Apple Cider, Fry Cakes, and Christmas Trees – Oh, My!

Western NY is fairly spread out. And I have to say I miss having all that room to breathe. {But, I must also say that I’ve become very used to having five Targets – three of them super – within a ten mile radius of my house!} Because everything is a bit of a drive from where we’re vacationing – and because we’ve recently been trapped in the car for two and a half days straight – we decided it would be best to combine trips around town whenever possible. And even though about two-thirds of the country was experiencing abnormally cold temps including NY – baby, it’s cold outside – we weren’t about to waste our whole vacation indoors. Not when we needed to get ourselves a Christmas tree.

So when we headed out to a u-cut tree farm today, we just had to stop off for the most amazing apple cider and fry cakes (denser donuts, for you uninitiated), because it was just down the road. See the indisputable logic in that? Thought so.

And the tree farm just happened to have a live animal nativity, so we could check ‘drive around looking at nativities’ off our to-do list (assuming it was on there in the first place).

And what Christmas celebration would be complete without a ride in Santa’s sleigh? You might even get to take the reigns.

As it turned out, the kids had so much fun with all the “extras” on our trip to the u-cut farm (not to mention having plenty more snow to play in), that they ended up ditching us before we even got a tree. Tom’pa and I were left to our own devises to make the final decision, cut it down, and haul it back to the car. And here I thought the kids would be so excited about that part!

Despite the lack of help, I think we ended up with a pretty good tree.

We didn’t get around to naming it, but if we had, I’m sure we would have called it something along the lines of “Spike.” It had the sharpest needles I’ve ever encountered on a pine! No fun to put up – Alexander and I both got stabbed repeatedly through our clothing – but the super-sharp needles did have the unexpected result of keeping the kids well away from the tree. In fact, I think this is the first year that not a single ornament was taken down by the littles.