The Second Most Ghetto Christmas Tree Ever

The very most ghetto tree ever? Christmas 2001. It was way before kids and we had only a month before bought our house in the Philadelphia suburb of Lansdowne, PA. That September I had been laid off from my HR job with an airline and Keith was in his second year of med school. I'm sure we were broke and I'm fairly certain that was the first Christmas that I didn't get to be with family. We were just not feeling a lot of Christmas spirit because we had decided not to bother getting a tree that year. Sad, no?

Well, my dear friend Michelle (love ya M!) would have none of that Grinch-ness. She was determined that we would have a tree in our new house. She worked magic only like Michelle can do and--sure enough--found us a tree! We resisted but a day or two later, we found a big tattered box with green plastic "branches" sticking out from various holes. This tree was donated to us by our bishop's wife--and I'm sure we saved it from a Christmas at the garbage dump as she had recently upgraded her own tree and this was her castoff. Which probably means that this particular tree had been saved from more than one garbage dump encounter--considering half of the things anyone (including the bishop's wife) owned in Lansdowne, PA had been pulled off from someones curb waiting for a bulk trash pickup.

This, I must say, was the first FAKE tree in my life. I'm a tree snob when it comes to Christmas. I want the real smell, the needles all over the floor, the bonfire afterwards, etc. So when this tree arrived on my doorstep, I was totally offended by it's "fakeness". But we reluctantly set it up in our empty dining room. Michelle came over later with a bag of Christmas lights--another save from the garbage dump on our part. There were probably 6 or 7 strings of lights--a total of maybe 500 bulbs. I'm pretty sure only about 100 actually worked. This tree started out ghetto and was going downhill fast. We took out the tangled mass of lights and stuck them on the tree in the same tangled mass. We tried to stretch them around a bit for full coverage but it was mostly just a garland of electrical cords and burned out lights. Later I popped a bag of microwave popcorn and found a needle and thread to add to the ghetto-ness. After I munched on some of the popcorn, I ended up with about a 3 foot section of strung popcorn. That ended up as our only decoration draped on the pathetic tree. It was absolutely a Christmas tree tragedy. In the end, we spent Christmas morning at Michelle's anyway so the plastic tree-shaped-object never hosted our Christmas joy.

That was one pathetic, super ghetto tree. We threw it out to the curb as soon as possible. Maybe even Christmas night? It really was begging for the garbage dump (although, I wouldn't be surprised if someone else "discovered" it from our trash pile).

Fast forward a decade or so. We have had so many fantastic Christmas trees over the years. Some bought from grocery store parking lots, others hacked down with a saw in the forest. I'm no Grinch--Christmas is absolutely a magical time and I haul out our Christmas decorations the day after Thanksgiving every year and deck the halls with as many lights, ribbons and bells as I can manage.

But this year.....oh gosh, where do I start?

It's a long story and most of it can be blamed on our house in Kentucky that hasn't sold. The short version is that we have found ourselves living in a 2-bedroom townhouse, hoping, expecting, praying that our house will sell. We moved here in August thinking we would tough it out for a month or two MAX but it's clean and we didn't have to sign a long-term lease (because, you know, "as soon as the house sells"..........).

Five months later, here we are. All three kids share one bedroom and SO MANY of our things are deep, deep, deep down in our garage, never to be seen again until we move. Of course, when we moved here, Christmas seemed like a lifetime away so all the decorations were stored as far back as possible. Which, it turns out, means no Christmas decorations for us this year.

But I would not, could not be without a tree! We paid our $10 for a permit to find one in the forest. We hauled all the kids into the mountains and went in search of the best Charlie Brown sized Christmas tree we could find. Seriously, I was thinking maybe a table top tree would be all we could squeeze into our front room. We looked around for a while and found one that seemed ok (for a Charlie Brown tree, that is). Keith was just about to start sawing when at his feet he noticed a tree, already cut, laying on the ground. He picked it up and we all decided, what the heck? Let's save ourselves the trouble and just take it. (Notice a pattern here? Taking people's castoffs for Christmas trees never ends well for us.)

We tied the poor thing to our car and brought it home. Of course, we couldn't find our fancy Christmas tree stand to save our lives so Keith had to prop it upright with some nails and a couple scraps of wood. There's no way that poor thing will ever see a drop of water again. We brought the tree inside and scooted a couple of things aside to make room for it. It is literally squeezed next to the couch and it's choking out our beloved house plant (which, I'm just sayin, has been alive and well for 12 years!! TWELVE!!! Green. Thumb.).

Of course the dozen or so strings of lights we own will never see the light of this Christmas so I had to run to Target for help. I bought a measly two strings of lights--just so my kids would have enough to stoke their little imaginations. Then I told my kids to go nuts and decorate it however they wanted. We ended up with a couple of paper stars and a couple of little drawings that we put on strings and hung, plus a little box of bells that we ended up with at an ornament exchange recently. That's it. So. Pathetic.





