Homeschooling and Homesteading in the Present: Christmas Eve Adventure

When you think of Christmas Eve, what activities come to mind? Maybe getting together with your family, going to see Christmas lights, last minute shopping...... Those are the type of things most people associate with Christmas Eve. My husband and I... and Malachi... spent a most memorable time outside this year. To begin the story, a few weeks ago, we purchased a used wood stove. We had some wood cut for the fireplace but did not have enough to be able to heat the house via wood alone. Darren decided that we should go out in our woods, find some fallen pines, cut them up, and haul them to the house on the back of his old farm truck. He backed his truck into the woods and we got to work. Darren cut the pines with his chainsaw and split the pieces...Malachi and I toted stacks of wood and threw them on the back of the truck. I noticed that the truck was sitting in a rather soggy spot and asked Darren if he thought the truck would be able to come out of there once the back was weighted down. He assured me it would. (chuckle) We worked for about an hour and a half and finally the truck bed was laden fully with fuel for the wood stove. Malachi and I stand back, admire our hard work, and wait for the truck to make its way out of the woods. Darren cranks the truck, puts it in gear and .... hmmm.....it spins. He tries reverse and drive, reverse and drive...rocking that truck like a child's toy....but to no avail. (Jacob used to have a favorite book called "Rotten Luck, My Truck is Stuck"...it immediately came to mind here) Anyway, he decides to go get the tractor and pull his truck out. Guess who gets to sit behind the wheel of the truck and spin mud??? Yeah me!! HaHa.... He hooks the tractor up to the truck and commences to pulling and tugging. I'm spinning mud (which I secretly enjoy) and the tractor is pulling as hard as it can, nose up in the air. That fact caused me some discomfort...just didn't look safe. He assured me that the scrape blade on the back would keep him from tipping over. I wasn't totally convinced. The truck wasn't really moving much. He brought out the "come along"... this was pretty much a foreign tool to me up until this point :D He hooked one side to the truck and one to the tree and we tried again.... me hitting the gas and him cranking. The truck was majorly stuck. He got back on the tractor and told me to keep hitting the gas...I was spinning like a mad dog, the tires were smoking, and ....the truck was stuck. Darren then informed me that if I floored the gas (like I was doing) and the truck suddenly achieved traction, it would lunge forward and run all over him. Great...now I'm thinking if we do succeed, I could kill him with the victory. Nice.... Well, to move along, the come along ended up snapping and we went in the house.....and left the truck in the muck. Two days later, help showed up in the form of other *men* and a bigger come along. That was AFTER Darren unloaded the wood off the truck - back into the woods. What a lesson in futility. I look back on the event with two viewpoints. One being that sometimes it just seems like there's an awful lot of work involved with the life we've chosen. I mean, good grief, we could just go in and turn on the heat and relax ... go see some Christmas lights...read a book....sit by an aesthetically pleasing fire that doesn't heat the entire house but looks pretty ... but no, we spend all stinking day toting firewood that in the end, gets tossed back off the truck to its natural abode. The other viewpoint is that sometimes working together bonds people. The time spent in actively pursuing a common goal sets you side by side emotionally and mentally. You can look back on the event and it is a shared experience...common ground...to be built upon by each new "adventure". Plus, it makes for some good stories :)