December ... Again!

Here's Dad's truck without the shell, it must be brand new!

Time to head up to the mountains for our annual trek ...

Our goal:  Find the perfect Christmas Tree! 

Every year, we trudged up mountains and down into valleys

searching for just the right tree!

Looks like our after-tree stop was at Santa's Village.

We always tried to stop and see something else besides

Christmas trees.  Sometimes it was Marianne's Ice Cream

in Santa Cruz, home of the double cone! 

Christmas 1972 (I think)

Our tree - a better shot of it - with tinsel!!

Lori and David, looks like we're gonna open gifts real soon!

Dad and Buffy.  Mom's little town on the TV behind him.

Holiday Time Again!

"Autumn paints in colors that summer has never seen."

Don't you just love the magic of fall?

Sno-Cones anyone?

The rough idea for the machine was invented by Hasbro 

(then known as Hassenfeld Brothers) in the early 1960s. 

The Frosty Sno-Man Sno-Cone Machine spit out chunks of ice 

through Frosty’s gaping belly.

After kids stuffed cubes into the top of his head and turned the 

hand crank on the back, they could fill up a (small) cup and 

flavor it with the included sweetener.

Christmas bounty!  Great smile, David!

And our tree .... with plenty of tinsel, of course!

Wonderful Christmas

Ahh, the Holidays once again.

Here's our Christmas Tree, things must be good,

loads of presents!  (And always tinsel, of course!)

Such a big smile with her little baby doll..... 

Dad and David, one of my fav pictures

building with the Thing-a-ma-Jigs!

And I have to laugh, they built it on mom's

"Trim Twist Executive Exerciser" by Jack Lalanne

(I remember watching his TV show in black and white.)

And an oh so fun farm set! 

"Christmas waves a magic wand over this world,

and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful."

-Norman Vincent Peale

1960s Christmas

Growing up, we always had a fresh Christmas Tree

As the years progressed,

our trees looked a little better than this one!

And, of course, the ever present tinsel!

Every year, we took a photo in front of the tree

(I'm thinking I'll cover these posts in groups by decade)

This is 1965

Each year, the pile of presents becomes better and better.

Check out that old TV!

You can see the beginnings of Mom's "Little Town"

that, too, gets better and better each year.

I'm betting a few of the ornaments on this tree

are still among mom's treasured ornaments now!

We had family to share this Christmas with us.

Mom's sister and her family came out.

Mom shared that us girls moved in their room

and Marge and Jim and the boys shared us girls' room.

Luckily, the bedrooms were very large on Maude Ave!

Ornaments with history became 'my thing' as an adult, and

each year I purchased and dated some.  With old dates

and stories, each year they're unwrapped and put on a tree ...

Sometimes, it's like seeing an old familiar friend!

Christmas Trees

When my Dad got his GMC truck -- he was so happy, proud even! -- we did everything with it.  I'm not sure if it just evolved, or it was planned this way, but he put a shell on the back, and bought a pop-up tent trailer for all of our trips in the 70s and 80s.

Before he put the shell on, we rode in the back of the truck up Highway 17 to Santa Cruz.  Any of you who have driven it know it as a winding highway through mountainous terrain.  Back in the 70s it was 4 lanes, no divider, and a history of many, many crashes.  There are portions of the road that are steep, and the curves come upon a driver much faster than you realize if you've never driven this road before.  How we were allowed to ride in the back of a truck on this kind of road was surprising! 

Every December, usually the first weekend, we would make this trek up and over the mountain to trudge our way along a hillside looking for the perfect Christmas tree.  We always found one we thought we liked -- they weren't usually as perfect looking once we got it home, but decorated up and the "bad side" turned against the wall and it looked as perfect as it needed to be! 

We would saw the tree down, toss it in the back of the pickup and we'd climb in after it.  Sometimes, if the weather was cooperating, we'd stop in Santa Cruz to check out the beach, maybe get a cone at Marianne's Ice Cream!!