Our Christmas Twigs

Christmas season is here, and with it's spirit of giving brings a frost in the air and warmth in a mug of hot chocolate. It also brings that special time when families either drag out their plastic Christmas tree from the attic or drive to the mountains to cut one down themselves. Jeff and I decided (OK, I decided) that even though we were only going to be here in Idaho for a short time this Christmas season that we (I) wanted to have a tree. You can't get presents if you don't have a tree. So, on our day off we donned our most attractive attire (gym clothes and big boots) and we headed out to the desert. I was a little confused as to why we were headed this way, the desert in Idaho is just sagebrush and large rocks. I said to him, "Jeff, shouldn't we be driving the other way?" And I pointed towards the mountains in the opposite direction. "I don't know that I've ever seen a tree out here." In an assuring and knowledgeable voice he told me there were plenty of trees by the river, and that's where we were headed. 200 miles later into the desert we did indeed find the river. However, it was surrounded by smelly rocks, frozen fish, abandoned deer hunt seats, tall oak trees and many, many dead bushes. "Uh, Jeff, I don't really think we are going to find a tree out here." I tried to explain that pine trees normally grew towards the mountains and not our desert wood area. I was still confused. We wandered around and threw a rock or two. Jeff suggested we go farther into the wooded area and maybe we'd find something. "Here we go!!!" He exclaimed as we walked towards a dead bush that resembled what a pine tree might have looked like if it had been dead for a couple years. "This one is GREAT!" I pretended to be enthusiastic. "Wow Jeff! A dead bush!!!" I think he got the hint as we moved on to find something that wasn't brown and dead.

Long story short it was our only chance to find a tree and our biggest success was a not-totally-dead bush full of thorns. We were out of time, and not wanting to return empty handed we improvised. We collected the prettiest red twigs we could find and headed back to the Burgbizzle.

Jeff and I are proud to present our Christmas Twigs.

Merry Christmas, kids.