Environmentally Conscious is the new awesome

Saturday morning we all piled into two cars and headed off to the mountains in search of a little Christmas cheer - the kind you can find in the "cut-your-own" tree lot (called the forest).

The guys that run the lot told us that children were not allowed to hold the saws, but they didn't say specifically that adults couldn't have a fight to the death.

Manly men and trees! As far as the eye can see. (If you look really far, you can see the free trees instead of these other ones that cost $50 to cut down).

Steve is a biologist/hippie-at-heart, and he didn't get that we were supposed to be cutting down trees, not hugging them.

He got over it pretty quickly when he saw how much fun it is to use a saw to make things fall over.

After looking at a million trees, Shawn found the perfect one.

Well. Almost as perfect as the tree Betsy and I found. And ours was free!


Wayne the lumberjack showed us how to show those trees who is boss.

Is the mild hypocrisy of driving around in a hybrid with a few freshly cut christmas trees on top lost on everyone?

Apparently.

After cutting down a few trees, we all carpooled in our low-emission vehicles over to the infamous Malibu Grand Prix so that we could drive around in these little gas guzzling, high-emission vehicles.

You know it is a classy establishment when you see the assortment of video games they have. Gunblade? I can't even imagine a more awesome and dangerous weapon.

Shawn was nice enough to give us all a few free tickets that he had gotten for Christmas last year. (Since he gave us the free rides, we all decided to let him beat us all. Bad.)

We all suited up in our sweet helmets.

Got in our sweet rides.

And raced around a little track trying to beat eachother's times. By the last lap, we were all catching air off the curbs and skidding around corners as if we were born in the backseat of a speeding Nascar racecar.

Shawn beat us all with a record of around 55 seconds. I am convinced that it is because he got to drive the police car go-cart.

If that doesn't give you all a bit of warm, fuzzy Christmas cheer, I am not sure what will. Hopefully not too warm, though. Wouldn't want to add to that global warming problem.