Christmas Tree Trip

Get a cup of coffee people. This is going to be a long one. Last weekend was our (hopefully) annual trip with the Bruces to the Virginia mountains to pick out, chop down and haul home our Christmas tree. We found a great cabin in Floyd, VA with 4 bedrooms and one room even had a crib for little Miss V. In some kind of cosmic event, both of the children took a nap while the snow came in and it was beautiful! and cold! We definitely have to toughen up our Florida skin if we're going to make it here.

Here are our men (Brian & Tres) hauling in the kindling for another great roaring fire. 

James and Virginia hugged no less than 100 times on the trip. They are very sweet together. The cabin was stocked with toys for the owner's grandkids, but to James & V, pure joy was jumping off the air mattress onto two dog-hair infested beanbags.

Some doodling before dinner. 

Floyd is a cute little town. Pretty artsy with a few antique shops and a music "jamboree" on Friday nights at one of the three restaurants. We stopped at this place on our way out of town. Brian got a latte, but I wasn't very thirsty so I just got an idea...

Then we drove about 30 minutes north to Pilot, VA to Roll Out Farms - home of insecticide free trees and tractors that run on vegetable oil. We cared about this for about 5 seconds since the windy top of the hill felt like it was roughly 1 degree. Here are our little eskimos toughing it out.

Shortly after these two photos, Brian and I went inside to have some hot chocolate and 58 chocolate chip cookies while James did all the work. He was really into it and he owes us anyway, right?

Here he is testing the needle strength of a Frasier Fir.

Then measuring to make sure it's about 8 feet. We told him, "don't even think of bringing us a 7 foot tree!"

In a moment of great parenting, we decided he shouldn't actually chop it down by himself so Brian helped a bit.

After hauling the tree down the steep steep steep hill to the truck, the poor little guy was pooped.
So we let him eat a cookie (or 18) and have some hot chocolate that was clearly labeled "double chocolate meltdown" which I thought might have been a sign of what was to come on our 5 hour ride home...

But then it was back to work - here's James with his great find. 

Stay tuned for the next post "Decorating The Tree" which also involves child labor...