About 15 Knights and high school students turned out the day after Thanksgiving to unload our delivery of 175 Christmas trees and numerous wreaths
Our annual Christmas sales of trees, wreaths, and roping are off to an encouraging start after the first weekend of sales.
Our lot next to the Knights shed and the St. Timothy School bus barn is open daily from 6 to 9 p.m. We may close as much as an hour early some nights if the sales are dead or the weather is inclement.
Weekend hours are 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Early closing times are also possible on weekend nights.
We began processing credit card payments Saturday evening after some initial hiccups navigating the updated software. Most customers, however, know that we prefer checks or cash.
Some trees are donated. One has gone to the rectory and two others for display outside the main doors of the church. We also will donate a tree to the La Sallette Sisters.
The weather was beautiful for the delivery on Friday morning and the big turnout of 15 volunteers allowed us to unload, set up the trees, and begin sales by noon.
Colleen Owens, the wife of Brother Knight John Owens, handled the official count and processed our early sales.
The only weather problem over the weekend was some drizzle late Sunday. There also was a gap in the volunteer signups that has been remedied by additional volunteer signups.
One of our newest Knights, Daniel Lee, stopped by Saturday evening with his wife Patricia to purchase a wreath. Told that we were short on Sunday volunteers, Daniel immediately stepped up to volunteer on Sunday morning.
Our prices have increased once again this year because of the increase by our supplier, but customers took the higher prices in stride because they know our net income is funneled into our charities. The most notable charity is the $3,600 that we budget for the parish St. Vincent de Paul food pantry.
We don’t have a comprehensive list of the Brother Knights who helped unload the delivery truck. However, among that group was Victor Karl and his son Nick, who is pictured below operating our drill that makes holes in the bottom of the tree trunks so that they can be displayed on spikes in our tree lot.
Brother Knight Mark Searle is holding the tree.
We also saw some new Knights, such as Marty Rothman.
The students were mostly from Paul VI High School, but the group included at least one from Chantilly High School.
PVI students have continued to volunteer for our three-hour sales shifts.
The Knights who helped with unloading included several past Grand Knights, including Jesus Cota and Tom Yehl.
Yehl, who is currently our regional District Deputy, is pictured below carrying the decorative roping that we sell in 75-foot lengths. 
Past Grand Knight Gary Meister, who served as our council’s third top officer in 1981-1982, is pictured below on the left, chatting with another past Grand Knight, Bill Gott. Bill also served as our financial secretary for 10 years.
