Post-Thanksgiving!

First thing Saturday morning, we dragged the Houston Smiths out the door with us to get our Christmas tree!   This involves us running all over the tree farm, leaving kids behind to "guard" every tree we like until we finally choose The One.  This year (just like last) we ended up choosing a tree that Kendra found-- she has a good eye, that one!  Camille quickly dubbed it "Fat Derek," and not only is it lovely and full, but it also was the closest to the parking lot of all our chosen trees, so that was nice!

Fat Derek!

One of the runners up!

And I got to let Jason help with set up!

We're so festive!

I swear, once we put on lights and ornaments the branches settled down a bit and our tree got even fatter!  It's awesome!!!

The Houston Smiths were all set to leave around 3pm that day, but about an hour beforehand, they all started getting notifications that their flights were delayed (which of course meant that they'd be missing their connecting flights, too).  The good news was that they hadn't left yet, so they just got to stay longer!  Craig and I had been planning on getting a few Christmas things, so we also grabbed some groceries, and I was able to make fried ramen for everyone (this was what Ryder had requested for his birthday dinner).  I even figured out how to make it gluten-free for Jeni, so I was proud of myself for that.  (Although I didn't actually taste it, so who knows how it really turned out?  If it was terrible, Jeni was definitely too polite to say so!)

And then we got to sit around playing "That Escalated Quickly" and laughing and having a great time together, so that was really wonderful.  We said our goodbyes and went to bed, and they left twelve hours later than originally planned, at 3am instead of 3pm.  (Gross!  Why is traveling always so hard?)  But they did get home safely and without further incident.

As soon as church was over, I began washing all the towels and bedding from having so much company, only to have my dryer break after the first load.  😫  Not gonna lie, that was a real bummer.  Craig was able to fix it, but not until the part came in the mail, which ended up being Friday.  So now I'm forever thankful to have a working dryer again!  And I'm thankful that we had such a wonderful time and that the joy of the Christmas season is in full swing!