Scattered Thoughts . . .

After we went to a Christmas Tree farm to cut Christmas trees this past weekend, we headed to a restaurant for a nice Christmas lunch. We've been doing this family Christmas lunch thing since the grandchildren were born four years ago. I don't think our intentions were to make this a tradition... I think we were just hungry that first year after cutting Christmas trees and lunch sounded like a good idea... after the second year of doing the same, we started thinking of it as a tradition. By now, it is definitely a nice tradition and something we look forward to each Christmas season.  Our lunch was delicious... the drinks were delicious... the desserts were delicious... the service was outstanding... and the atmosphere was warm, cozy and Christmassy... Arriving at the restaurant... Happy to see Gee again... I had to shoot a photo of this... I even advised Lukey to never attempt this in a real NY pizzeria... he was dipping his pizza in ranch dressing...

Here are some photos from yesterday's frigid excursion to the Christmas Tree farm. I still have some photos from our lunch at The Whip that I'll share sometime later... for now, here are the photos from the tree farm. The wind chill was below zero but we all were ready for the cold and dressed appropriately. Well... that reminds me, I could use some gloves which would be more appropriate for photography while out in freezing temperatures. I had to resort to having one bare hand to operate the camera. I could not operate my camera while wearing a glove. That being said, I dressed for the weather and I stayed warm though... with the exception of my right hand! We managed to get trees and move on to lunch very quickly which was nice. It was a really nice day! Getting some warmth... Getting a ride back to the cars with the trees in the back of the wagon... You can definitely see how cold it is in this photo!

Here is a short video of our morning of cutting Christmas trees. The wind chill temperature was below zero... it was snowy... and the tree farm was rather busy and full of happy people filled with Christmas spirit!  Our ride on the wagon back to the cars with the trees was a very bumpy one! Video stabilization sort of converted the severely jerky video to more of a jello-like video but I suppose that is a bit better than the original bumpy video.   I also shot a lot of good photos which I will share a little bit later. I still need to sort through all the photos. In the meantime, here is a short video. Despite the frigid temperatures, we all had a great time!

Last year, our trek to cut Christmas trees involved ice covered dirt roads, deep snow and downed power lines. This year, our trek to cut Christmas trees involved grass covered hills and wet, muddy, rutty roads where the car bottomed out and was thrown violently from rut to rut all over the road. It was quite a contrast between the years. The sap is running in the trees... flowers are blooming in our gardens... so the trees are unaware that they are supposed to be dormant this time of year. If the trees are not dormant when cut, this is not good for the Christmas season. These trees will die very quickly after being cut so the big question this year is whether or not we will have a "tree" on Christmas morning or a dried out twig. (I'm betting on a dried out twig.) (Have I mentioned lately how much I despise spring-like weather for Christmas?) We all had a good time though and it was easy to stay warm!  As we do every year, immediately following our tree cutting, we he

This past weekend we trekked out to the woods to choose and cut five Christmas trees.  The day we chose was a relatively beautiful day, thankfully, because the snow was deep! If it had been cold outside on this day, we would have had a rough time out there in all that snow. In the preceding days, we had a pretty nasty storm here in Vermont...  a lot of snow, followed by a lot of freezing rain...  more snow...  more sleet and freezing rain...  more snow...  more freezing rain...  Many areas were left with downed power lines which included the area where we went searching for five perfect Christmas trees. On our drive up the mountain, we passed a line crew working on a number of downed lines. They had about a hundred yards of line left to hang on the utility poles. The downed trees and limbs were already cut and removed by the time we ventured into this winter wonderland but the tree farm was still left without power.   When we reached the tree farm and parked our cars in the sno