Hunting the Wild Tree (s)

Some people call our beautiful wild Christmas trees 'Charlie Brown Trees". We think they're the opposite: totally beautiful, naturally-formed, healthy trees -- just the way healthy natural trees really look. And plus... because they are not pruned and shaped like farmed trees, they have room between the branches for ornaments, gifts, and candles. :-) This is how we always have it.

For the second year in a row our whole Bowen family got our trees from the neighbours' field, which seems to have sprouted its own little fir-forest. They're planning to clear this tiny forest again, so we're happy to take the loveliest fated trees off their hands. This year the kids suddenly took the notion to cut themselves mini-trees... and they did! They're both cedars, and Tali's is the naturally-deformed 'Dr. Suess' tree. They even completed them with self-made paper ornaments, and are extremely proud.

Then, after having decorated, we had a little eclipse party with Uncle Adrian, lit the big tree, and sung some carols together. This year was the first in over 500 when a full lunar eclipse happened on the winter solstice -- the concurrence of two returning-of-light events was too much not to celebrate! Our new-to-us (free) telescope unfortunately has a few broken parts, and was useless anyway with the heavy cloud-cover. (One day it will be great!!) This was also the first year that Rhiannon could read along in a carol book. It was hard to get her to stop! She was still loudly singing songs from the book at 1am when we gave up trying to see the eclipse through the clouds and headed back in to bed!

As usual, click to enlarge any of these you want to, and press back to return here.
(PS: That beautiful braided crown on Rhiannon was made Auntie Ginger!)