O Tannenbaum!

The Saturday after Thanksgiving I was on my way home from a 15 mile run with the Gov Cup group. It was a blustery day and as I approached my turn off of Skyline, I spotted a large pine branch blocking the north bound traffic. As I got closer, I realized that it wasn't just a downed branch, but rather a Christmas tree.

I stopped the truck and dragged the tree to the side of the road. Of course, I didn't want to be stealing the tree from some unfortunate family, so I waited by the side of the road for the next ten minutes, but the street was dead; nobody came by.

Woohoo - finders keepers! Free Tree for the Smith family! It needed a good hose down and the trunk was a little wonky, but otherwise, not a bad find. I think it must have fallen off one of the trucks from all the Christmas tree farms down here. Either that, or it really was some poor family's tree and they didn't come back in time to get it. I would feel a little bad about the latter, but what can I say now, except maybe, "Tie your tree down better next year, suckers!"

The kids were so excited we decorated it that afternoon - it was still dripping from its hose-down.
Megan and Liam had very different attitudes toward decorating the tree. I said the ugly ones should go in the back. Every ornament Liam pulled out he thought belonged in the back. Megan wanted all of hers in the front. Even when I would tell her it was an ugly one (I have a lot of ugly ones), Megan would say, "how about we hang it on the side?" So we didn't have much trouble decorating ALL sides of the tree.

Not too bad for free!