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What could go wrong?

By
Hannah Gross, NLJ Correspondent

“TIMBER!” was the resonating shout on the Friday after Thanksgiving as many families, including my own, headed into the forest to chop down a tree and kick off the Christmas season.
I absolutely love Christmas — it is truly the most wonderful time of the year, but I am of the opinion that Christmas doesn’t start until the day after Thanksgiving. However, as soon as we all come out of our food coma, I’m ready to crank up the Christmas music and put out the decorations. 
Every year, we have a tradition with several family friends to go up by Mallo on Black Friday and hunt for
the not-so-perfect Christmas tree, followed by a campfire lunch and hours of football in the snow. I think I might enjoy it more than Christmas Day itself. 
With plans to leave in January for a 10-month mission trip in Mexico, I was especially looking forward to it this year. But things did not happen as expected.
To start off, my brother was hit with a flu bug on Wednesday, and soon became victim to aches and pains with a 103.6 degree fever.
If that wasn’t enough,
that same day we started having plumbing issues at our house. The drains weren’t working properly, and the sewer was backing up. With it being the holidays, there would be no available plumbers until Monday. 
So, we had to severely limit our water usage, which meant using the restroom, showering and doing laundry elsewhere as much as possible.
My grandma, mom and I still managed to cook a full Thanksgiving meal by filling a large pot with water to handwash all the dishes and dumping the water outside rather than down the drain. The rest of the afternoon was spent enjoying card games, pumpkin pie and a “Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.”
When I woke up the next morning, I was excited when I remembered that the 2022 Christmas season had officially begun, but I was sad that my brother would miss out. On top of that, my grandma caught the same bug, so she and my grandpa, who were going to visit until Monday, decided to go home early. 
With the plumbing still out, my dad also decided to stay home in case a plumber called back. So, with half our family, we headed out, now 20 minutes late, to meet up with the others. 
Despite everything that had gone wrong, it was a beautiful day. At first, I was disappointed because of the lack of snow, but I was delightfully surprised to find several inches of white the deeper we drove into the forest. 
In fact, we were still sliding and fish-tailing a little even with four-wheel drive, and one of our friends nearly got stuck in a ditch.
Some years, we’ve hiked up and down, right and left, across the road and back to the other side, traipsing through the snow before settling on the right tree. But this year, we found our tree right away — it stood tall, symmetrical and very full (a little too full now that it sits in the house taking up half the living room).
My mom, brother and I took turns sawing the trunk before dragging the tree back to the vehicles and hoisting it up on the suburban. After everyone else found theirs, it was time for the fun to begin!
We set up some tables and chairs, started a campfire and brought out the roasting sticks, hot dogs, marshmallows and leftover pie. 
With stomachs full, it was time to begin our annual football game to burn off all those Thanksgiving calories. Using a sled to create boundaries, we split into even teams, which is usually a mash-up of kids and adults of both genders. 
It usually gets pretty competitive, and a “two-hand touch” tackle still ends in a full-blown tackle into the snow. We did our best not to slip and slide as we attempted passes and touchdowns—let me just point out that it is not easy to run in muck boots.
(Sometimes our dads, who often join us, try to relive the glory days of their youth and wind up icing their sore joints for the next week.)
When my family finally got around to decorating the tree later that weekend, we realized it had a crooked trunk. When we tried repositioning it, the tree tipped over and broke the stand. My mom rushed to buy a new stand before the store closed, leaving me to hold the 10-foot pine by myself. 
Despite many of the things that went wrong this Thanksgiving, it was still a good holiday celebration. Both my brother and grandma eventually got better, we had friends and neighbors willing to help out with our plumbing dilemma, and there were many laughable memories made with our family and friends.
I wasn’t able to control or predict how this year’s Thanksgiving went, but I could control how I responded. I could have (and sometimes did) thrown myself a pity party, or I could count my blessings. And by the grace of God, when I did just that, I realized how much I truly have to be thankful for.
I’m already counting down the days until next year when we go Christmas tree hunting, and we can do it all over again.

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