Weekend wonders

 Saturday was a big day.  The first train ride for the girls, and we were on our way to Chicago on a special mission. 

The girls were troopers from the first.  The excite-o-meter dial was moving wildly.

 But there were glitches.  The train was an hour late in leaving our station and a few...a very few miles outside Chicago there was a glitch in a bridge sensor and we were stopped for another hour and a half.  Two and a half hours behind schedule and by now, the only thing that made sense was a little Chardonnay.

 After begging and cajoling, exactly five minutes from Union Station they finally fell asleep.  Five minutes.

  Destination:  American Girl Store!

 It was sensory overload. There was so much to see, it was so hard! I never saw such crowds....oh, wait, yes I have.  New Year's Eve at Times Square. 

 By the time we left this one was way past her shelf life.  She would have fallen asleep standing up.

 And after no delays coming home, we got off the train and discovered it had snowed on this side of Lake Michigan and the girls couldn't run in it, or eat it fast enough.

 Next day, Patient Husband and I went hunting.  There have always been rules about our Christmas tree.  When the kids were growing up the main rule was the top of the tree had to touch the ceiling.  Lisa would carry along a piece of string that she measured by standing on a chair and letting a ball of string drop to the floor while she held it at ceiling.  We would cut it and take the string with us. Somehow that system always failed.  We always found a tree, measured the string and yet had to cut off at least a foot when we got home.  In this house we don't use a string.  It depends on how far we have to hold our head back to determine if it's tall enough.  This house has higher ceilings and it really doesn't matter how tall.

 PH is getting too old for this.  We are discussing a small chain saw for future years.

 But this is what I love.  The gift wrap at the end.  We don't have a truck and PH is way, way to trusting of tying things to the top of the car and expecting one ribbon tied in a bow to hold it on.  We have stories.

 So the baler is the important thing for me.  The tree goes in like this......

 and ...

 comes out like this!!  Oh so worth it.

 Now, for the really important part.  We have one of those stands with a spike in the bowl and we need to have a hole drilled in the trunk so the tree can sit nicely on the spike and not ever fall over.  We have stories.

See the drill bit at the bottom?  Up it goes...     Love this thing.