Despite our ghetto tree, Santa is planning a nice stop at our house. Although, since we don't have a chimney, it's been determined that the fat man will be using our dryer vent.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

A few recent happenings

November was busy. Crazy busy. In the beginning of the month, I took the two littles to Utah for nearly two weeks and left Keith and Bennett at home. I got to have an amazing few days (kid free!!) with some of my dear friends on my first weekend there and spent the following weekend in St. George with my mom/sisters at Time Out For Women. Oh. My. Goodness.....having a few days (or in my case, eight) without kids is sort of make-your-head-explode awesome. I LOVED it! Thanks mom and dad for taking care of my kids while I played! In so many ways, it recharged me. What a blast.

Here's what else we've been up to:

The kids had fun with Grandpa while I was out partying:


My brother won the election and is now the mayor of Ogden:


After I got home from my trip, Keith left for Kentucky to work on the house (again--enough already!!!). But he did fit in a trail marathon with a good friend:


And to top off the month, we had the greatest Thanksgiving EVER. Thanks to my sister, she hooked us up with an amazing beach house. Enjoying a few days with my sister, eating turkey, pie and looking at this view gives feelings of Thanksgiving like I've never known:



And now, is it Christmas already???

Before I'm an entire holiday behind....

Happy Thanksgiving from Captain America, Purple Butterfly, and Dr. Card!

Bizz Johnson

Who/what/where is Bizz Johnson? So glad you asked.

It starts here:

Home of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Big Blue Ox. The real deal.

The Bizz Johnson trail is an unfortunate name for an absolutely fantastic rail trail near Susanville, CA (a quick two hour jaunt from our casa). Someone had given Keith the lowdown on it and we decided to try it out for ourselves last weekend. We've done a couple of rail trails and we LOVE them. Since they are old rail beds converted to hiking/biking trails, they are nice and wide with a max 3% grade and when you get a good trail starting in the mountains, they are pretty much downhill the whole way. Beyond cool.

This trail is slightly less traveled than others we have done where you can hire a shuttle to take you to the top and you ride to your car. In this case, we found that a city bus would get us pretty close and for $6 in bus fare, ended up working out perfectly. We got dropped off at a gas station across the street from Paul and Babe and rode a couple miles of pavement to get us to the start of the trail. Bennett rode his own bike and we pulled the two littles in the trailer.

The trail is about 27 miles and we enjoyed every minute of it. And here's the awesomest part--my little six year old Bennett rode all 27 miles by himself! My knees were feeling a little creaky the next day and it didn't phase him one bit. What a champ!



Then we turned onto the dirt and into the trees. The fall colors were AMAZING.


We crossed a ton of bridges and went through a couple of dark tunnels.






It was an absolutely perfect day.

You know we're obsessed with real estate when....

The other day I was riding my bike with the kids in the trailer on our way to the park. I took a little detour past a house Keith and I had been drooling over online. When we got to the house, I asked Leah to jump out of the bike trailer and get one of the sales flyers.

She grabbed a flyer out of the box, took a minute looking it over and exclaimed, "Two kitchens, one bath!"

Twin Lakes to Tuolomne

We did this trip a few weeks ago--for my birthday, actually. (A birthday near Labor Day rules!!)

We went south to Twin Lakes, near Bridgeport, CA. We camped in an pretty lame campground but in the most spectacular setting. We spent my birthday playing at Upper Twin Lake and going on a fun hike to some gorgeous waterfalls.


Isn't this awesome? The kid is totally passed out.

But he was much happier after a little nap!


In case you were wondering, YES, my kids are awesome hikers. This was a pretty steep hike and we went about 3 or 4 miles round trip. Although licorice helps a lot. And tootsie rolls.



Of course, as I've said before, no Card family trip is complete without a Keith-style adventure thrown in for fun. He got up the next morning (3:30 am start--no bears greeting him this time) and started hiking. We picked him up at 9 pm that night about 28 miles away in Tuolomne Meadows. Keith did a traverse across the Sierras and went over 7 mountain passes, around numerous mountain lakes and streams, across giant boulder fields, and otherwise was alone in the wilderness picking a route across the mountains to find us.

See?








While Keith was hiking, the kids and I went to the Labor Day festival in Bridgeport. Leah and Bryce were a little freaked out by Smokey but Bennett was totally game.



And the picture of the week belongs to our slightly unsteady little camper. We call it "faceplant".

The Last Summer Vacation

I'm about to do a photo dump of all our summer fun. Watch out. It's coming.

But I'll probably work backwards and start with the most recent. This was from the aforementioned trip that got us home the day before school started. There's a good story in here...stick with me.

