Yesterday, December 22, we went out with the family to cut down Christmas trees! I had been to Christmas tree farms before with my family but had never just pulled off the side of the road, hiked a bit and picked one out!
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| The view of Nordfjord from our front window. |
We were quite the tour of people with the various families picking out which tree would best fit their homes.
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| Walking along the road to the starting spot. |
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| Alv, the patriarch, suggests where to search for the best trees. |
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| Family meeting in the woods! |
Svein Arild and I stumbled across ours relatively quickly *and* spotted a great spot for a cache nearby so look for that cache on geocaching.com in the next week or so! Svein Arild was quite the gentleman and let me do the honors of cutting the tree down myself!
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| Svein Arild and our tree! |
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| Chop chop chop! Or, rather, saw, saw, saw! |
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| I am a lumberjack and I'm okay! |
(Side note: Svein Arild and I are wearing our Christmas presents from my parents. They are called Ribz and are packs designed for hiking that distribute the weight evenly and keep everything handy. They are very practical and comfortable...they just look a little funny :) Thanks, Mom and Dad, for the packs! We will definitely use them on our caching expeditions!!)
Since we were done with selecting our tree we decided to stay along the road and wait for the rest as they ventured down the mountain. So I played around with my camera...
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| Crystals in the snow. |
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| Weeping rocks. |
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| Really sad weeping rocks. |
Then I got a spark of "genius" and decided to put my camera on a ten second timer and put it on the ledges behind the ice in the wall of weeping rocks. Here are my two favorite shots...
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| What the rocks see behind the tears. |
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| We were having a little too much fun with this! |
We were walking back to the car with the tree and our neighbor, Oddvin, stopped to say hello and congratulate us on Paper Day!
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| A neighborly greeting! |
After cutting down the Christmas trees, it is tradition for the Bergsets to gather around a campfire to roast hotdogs and sip hot cocoa or warm juice. The roasting sticks were made years ago and they just use the same ones every year.
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| Warming by the fire. |
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| Mmm grill pølser! |
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| A nice family gathering! |
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| Most of the family. |
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| We balanced the tree on the trunk of the car all the way back to Nylendene! It only almost fell once. |
I decided to warm up by taking a shower before heading over to GOBU for the juletregraut, a "Christmas Tree Porridge." It was a delicious rice porridge which you top with sugar, cinnamon, raisins (if you're not me) and butter.
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| Bowls awaiting the juletregraut! |
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| Also served alongside the porridge were some salt-cured hams and sausages. |
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| Porridge coma! We were so full! |
After a lovely evening with the family we went home and crashed. Poor Svein Arild is sick as a dog so he has been trying to get better today. But he did take some time from resting to help make some Christmas goodies and to decorate the tree we cut down yesterday!
What better way to decorate than with the Carpenter's Christmas Portrait album playing in the background, some apple cinnamon tea and cookies made by Agnete and Gunnhild! I brought some ornaments from home (though I left most of them in Branson) and we used the popcorn chains we made the other day as garlands!
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| Mmmm tea and cookies! |
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| Our first Christmas tree! |
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| Our first Christmas ornament looks like Nylendene and has a charm that reads "December 21, 2012: A day to remember" |
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| A felt ornament made by my great-grandmother Elsie, or as we called her, Mimi. |
We are now enjoying "Home Alone" playing on Norwegian cable and wrapping Christmas presents! The next couple days are going to be very busy so I'm not anticipating any posts until after Christmas.
From both of us here at Nylendene, we wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
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