Do You Have A Public Restroom?

There is a good explanation to Olivia's look of uneasiness in this picture. Read on...

Think "tradition" and you usually conjure up the familiar images of birthday parties, holiday celebrations and the Nebraska football team running up the score on hapless opponents (uh, maybe not that last one anymore).

Anyway, it is a tradition of ours to venture out to some faraway field and pick our Christmas tree. And it always proves to be quite an adventure.

Out of the nine years we have been carrying on this tradition, at least half the time one of the girls has wet their pants. And more than half of the time the day we pick to go to the tree farm is a cold one.

But this year was different. With temperatures in the 50s, we knew we wouldn't be shivering while mom led us up and down the rows, aisle after aisle, looking for that "perfect" tree. Now you have to understand what mom considers to be a suitable Christmas tree. It cannot have the typical "Christmas tree" triangular shape ("Trees don't grow like that," she says) and it has to be fairly big ("We have a lot of ornaments, you know").

So the decision-making process normally leads to us sloshing through soft mud (or snow) until darkness — or until they chase us out of the place.

This year, mom's openmindedness to change gave way to a new tradition: Every other year, we will get mom a "Charlie Brown" christmas tree. Here is a picture of what we're talking about. This is "Bee Bee," our christmas tree from last year.

With that in mind, the process of choosing a tree went so much more smoothly. Except for one thing: shortly after we arrived, Olivia informed us that she "had to go potty."

Danielle quickly asked the tree farm owners if they had a public restroom. "No, ma'am," came the reply. Great.

But to Olivia's credit, there would be no wet pants this year. She bravely hung in there, patiently straining through 20 minutes of choosing, cutting and loading our tree.

And what a surprise we would have when we got it home. Suddenly, that "good-sized" tree that we posed for a picture beside had transformed itself into a monstrosity that was much taller — and wider — than we had anticipated.

One last notable memory from the trip to the tree farm: It started pouring rain just as we pulled out of the parking lot. Good timing. One wet tree when we got home...