When Grandmas Was A Little Girl - #23

Story #23 - Christmas tree cutting and hot chocolate-Cloudcroft
Do you like to go and pick out your family Christmas tree? Do you get all excited?

When I was growing up we drove up to Cloudcroft, about half an hour away, and would go cut down our Christmas tree. My dad had a friend who lived up in Cloudcroft and he would invite our family up to cut our Christmas tree. We always looked forward to this special trip! I can’t remember my dad’s friend’s first name. I only remember them as Mr. and Mrs. Mitchell. My mom would have us all bundle up in warm clothes and she would bring blankets and several thermoses of hot chocolate. Most of the time when we made the trip there was snow on the ground. Mr. Mitchell had a tree rope that hung from a tall fir tree not too far from his house. You could swing out far and it was so much fun! His home was on a hillside so there was a slope to the ground. You would hang onto the thick rope and then push off from the ground and swing out over the slope and then come back to the to the top of the mound of ground where you pushed off. We would then tramp through the snow up into the forest to find just the ‘perfect tree.’ My brother Geoffrey was not afraid of heights and he always looked for the best treetop. Then he or Douglas would climb up with the saw and cut the treetop off. They always made sure it was at least six feet tall! My mom would also have us cut sugar pine branches. She loved to decorate with the branches of long sugar pine.

One year when we went to get our tree from the Mitchells, it was really cold and the snow was deep and hard to tramp through. The snow came up to our knees. My dad and brothers finally found a suitable tree. Doug climbed up the tree and cut off the treetop. It was so cold; he just fell out of the tree onto the snow. He was so cold. He tried to warm up with hot cocoa but he didn’t really warm up until we got home and he had a hot bath!

My mom loved to decorate and she was very artistic and creative. She would put the branch swags of sugar pine on the top of the fireplace mantel. It was always so pretty. She would add pine cones to it as well. One year she bought several rolls of red velvet wrapping paper and covered the living room doors and used gold Christmas decorations and made a beautiful door arrangement onto the red velvet doors. It was beautiful! My mom would also have centerpieces on the coffee table in the family room. She always made it look so pretty at Christmas time.

When your grandpa and I lived in Hawaii while my kids were young I liked to decorate my front door with wrapping paper and a wreath and decorate the wreath. Our front door always looked pretty. I put lots of strings of small clear white Christmas lights under the edge of the overhang of the roof. I would put garland around the mailbox and post and would put a big red velvet bow on top of the mailbox. I had to throw the garland away every year because the dogs that walked by liked to ‘mark’ the mailbox post! We had Areca Palms along the side of the garage. They grew quite bushy. I intertwined lots of strings of clear white Christmas lights in those. When the wind blew softy the palm branches swayed so gracefully and the little clear white lights looked so beautiful. People that lived in Aikahi Park, where we lived, would walk by at night and always loved our decorations. I guess I took after my mom I that I love to decorate for Christmas!

(This story should be #23- I posted one a few days ago as #23 about a 'finitisimal bite' and that should have been story #24-oops. I corrected that one as story #24-not that anybody would know the difference!)