I want to have traditions for our family, especially around Christmas. However, I didn’t intend for our yearly Christmas tree hunt to be traditionally filled with bloopers. Last year we had a memorable experience. I thought this year would be quiet. Yeah…

We decided to go to a local guy who has a small Christmas tree farm to have a fresh tree. My sister-in-law decided to tag along with us and pick up one as well. We made quite an entrance with 7 kids between us all.

She quickly found a tree and her teenager cut it down. I started to pull on my leather work gloves, which I had grabbed from my back porch before leaving. I got the right glove mostly on when I felt a prick in the space between my index and middle finger. Huh. Must have a needle in it or something. Except the sharp pain started getting worse.

I yanked the glove off. A wiggling wasp fell out.

So THAT was the culprit. Darn thing trying to get warm. I hope it froze out there.

Well, if that was our excitement for the day, it wasn’t bad (as I write 2 days later with my finger still swollen). I made sure to shake my gloves out, then found our own tree and did my best Paul Bunyan.

The problem was how to get home. I had planned on putting the tree on my van’s roof. My sister-in-law had brought her Expedition with a travel case on top. She didn’t really want needles in her vehicle. As her teenaged son wondered why they hadn’t brought his truck, I confidently said we could put both on top of my Caravan. After fighting bungee cords and pine needles, we were ready.

For trouble.

It is about a 5 mile trip on the highway back into town. I drove slowly, since my boys expressed concern that the trees might fall off. As Dads do, I reassured them that it wouldn’t happen…

Hey, was that a couple of Christmas trees that landed in the middle of the road?

Yep, our trees did a nice bounce off the pavement. We both pulled over, and thankfully there wasn’t much traffic as my niece and nephew jumped in the road right away. Also, I was impressed as our trees weren’t reduced to kindling. They relented and shoved their slippery spruce in the back of the Expedition, as I firmly lashed ours back to the van. We all managed to arrive at home without further excitement.

So far.