Welcome! Merry Holidays! Happy late Christmas! This week has been a super-duper crazy week for me and my family. From crazy Christmas tree stories to waking up at 6am to look for presents. This story will be (at least to me) one to remember.
It all started when my older sister came home last Tuesday on the 15th. She flew home from Philadelphia. Since my sister had just flown from New England, we delayed our annual trip to Espe’s Tree Farm to pick our Christmas tree by a couple of days.
Before we left for the tree farm we had a slight complication with winter gear because this was the first time we were all going to need our full gear since last January. But after the small hold up, we were well on our way. The tree farm was about 30 minutes away, so we listened to an old CD of kids' folk songs on the way. I tried to take some nice pictures, but when there are 7 people in a car, it can be hard to capture everyone's attention.
Once we got to the tree farm, the owners led us to an ATV with a sled trailer and gave my dad directions to the type of tree that my dad wanted to get. (NOTICE: My 5-year-old little brother was curious about how the ATV worked.)
Naturally, every year, my older brother and I have some kind of surfing-on-the-sled competition, which is pretty dangerous, but then again, we don’t have an ATV at our house, so when we have the opportunity to ride an ATV, we make the most of it.
When we got to the spot with the Norway pines, we spent some time figuring out exactly which tree we were going to pick. As you probably can guess, my brother and I saw an opportunity to play some games. What games you might ask? Well, one involved me jumping into the sled while my brother tried to drive away on the ATV; another was just a simple really, really fast loop around the tree farm. And while all of this was happening, my little brother was watching carefully. Specifically on how to make the vehicle go.
Eventually, my dad got angry and made my brother and me get off the four-wheeler and help with cutting the selected tree down. So while all of us were trying to cut down the tree, a curious little boy hopped onto the four-wheeler. When my older sister saw that he had gotten on to the ATV, “as a joke” she told him to drive it. We were just about to put the tree on the sled when all of a sudden: VROOOOOOOOOM!! The ATV lunged forward as my brother squeezed the handle! Being my usual self, I yelled “Go, go!” but then I realized that was a mistake. My little brother laughed and kept driving till he realized that he didn’t know how to control the vehicle. At this point, the whole family was telling him to stop and he got pretty scared and was holding down the gas lever thingy out of pure shock.
After nearly running over a little tree, my brother fell off. The four-wheeler rolled to a stop right in front of one of the larger trees in the row. My parents tried to figure out what had just happened, and it turned out that all of us kids had encouraged our littlest brother to drive the four-wheeler. And yes...one of them was me. “As a joke.” While we were riding back to the main area, we all made a family decision to say nothing of what happened until after we left to go home.
After we got back to the main area, we got served hot chocolate, marshmallows and cookies (outside obviously). Once we got home we put the tree in our detached garage to let it recover from being cut down.
The next few days were just your normal school days. On the 24th, I helped my dad set up the tree in our house, my mom baked fish, I hung up stockings with my sister, and best of all, we had probably the best Christmas dinner we’ve had in a while. Oh and we also ate tons of cookies. That night, the older ones and I watched The Fast and the Furious as a finale for the night. Also that night, my little sister fell asleep on the couch in the living room while waiting to be the first to see the presents.
The next morning, I woke up in my dark room, confused as to why I woke up. I was super tired, and I was going to try to fall asleep when a dark shape entered the room.
“David! There are presents under the tree!”
I sighed in relief, as I realized that it was my little sister. I grudgingly got out of bed and walked to the living room. Sure enough, there were about 25 presents under our tree. I walked back to my room to check the time, and when I saw that it was only about 6 in the morning, I told her I would come back to the tree at around 8. She came back later around 7:45 so I decided to get up. I took some pictures of the tree and the presents while they were still in their untouched state. I knew that in the coming minutes they would get dismantled and separated into piles. (By me. I dismantled and separated the presents into piles which my older brother didn't like and made me put them all back under the tree.)
Eventually, everyone got out of bed and after a ton of waiting, we all opened our presents. My little brother got a Connect 4 game and the entire family played that. My mom had a failed cranberry pie attempt, but once it was finally finished, it was good.
Christmas day at our house is usually a lounge-around-do-nothing day. While I was writing the bulk of the post, everyone else watched Soul which is a Disney movie that came out on the 25th. And again as a finale, the big kids watched 2 Fast 2 Furious, the second movie in the Fast & Furious series.
I hope you all have a wonderful day, and I will see you soon.
David
AKA, WAKWIR (Wannaskan Almanc Kid Writer-in-Residence)
On This Day
Remembering You
Kim
Great job of storytelling David! I hope some other family stories will be told by your perspective soon!
ReplyDeleteLove the Sedaris quote. So true!
ReplyDeleteDavid, thanks for the great story. I get excited when I see you are writing in a post.
Great story telling job- you kept a brisk pace for the readers as well as good descriptive passages adding in bits of humor throughout.
ReplyDeleteHappy New Year to you and your family.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the review of Fast & Furious: the Christmas Tree Farm.
It'll be the 9th in the F&F series. LOL! :)
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