Michigan Weather and Weekend Fun

It was a weird weather weekend here in MI. Saturday was a mild snow storm. It lasted about 3 hours, and consisted of fine dry snow blowing around like mad, then sleet that froze, then rain which melted the frozen sleet and created an icy slush mess for a few hours. The next day it rained. And then it poured. And then it poured even harder. And Sunday night it snowed again, creating an icy mess once more. Yup, welcome to Michigan weather!

End of Snowman
Before all of that mess, it was a warm 32 degrees and the girls went out to play. Our snowman from Thanksgiving, now a week old, was barely surviving the warm sunshine and low thirty degree days, and its melting carcass created quite an interesting play thing for the girls. They climbed it, kicked it, beat it with sticks, and finally managed to knock the head off. All our hard work last week was now turned into a punching bag a-la the old Bozo toys from the 60's.

Charlie Brown Xmas Tree

On Sunday we decided to get our Christmas Tree. Bill found a place on the Internet where we could chop our own tree. I'm not sure why he chose this place, but it turned out to be a good location for our situation. And our timing was awesome! Really, it was.

So, growing up (bear with me, this is relevant) I lived near our local grainery. About 10yrs ago the family that owned the grainery sold the business and moved out of their historical home, building a new home down the road and a bit closer to my parents place. They eventually decided to plant trees on their wide open land, and now sell Christmas trees. So here is the funny part, the man that owned the place is named Charlie Braun (pronounced "brown.") Unbeknown to Bill, he chose the Charlie Brown Christmas Tree Farm; I have always wanted to get a tree from Braun's U-Cut Trees, just to say I have a Charlie Brown Christmas Tree. Now I can!

And here is the Michigan weather part. We set off around 11am to get the tree. The girls were all excited to choose and cut a tree. We arrived at the farm and grabbed the saw and little wagons they provide for you and trotted off the slippery icy dirt paths in search of the perfect tree. Then it started to rain a bit. It wasn't too cold, and it wasn't raining too hard, so we were OK with a light rain, and felt no pressure to hurry up and find the right tree. Soon we found just the right tree, and with a few sawings it was down and loaded up to go. Just in time too, because the rain was picking up a bit. Even my camera had a few rain drops on it now.

By the time we (err, they, since the kids gladly took care of transporting the tree) got to the booth to pay for it, it was raining pretty good, and we were all fairly wet. Can you see the puddle above? Remember, it is Dec. and cold too! Anyway, we gave the tree to a young man to shake off and wrap, then went into the little makeshift office building and, BLAM, it started to dump water from the sky. We paid, and waited a few minutes under the office's little porch area. La la la la; now we are bored. So we go under one of the tents (set up to block snow and wind) and gathered there to wait out the rain. Now it has been pouring very hard for 10 minutes. No let up at all. OK, we begin to assess our options, because we still have to walk to our car with the tree and put it inside. hmmmm, nope, not going to attempt yet. We wait some more. But after another 5 minutes the girls are antsy, and we think maybe it has let up a tad. (that was us trying to justify, actually. It was still a solid sheet of rain.) So off we went, dashing about in the rain and trying to doge the now lake size puddles that were growing on top of the sheet of ice on the ground.

In the end we got soaked. So being only about three miles from my parents house, we made a small detour to visit the drier! Thanks Nanna and Poppa! And we are going to have a great Charlie Brown Christmas this year!