We had a few of my siblings over on Thanksgiving Sunday!! Ryan and Tara and their girls came. Joel and Megan came. Shannon was here. Then Michael, Brady, and Sean drove from CA that morning. My niece Shaelyn also came. We played games and visited and ate sweet pork burritos. Cousin Bracken stopped by. It was a great ending to our Thanksgiving break.
carcassonne
Rook and Rummikub
biggest arm bump
Michael, Shan and Brady stayed the night… (no wonder I am exhausted.)
A Christmas Tree Farm?? in Alpine you say? yep. We went a few minutes down the street from Ben’s parents and walked among the trees and found the perfect one…
This was our first time trying the tree farm and it was so nice. Very Close to our house. Warm weather. Kid friendly. They had chain saws and 4 wheelers and cut and hauled for us. The trees are big and well priced. I’m pretty sure we’ll go back again next year.
We spent the rest of the day – FRIDAY after THANKSGIVING 11/29 – putting up the tree and decorating it and decorating the house. It’s all different in our new house. We had to try and find spots for our decor and we have no money for new decor but we love having a fireplace for the first time and somewhere to hang our billion stockings! Shannon helped me put the lights on the tree – would have been easy peasy but the perfect tree we brought home happened to be EXTREMELY prickly. We had to break out the long sleeves and the gloves. It’s also a taller tree than we are used to so we had to be up on the ladders. We were proud of ourselves for a job well done (and then the next afternoon the entire tree fell over!! and the lights are dangling and ornaments are barely on but that thing is way to prickly to try and fix it!) We are loving our tree.
Per tradition, we slept out near the Christmas tree that night!! I think I was asleep in the first hour -(after pulling an all night shopping trip the night before I was spent.) But the family watched the Grinch, Elf and Home Alone before forcing Benji to close his eyes and go to sleep! CHRISTMAS time is here!! We Love this time of year.
Thanksgiving was very relaxing this year. I got to sleep in. I made a couple of chocolate pies the day before. My sister Shannon came and spent the day and rest of the week with us! Ben made pies and beans and jello. We had lots of food and even more pie. We spent most of the day at Ben’s parents. Michelle’s and Emily’s and Pete’s families were all there. Grandma and Grandpa Becker and Bill all came. The kids all played with their cousins which is awesome how well they entertain each other. We visited, played a few games, ran over to the 6pm walmart sale, and enjoyed being with family.
The weather was warm enough to eat outside! We were thankful for that and THANKFUL for this life that we are living. It was nice to slow down and count our blessings. We have been given so much. I hope we never take this good life for granted and try and always remain grateful and thankful for the MANY comforts that we have.
At midnight Shannon and I decided to go out shopping! It was great fun. The stores were pretty empty because of all of the early sales but we just had fun being out and searching for Christmas gifts. This Thanksgiving break was one of the first times I was able to hang out with just Shannon. She has so many friends and she is 10 years younger than I am and we usually have other siblings in the mix but it was just her and I and I really enjoyed our time together. We shopped, talked, and played games (2 man 7 Wonders is fun!). She played with my kids, we took them to the park, and she sung with them in the bathroom while getting ready for the day. We had a sleepover in the family room and ate lots of junk. We loved having Shannon for Thanksgiving.
