Church and Christmas Trees

Since I had the day off from working at the YMCA I went to church.  I haven't been to confession in months so I didn't enter the nave or stay for the anaphora or what follows, but it was still good to be there.




After I left church I went and picked up my boys and went into the hills of the Santa Cruz Range to get a Christmas tree. We went again to the Tobacco Ranch Christmas Tree Farm this year.  It is the same place we went last year. But this year we saw that they have planted about an acre of wine grapes.  There is no stopping money.  I fear that wine grapes will displace all other crops in California.

It took a while for the boys to agree on a tree to fell (I mentioned Jacob and Esau to them but they didn't know what I was talking about.  I thought they knew those Biblical brothers but I was wrong.  Oh, my time to teach these boys is running out and I have so much left to do!  How will I find the time??!!) but eventually they did.  We tied it to the roof of the car (Thank you, Air Assault School knot tying skills!) and drove it down the mountain.  On the way back to their house I stopped at a market and I bought potatoes, a chicken, and Brussels sprouts to make the boys for supper.  While the chicken was baking we trimmed the tree. 


Athanasia came home while we were still working, and she finished supper.  We ate together, then I hung a few more ornaments in the windows, hung the chocolate ornaments on the walls (not to be taken down and consumed until all the decorations are taken down on Twelfth Night), hung the mistletoe over the door, and left.