjoyed seeing Grandma and Pappy.  After lunch Kurt, Jon and I headed back home after lunch and took naps / relaxed until the football games come on.  It was a great day yesterday with both USC and PSU winning their games :)  The gluhwein we had at lunch was so good that Kurt had the great idea to look up a recipe to make it ourselves and we went over to our neighbors to share the deliciousness with them (and they shared their delicious smoked turkey with us).  Overall, great day.

Since we didn't do our "active family Saturday", we decided that we would just move it to today, Sunday.  There is a small lake in the middle of Fort Meade called Burba Lake.  As I was driving past it last week I noticed a trail going around the lake.  I wanted to know how long it was, so Jon and I headed out there with a jogging stroller to measure the distance (.75 miles).  He liked looking at all the geese and I got a little exercise in.  To be fair to Jon and get him moving, we did a second lap around the lake with Jon on his bike.  He did really well and actually went pretty fast at first, but got tired halfway around and I ended up pushing his bike most of the way back.  At one point we got close to some geese / ducks who thought we might have some food for them.  It was all I could do to keep Jon from "petting" the geese.  Lucky for us, Fort Meade just installed a bunch of new playgrounds around Post, one of which was right by Burba Lake.  Jon loved the playground, but unfortunately no one was there that early in the morning so I had to run around and play with him.  It was still fun, but next time we go we'll take Micaela and then they'll really have a good time.

Oops, went a little off-road

Can you spot the goose/duck in this picture?

Saturday Mornings

Two weeks ago Kurt had an idea.  He was tired of lazy weekend mornings and thought that we needed something to get us up and moving on Saturdays so we starting Active Family Saturdays.  Basically, we get up and out of the house by 9am and do something outside or active.  For the first one Micaela had the idea that we should go out in the backyard and pickup all the leaves (really?).  That's what Kurt wanted to do too, so we bundled up and headed outside.  It was actually kind of fun despite the fact that Kurt and I did the bagging while the kids ran around the yard and played chase with the dogs or kicked the soccer ball around.  Still, it met it's purpose in that we all spent the morning together, outside, doing something.

This past weekend I had no desire to bag leaves (which are never ending) so I suggested we head over to the Piney Orchard Nature Preserve.  I found this place while running with one of my old co-workers and Kurt and the kids had never been there.  Its a series of trails (some hard trails, some dirt trails) that run through a nature preserve that was made around a few lakes.  Ironically these lakes are the result of a mining company that needed somewhere to pump groundwater.  It was still a nice walk though and the kids liked running through the woods and throwing rocks and playing with sticks and such.

Snow!!!

I've been a little delinquent in my blogging, but now that I'm home alone (whoo hoo!) I have a few minutes to catch up on what we've been doing. 

For the most part, we've been spending our weekends here in MD, just doing stuff around the house, watching football, and relaxing.   Occasionally we make the trip up to PA and do the same stuff up there - watch football and relax.  Two weeks ago we saw that they were predicting snow up in PA and Kurt immediately decided that we needed to go.  Kurt's parents were great hosts (especially since they had watched the kids the previous weekend while Kurt and I celebrated with Ranj in DC) and the kids loved the snow.

It is so nice having "older" kids - we just suited them up and pushed them out the door and they were content playing in the snow all day.  Micaela even got Jon off to an early start with the snowboarding.  I was impressed with how well they both did.

While playing with your little brother is alright, it's much more fun when cousins are around!

And of course the biggest kid in the family also went out to play.  I was content with taking pictures, although I did go down the sled run once or twice :)