Episode 95: In Which Thanksgiving Gives Way To Christmas

I'm gonna throw it out there right now, thanksgiving is one of my least favorite holidays. But I always look forward to it as the gateway to Christmas. (Plus, I get school off).

So this post will probably have little mention of Thanksgiving at all. In fact, all I want to say about it is that I made a pie. And...it was a good pie too. Did anyone else hear Mulan's voice when I said that?

We went to Andrew's aunt and uncle's house for Thanksgiving again this year and I made a pumpkin pie last year too. Last year though, I was recovering from surgery and so I think the pain and nausea caused me to accidentally double up on the ginger. (ha..I just realized ginger is good for nausea...my subconscious knows things). This year I was nervous about how it would come out but it came out beautifully. So beautifully that on Friday, Andrew requested that I make another one since the other one was gone. So Friday night, I made another pie.

Friday, we avoided as much black friday shopping as we could and slept in until 11am. We went to our favorite restaurant, Spark, and bought 25 dollar gift cards for 12.50 each. Score. The only black friday sale I've seen to date that was worth my time...and we didn't even have to get up early for it. =P

Saturday was the day I was looking forward to all week. It was the day we went to cut our Christmas tree!

Every year my family does it, but this was the first annual Powell family Christmas tree hunt! It was so fun! We took our friend Jared along because he's always fun to do things outdoors with. We met at his house and decided to take his truck. Good thing too...because there was so much snow!

There was snow everywhere! I was super happy just about that because we have not gotten ANY snow this year yet...nothing worth noting though. All the winter storms that have come through have stalled at the point of the mountain like they usually do. Provo is the lamest most sheltered place there is.

We hunted for about an hour before driving further up the road to try our luck there. We finally got to a spot that even Jared's truck couldn't get through so we got out to scout around. It didn't take long for me to find our tree, it was standing alone looking so perfect in its 15 foot glory. Yes, we cut down a 15 foot tree. Well maybe it was like 12 or 13. Anyhow, the bottom 3 feet were devoid of branches so we just cut that part off in the forest. Afterwards we had a hot lunch of pork and beans and hot apple cider then packed up to go home.

When we got home, we made a fresh cut in the tree (2 feet up because it was too tall for our house...but that is also tradition =P) We set it up in the house and it looks gorgeous. Andrew put the lights on it that night but we are still short 1 strand so we haven't started decorating it yet, but that will be remedied tonight.

Oh my goodness I am so happy to have a pretty live tree! It's a blessing as a college student to afford such a luxury, trees are so expensive these days that even normal people quite often can not afford a live tree these days! It makes our house smell WONDERFUL!!!

On our way to get our tree!

This adventure is no small production, we grabbed donuts for breakfast. Andrew was sure to get lots of maple ones for me! :)

Snowy road

Lots of snow everywhere!

grabbing a donut before heading out

following in my footsteps

Andrew, cutting down our tree

taking it back to the truck! It has aspen leaves all in it. :)

Pork and beans

loading up

making the fresh cut

Isn't it beautiful!?!

Andrew is a super expert at stringing lights

Still missing one strand of lights, but there you have it! :)