We woke the kids up early (4 or 5 am?) and drove to Tuolomne Meadows (for those who might not know, it's the eastern-most section of Yosemite National Park). We knew we needed to get there early in order to get a campsite since we didn't have reservations. Our plan worked like a charm and we got a spot without a problem (that place is crowded!). We had a few hours to kill while we were on the campsite waiting list so we did a couple mile hike up Lembert dome.
The summit blob! It's not quite as steep and dangerous as the picture makes it seem. And even if it was a 500 foot drop off, I wouldn't admit that here. Grandma reads this blog, you know. :)


Despite the crowds, Tuolomne is jaw-droppingly beautiful. Being in a place like this can make any loser feel like life is worth living. I speak from experience on this. :)


Camping with kids is the dirtiest, funnest thing ever. Seriously, we have a perma-ring around the tub from these grubbies.



The next day, we took our time and headed south past Bishop to a little town called Lone Pine. Then we hooked a right and headed up a steep mountainside as far as the road would take us. We found ourselves in Whitney Portal--the outpost/base camp for Mt. Whitney, the highest mountain in the lower 48 (14,505'). In addition to being the starting point for climbers, there is a gorgeous campground with a cold mountain stream, a big waterfall, a fishing hole, and the Whitney Portal Store, a tiny little place with legendary burgers and fries.

Keith, of course, had a plan to enjoy more than the incredible scenery of the campground. He was there to bag a peak. (As you'll soon learn, any vacation of ours is likely to have a mountaineering/crazy-Keith-adventure thrown in for good measure.) His plan was not to follow the leader for the bragging rights of Mt. Whitney. Instead, he picked the solitude of Mt. Russell (14,094') which is right next door to Whitney and didn't involve a lottery for the chance to climb it.

So the next morning, Keith got an alpine start to his day (3 am) and woke up to this little fella wandering our campsite.

He was harmlessly sniffing around our bear box but he gave Keith a little scare! And then off Keith went to climb the mountain.

MEANWHILE, the kids and I slept in and tried to kill as much time as possible. Keith was planning to be gone until at least 3 pm so I had a bunch of time on my hands with 3 little kids. After breakfast (I groaned when I realized it was only 8:30), we decided to hike from our campsite to check out the waterfall and get some treats at the store. It was a steep little hike, probably nearly a mile with all the switchbacks. When we got to the top, we took a rest near the fishing pond and only a couple minutes later, a fish & game truck drove up and dumped a fresh load of fish in it.

Shortly after, a dad and his son came out of the store with their fishing poles and starting catching fish. Those new fish were biting like crazy! They were casting without bait and reeling in a fish every time. Leah and Bennett, of course, were totally enthralled. The dad and the son (who was around Bennett's age) were happy to give L & B turns with their rods. I couldn't believe how many fish they were catching! I was busy trying to keep Bryce from jumping into the water and becoming a fish too.

A few minutes later, I heard an awful scream. I looked up and saw Bennett freaking out. I had wandered a few yards away with the baby and I picked him up and ran to see what was going on. The fishing dad beat me to it and I could tell something was really wrong. I got there to find two prongs of a fishing hook sunk deep in Bennett's finger. The fishing dad told us to go into the store for help. Inside, there was an older man working the counter. He took one look at the finger and told us we needed to get to a doctor.

Really? Sooo not what I wanted to hear. They explained how I could find a clinic in town ( a very small town) to avoid going to the ER (of a tiny hospital) and offered to take me there. I declined but did have them give me a ride back to my car at the campground. So, the kids and I took off down the mountain in search of a doctor to remove the fish hook, while my doctor husband was up smelling the flowers in the high country.



The doctor ended up being a nice hippie sort of guy who was pretty good with fish hooks. He gave Bennett a numbing shot and took a minute to wrangle the hooks out.

We now have a nice fishing hook in a jar as a souvenir. Incidentally it was a brand new hook. Used only once--just not on a fish.

By the way, I'm noticing a bad trend here. Bennett was wearing the same shirt (his favorite) for his doctor visit earlier this summer. Excuse me while I go burn that shirt now....

Since we found ourselves in town instead of at the campground like we had planned, we spent the rest of the day at the city park. It ended up being a great way to spend our day, if not for the emergency that got us there.

Meanwhile, Keith was enjoying this:











See? He really was smelling flowers!

After we were all safely reunited, we went back to the Whitney Portal Store for the legendary burgers and fries. When we walked in, the older guy at the counter (who turned out to be the owner) immediately recognized us and made Bennett tell him all about his trip to the doctor. When he was done telling his story, the guy insisted on treating us all to dinner (which rocked because those burgers are $10 each!) and he autographed a book for Bennett. Who knew the guy was an author? In the end, we ended up getting more in burgers, fries and books than we had paid the doctor for the mini-surgery. And they treated Bennett like a celebrity!

Although I could definitely have done without a trip to the doctor that day, I think that ended up being the best part about the trip for Bennett--in hindsight, of course.