Erin: Last week in The Sisterhood we had a very Freaky Friday, er, Saturday,  kind of thing going on. The kind of thing that made me want to do something like this . . .

Ellen: Excuse me if I thought running full speed at each other into full-on belly slams was excessive, but maybe you would have gotten a concussion so you could‘ve forgotten about your Saturday. And forgotten about whining.

Erin: It was all over holiday decorating. In particular, the tree. My family has tree-getting down to an art. If it’s not quite Norman Rockwell, it is definitely good enough for Facebook bragging.

Ellen: This would normally be the point where I would scoff and ridicule, because Frank and I are traditionally The Home Depot sort of tree buyers. We don’t even take the kids with us. Don’t  judge or the Elf on the Shelf will get you. He hates self-righteousness as much as he seems to enjoy seeing all of his pranks archived on Pinterest. But not this year! We went full-on Christmas tree farm!

Erin: Didn’t you love it? I have fond memories from Decembers past of packing up the crew in their festive holiday garb — sometimes there are even hats — and heading to a local tree farm. We make a total day of it. Picking out the tree. Playing on the hay bales, singing carols, drinking hot chocolate, taking the classic poses by cardboard Santa measuring how much we have grown . . .

Ellen: And there it is.

Erin: What?

Ellen: My reason to pull your antlers. Singing carols in holiday hats? Did this really go down or are you remembering a Hallmark Hall of Fame Christmas special?

Erin: Oh, I have the pictures to prove it.

Ellen: Sometimes you make my snarky bone hurt, but I see your goofy hat and raise you a nuclear reactor, helicopter rides, playgrounds, pony rides . . .  and a teepee.

Erin: Are you sure you didn’t just cut a tree down on the set of Red Dawn?

Ellen: No. On this gift of a perfect weather day, we went to Coleman’s Christmas Tree Farm — after attending our first local Christmas parade, which was delightful. Coco’s (14) high school marching band did such a great job.  We had the absolute best day. It WAS  Norman Rockwell — on steroids.

Erin: So how does a self-proclaimed Home Depot devotee happen upon such a place?

Ellen: We ended up there last year out of desperation. We got jammed and weren’t able to get our tree until the 15th. Every depot, mini-mart, and scout stand was all sold out. Unless this was your dream tree.

Ellen –  Per tradition, Frank and I were by ourselves when magic Google found Coleman’s for us. We did have the parental decency to feel a wee bit shameful on the awesome wagon ride out to the field. Frank muttered, “This would probably be fun for the girls.”

So bam! We did it this year and it was epically fun. We are converts!  Just look at my man harvesting our tree.

Erin: I’m woman enough to admit that I’m feeling a twee bit of evil towards you.  Sort of like the evil vortex that hung over my whole tree day and sucked the Norman Rockwell right out of it. I suspected there might be trouble when they ALL woke up cranky. That’s a rarity. There’s usually at least one chipper bird in my nest of five. Instead, they all looked like this. . .

Ellen: You need to learn when to tamp down your Mom-on-a-Mission tendencies.

Erin: Oh no. This was THE day, and no mounting evidence to the contrary was gonna change my mind. So we packed the camera and the cranky kids and headed to our favorite farm. Holiday spirit be damned: we were getting our tree today.

Ellen: I can’t imagine why things went downhill.

Erin: Well, once we got there, that ball of crap we were rolling really started to pick up steam. The minivan doors open and Charlie (11) sneak attacks Deacon (9) and boots him into a puddle of mud. This breach of familial etiquette causes Deacon to let off a scream completely incongruous to the event that had just transpired. (Just for the record, my vocabulary expands exponentially the pissier I get. When I start spewing 4 syllable words—Run!) Nothing says fa-la-la-la like halting the fun with a public time out in the middle of a parking lot full of witnesses.

Ellen: The towel should have been thrown in before you even left the house, Ms. Intractable. See, I know big words too.

Erin: Just wait. Five minutes later, everyone is roughhousing on the hay bales and the kids are clamoring to get their pictures taken in front of cardboard Santa. As I whip out the camera and back-pedal quickly because all I have is my zoom lens since I lost my camera bag,  my jingle bells  jangle even more because I have forgotten the SD card. Are you kidding me!?! My head  pounds like the little drummer boy on Mountain Dew as I frantically check my purse and the car for the missing card. At this point, my husband lobs a live grenade with his not-so-subtle jab at my forgetfulness, “Are you pregnant?”

Ellen: Seems legit . . . given the circumstances.

Erin: As Steve ducks to avoid the holiday left hook aimed for his head, the 14 year old girl child remembers that she has her iPod touch with her. Unfortunately, she drained it listening to One Direction on a continuous loop, so it’s zero help. Three pictures later, and this mess was recorded for posterity.

Ellen:  Barely. Did you think to use your phone? Oh, that’s right.  I had to give you instructions yesterday on how to take pictures with my phone . . . that is exactly like your phone.

Erin: Perhaps. Or it could be that I was distracted by the 5 year old nosediving off the hay bale. Amid the screams and recriminations, we put this stinker of a day down. Once and for all. There was a little lot of pre-cut trees right beside the barn. We wandered over with our spirits broken, pointed at one that looked about the right size, and we. were. done.

Ellen: Just to be clear, I’m not trading days with you. Besides our end products were equally yuletide-y and this will all fade from everyone’s memory . . .

Erin: If we hadn’t written a post about it.

Ellen: That’s okay. The true secret of Christmas is you need a little Bah Humbug to make the joy all that more joyful.

Erin: And now you’ve made MY snarky bone hurt.