I'm still not up to the present year, I'm afraid. Just remembering the trips back home from school along the lakefront last year. Riding the kids home from school is one of my favorite things. With spring in full bloom we weren't in a big rush to get home.

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Some of my fondest childhood memories are of getting the Christmas tree. We almost always went into the mountains to cut one down. One year all six of us piled into the front of our 66 Chevy truck for the trip. Another year my dad let us pick the tallest tree we could find. A tree trimmer by trade, he climbed up a hundred feet or so and cut the top off the tree. Some years we hiked for what seemed like a mile through the woods to try to find the perfect tree. I don't think the trees we found were any better than the ones right next to our truck, but this was more about the adventure than the tree. I'm not sure if we ever got a tree that actually fit in our house. Most years we'd have to lop off another three feet or so to get it to work. Of course we could have measured it in the mountains, but getting a tree that was too big became part of the yearly ritual.

This year I decided it was high time that we introduced an element of the ridiculous into our trip to get the Christmas tree. We didn't make it to the mountains, but we did manage to strap a hefty tree on top of our cargo bike, which we managed to walk home without crashing (barely). The kids were very proud of their effort.

I took this picture with my phone before we started our journey home. It was almost dark so the image was pretty noisy. I tried to use this to my advantage when processing it. With the old building in the background and no cars in sight, I thought the picture looked like it might have been taken years ago. I hope that years from now our children will come across this picture and remember our Christmas tree adventure.

Feel free to share your own traditions in the comments section. It's fun to hear about other people's traditions, particularly when they involve a bit of silliness.

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