The Christmas Tree!

We got our Christmas tree pretty early this year.  I was worried it wouldn't last well because it has been SO DRY this year.  We haven't had hardly any rain.  We went to get it the Saturday after Thanksgiving.  It turned into a bit of an adventure when we got stuck in the tiniest bit of snow and mostly mud on a little downhill slope.  Usually we wouldn't even have been able to drive on this road in our 2-wheel drive little pick up, but we actually made it a little ways in because there was pretty much no snow except in shady spots.  But we did find a way to get stuck.  We tried a lot of things, but finally settled on digging up dirt and putting it behind the wheels to made a path.  Between that and Paul's great driving skills, we got unstuck.  And then we looked for Christmas trees.  We got a really cute one for Anna Lou and then found a pretty good one for us back in among lots of fallen trees that we had to climb over to get it out.  It needed a little trimming when we got it set up, but turned out to be a pretty nice tree.  And then last night - the 19th - we saw that it is actually sprouting new little needles!  We have never had a tree do that!  Here I was worried that it would be dry and dropping needles like crazy before Christmas even came and instead it's alive and growing!  Very unusual to say the least!