A Christmas Memory with Author Cambria Hebert

Let's all welcome author Camria Hebert for her favorite Christmas memory. Read on and leave some nice comments. 

Hey Everyone!!

So who’s ready for Christmas? LOL. I don’t see many hands in the air… in fact I would be sitting on mine if I wasn’t typing. December has totally snuck up on me this year (like every other year) and I am so unprepared. The shopping, the baking and the wrapping! Whew. Who’s tired? That doesn’t even cover the decorating and the parties, etc… sometimes the holidays are so busy that we forget to enjoy them. We forget to relax. We forget the Christmas spirit.

When Mysti asked me to write a guest post on my favorite Christmas memory – I actually had to stop and think about it. Not that I don’t have a ton of great memories but my most recent memories are of shopping for my kids til I drop, cleaning up sprinkles and icing after we all make cookie (fun – but messy) and spending a whole weekend decorating and hauling Rubbermaid bins from the garage. Lol. But then I thought about when I was younger and a certain memory really made me smile. I think it IS my favorite holiday memory and strangely it isn’t a memory from Christmas day.

When I was younger – in fact all through my childhood – we always had a real Christmas tree. It was a tradition – one I never ever intended to break… but then I had kids and it turns out my daughter suffers from Christmas Tree Asthma – and NO I am not kidding, its real. LOL. When she was three we bought the huge beautiful tree and brought it home, strung the lights and hung the ornaments… and the asthma attacks began. Her allergy doctor confirmed it… and the tree went out into the yard. Lol. There won’t be another real tree in my house for a long time. But that’s okay because the false tree we found is absolutely beautiful and I appreciate the pre strung lights. Lol.

But back when I did have real trees….

My mom and I would drive every year to this Christmas tree farm about 45 minutes or so from our house. I still remember sitting it the blue car with light blue leather seats (lol!!) and driving out the long road that took us there. When we got close enough you could see the farm from the road. We would pull doen this dirt road into their drive and then park in a parking lost adjacent from a big red barn. There was a three legged dog at the barn that would greet everyone and a pen with Emu’s (yes those nasty things) near the barn. Inside the barn smelled like fresh cut pine a cinnamon and there was hay everywhere. Also, part of the barn was a gift shop with ornaments and cinnamon pine cones. The woman behind the register always smiled.

We would get a metal red wagon and a saw… lol… then we would make our way down the path behind the barn into the vast tree area. There were several areas all with different kinds of trees. We always got the one with long needles. We had to pass the chicken pen to get to the tree lot… and you all know how I feel about chickens… the nasty little things. Lol One year they surrounded me and I froze up and nearly had a panic attack – my mother was very embarrassed. LOL. Once past the chickens we would pass the goats (I liked them) and down into the trees. It was always freezing cold and sometimes it was muddy. I use to have this dark green corduroy coat with a red plaid lining that was warm and I remember being zipped up in it and trying not to freeze because we were always out there a long time. I could never settle on which tree to get. I always wanted the biggest, fattest one I could find. After my mom and I haggled over which one was perfect she would climb under it (ha ha ha) and start sawing.

Frankly watching her saw down a tree never ceased to amuse me. Especially when it didn’t want to fall. But we always managed and then we would load it in the cart and pull it back up the hill to the barn. So times we got lucky and a tractor would be running and would come down and give us and the tree a hayride back up to the barn.

Once we made our way back up the men would shake the tree to get all the loose needles out and then run it through a red netting to keep it contained then they would tie it to the roof of the car. Lol.

You would think the hard part would be over right? Nope. Remember how I said I always wanted the biggest tree? Yeah. It never fit in the house… lol.

One year we had to saw off the top of it so it would stand up. Ha ha ha. Most years we had to saw off the stump at the bottom and then screw in the tree stand… it was always amusing to me that two small women (one a teenager) standing in the driveway with a saw trying to make a big tree smaller. One year we scrapped up the ceiling when we stood it up… lol.

But once we got it up it was beautiful.

So you see, it isn’t the presents, the parties or the decorating I remember most about my holiday’s as a child… it was the fun in getting to that part I guess. So maybe… I just taught myself something here… maybe I shouldn’t worry as much about the shopping and the decorating but instead spending more time enjoying the things that I do to get to the celebration.

Thanks to Mysti for having me here today to remind myself of the fun I used to have and to remind myself to keep creating holiday memories like that one.

Happy Holidays everyone!!

Cambria Hebert is an author, a blogger and a latte sipper. She has an irrational fear of chickens (EWWW!) and is obsessed with werewolves. She would rather have coffee (Starbucks please!) than food and her favorite TV show is the Vampire Diaries. You can find her stalking the YA aisles of Barnes and Noble with her iphone glued to her hand.

To learn more about Cambria Hebert and her work, visit:

http://www.cambriahebert.com

https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Cambria-Hebert/128278117253138

Twitter: @cambriahebert

Pre-order her debut novel Masquerade, available December 16! Click HERE. 

Here's the scoop on it...

Before. Everything was so much better Before. I wasn’t haunted by nightmares, my place at school was secure and my face was flawless. Now, I’m a freak and everything has changed. The worst part is that I can’t remember the night I was sentenced to the shadows. The memory has been stolen from me and I just can’t shake the feeling that someone, something is out there -watching.

Just when I think I have my life handled, Sam, with his intimidating golden stare and shiver inducing voice, makes me realize that I don’t know anything. He makes me see that my scars don’t matter. That they never mattered. I can’t help but fall for him, completely unknowing that he knows exactly how I got this way. Not knowing he was involved.

*** Heven has no idea how closely death stalks her. She has no idea what I have done to keep her alive. I fear the day she learns my secrets, finds out what I really am. But even then I cannot stop, I vow to make things right. Finally her hunter will be hunted, Heaven and Hell, faith and sin will battle, and we will be victorious. But first, Heven must learn to be what she never imagined. I know her strength is there – I feel it. If we are to overcome all odds, she must push past her flaws – her frailties – to become much more.