Sending Our Deaf Kids Into the Woods

We drove up into the mountains to chop down our Christmas tree this past weekend. It may seem a bit early for that sort of thing, but we realized that someone in the family is busy for the next several weekends, so rather than risk not being able to go up together, we headed up on Saturday.

Our family is divided on when Christmas music should be played....some of us feel that Christmas music is only appropriate after Thanksgiving. Other family members welcome Christmas music anytime. Chance feels that after Thanksgiving is appropriate, and Ammon likes it anytime. So on our hour drive up to the mountains, there was much discussion about what kind of music we should be listening to.

We didn't head to our regular spot that we usually go to. We decided to try a new area. It was beautiful. Mountain air, green pines stretching up on either side and family. It was a good mix.
The weather was not very cold and hiking through the trees we found a little bit of snow, but not too much, which is good because one of the kids forgot their snow boots.

Since we were new to the area, and we had to cut down a tree that was at least 200 feet off of the road, we decided that we should send Chance up ahead to scout out the trees and see if the kind we needed was present. There is one kind of tree that we are allowed to cut down, so we have to ensure that we know what we are getting. It is a sub alpine fir and it is mixed in with other kinds of trees across the mountain.

After we pulled off and parked the car, we pulled on our coats, gloves and boots. Chance and Ammon headed off and disappeared into the tree line where they quickly disappeared from view. It was at that moment that we realized that we had just sent our two deafies into the mountains and that it may be hard for them to hear us when we called. A bit funny how you think about these things after the fact.
Thankfully, Ammon found animal tracks and started yelling excitedly so we knew right where the two of them were and could hike up to them.

Chance brought his hatchet that he got at the mountain man rendezvous this past summer, and between that and the saw, getting our tree was fairly easy. We all took turns and Chance got to finish the job with his hatchet and call timber.

So now, our Christmas tree is sitting in our garage in a bucket of water. It needs to acclimate for a few days. Sometimes we have been a bit late in getting our Christmas tree up. Not this year! We'll have our tree up and ready by Thanksgiving.

Thankfully those mountain trees last for two months inside.