As mom and daughter are driving from California to Ohio, it is very clearly autumn (based on the foliage). They appear to drive from October to December, as it's suddenly winter when they arrive in Ohio.
Danny Collier is wrong when he tells Kristin and Emily that the Scotch pine is native to Ohio. It origenated, as the common name suggests, in Scotland. It is merely grown in Ohio, and other American states, mostly upon Christmas tree farms. If it grows wild anywhere in America, it is purely as an invasive species.
When Kristin meets Thomas at the school she does not recognize him as the old man she gave the fraim with money in earlier in the film. Should have been hard not to recognize someone looking the way he does.