Thanksgiving Weekend

Wednesday afternoon Paul's parents came in town and we all had dinner at Gram's house. My family just adores Mom and Dad Hicks and it is so nice when we can all be together. Thursday we headed to Boone to spend a couple of nights with Paul's grandfather, aunts, uncles and cousins. I truly love his family and couldn't be more blessed by all of my in-laws. Just between two of Paul's cousins there are 11 kids under the age of 5! They are kind of like the Duggars, if you know what I mean. But let me tell you, they are the most well behaved and non spoiled children I have ever been around. Paul and I take notes on their parenting skills every time we visit.

On our way home Saturday we went to a Christmas tree farm right by Paul's aunt and uncle's house and picked out our own tree.


It was my first time and I sure hope we'll make it a yearly tradition from now on. It was so much fun! I never had much room for a tree in my townhouse but since we are living in Paul's now, we have a little bit more space for a good size tree.

Behold, the first annual hand picked Hicks family Christmas tree.



We definitely felt like the Griswolds trying to get this big guy in the house.
Little full, lot of sap.




Paul had to do quite a bit of trimming and it still touches the ceiling. No tree is too big in my opinion though. And there are few smells as good to me as a fresh Christmas tree. I am so excited to be able to enjoy it for the next month. The majority of our Christmas decorations are packed too far away in storage at my mom's to bother getting out. It's times like these that I remember we aren't living in our permanent home and I can't wait to have a house with all of our things in one place. It will feel like we just got married again by the time we unpack all of the things we left behind when we moved into Paul's house almost a year ago. We did manage to dig a few Christmas things out. Sophie's Christmas sweater included of course.




My mom knitted this tree skirt a couple of years ago and it is such a treasure to me. It took her over 6 months.



My wonderful family is always very understanding of having to "share" us for the holidays so we waited until Sunday and had our second round of turkey day at Gram's house. Paul cooked the turkey.



It was his first time and he was sooo excited about it! It was a huge success and we've enjoyed three days of leftovers for lunch.

In less than 3 weeks we'll be out of school for Christmas break!