Tree Hunting

In the past years, one of our traditions has been to go to the cabin and cut down our own tree for Christmas.  We’ve had many friends go up there with us to enjoy this tradition.  With everything that has been going on with Craig, that wasn’t an option this year.  Corinne was very adamant that we couldn’t put up an artificial tree.  I had started looking around to see if there was any where close that we could cut down our own.  That’s when the Jeff and Treasa Wilkinson called.  They came up last year to the cabin with us and we had a great time searching around the mountain for the perfect one.  As a gift to us they wanted to take us to get a tree.  Craig was still not doing well on Saturday from his chemo on Wednesday so I stayed home with him while the kids, along with the Wilkinson family, took off to find a tree for us this year at a Tree Farm in Alpine.  They said it was a lot easier then at the cabin.  We usually take the snowmobiles out looking and it is a long day searching for just the right one.  It’s a little different in the middle of the forest than on a farm where there is tree after tree planted years ago for you to come and look at and decide from.  I personally enjoy going out for the day with the snowmobiles in the 2+ feet of snow and shaking each tree looking for the perfect one, and we have a lot of great memories doing exactly that.  Craig and I received many messages on our phone with pictures of trees, some short and fat, and some about 2 feet tall, they were having a lot of fun making us worry about the kind of tree that they would bring home.  We ended up with a great tree in our living room, to bring us the Christmas spirit.  Thank you to the Wilkinson family for helping with that wonderful day.  Everyone had a lot of fun.

Our speakers today at church were great.  One of them talked about the growth rings of trees and how during times of stressful weather conditions or other bad growing conditions the rings are very close together, showing that the tree hasn’t had much good growth during that time.  I think our families growth rings might be a little narrow when looked back on during this time.  Corinne came home this week from being at college and stated that she was feeling a little out of place with what is going on in the home.  Wanting to help and do what she could to make things seem like normal but she didn’t know what to do.  That is something that we are all struggling with right now.  We want things to be normal, back to the “normal thing”; we really do realize that we are anything but normal.  Many of you have done many things to help us to lighten our load and we are very appreciative of those things.

Craig has turned the corner for this past week’s chemo and now we are in the rebuilding mood.  They give him a shot to help start to rebuild the cells for the next treatment.  He said the other day, “I feel like this chemo is killing me”.  I reminded him that sometimes we have to get knocked ALL the way down to be able to stand back up.  We hope that is exactly what the chemo is doing.