It’s been a busy week – one of many to follow over the next month – but we ended the week at the tree lot, so it was a good one. We put the baby in the same sweater that her sister wore to the same tree lot six years before. E said that we were picking the tree that her sister stared at the longest – she’s convinced that’s how she communicates her approval. I thought that was a perfectly fine indicator and then made sure that she was whisked through the aisles of standing 5- and 6- and 7-footers to the leaning row of 10′ plus. We positioned her in front of the most perfect specimen, tall, symmetrical, full branches but not too round at the bottom, and we let her stare. “That’s the one!” It took us less than three minutes flat. E got her “free” kids cone that comes each year with the $150 tree purchase, and graciously let us use some of her Ted Drewes Frozen Custard fund that her great-popaw refills each time we visit. We chose hot fudge on top (to warm us up) and ate it in the cozy cab of the truck with our evergreen beauty hanging off the bed behind us. A year seems so long when you start that new calendar in January, and yet it always seems like we were just here in the cab of a truck eating cold custard with warm fudge and smelling Christmas balsam and fresh pine roping. The next year will go by just as quickly as the last, and all four of us will be scraping the bottoms of our cups before heading home to get out the lights.
This is my favorite tradition of our Christmas.
