i {heart} butter

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

we had a great Thanksgiving day with family…and ate more than i care to reveal to you! (like…its quite possible that i ate my weight in butter alone!)

this year, our holiday has been particularly wonderful and relaxing:

cause its the very first year in our married lives (that’s 9 years, peeps) where the hubs and/or i did not have to work a Christmas Tree Lot beginning 6am the morning after Thanksgiving and ending 3 weeks later. we feel so FREE!!

(when we worked at the church, our main fundraiser of the year was a Tree Lot to raise money for our student ministry’s mission trips throughout the year. it really was a blast, but tons of work, and tons of time away from each other and our family. it’s absolutely GLORIOUS to not have that this year!)

however, we couldn’t stay away too long, and revisited our old stomping grounds to buy our tree today! (again, a first for us…getting our tree together as a family the day after Thanksgiving!)

the Bug was in awe of the sheer height of some of the trees:

the Boy was sure to inspect, poke, and prod the trees to make sure we got a good one:

the Hubs just had to jump in for old times sake and use the chainsaw (and i know those of you who have spent countless hours with us on that lot are smiling right now!):

the kiddos stood by and watched (with plugged ears), and then helped tie that bad boy up on the roof of the car:

they were all smiles when we also picked out a smaller tree, just for the crazies:

so we’ll get to work on decorating, and i’m sure at some point you’ll see the finished products!

this little one is dreaming of a White Christmas apparently, as i found her in her room, decking herself out:

but she’ll have to keep dreaming, cause its a whopping 82 degrees here in the sunshine state!

and, although this shouldn’t suprise you by now, i’m aware that i didn’t quite make it back with any recipes in time for the big feast. but…if you come back in the next day or two, i’ll tell you all about this apple pie:

happy black friday!! (we didn’t participate, but i hope those of you who did got some great deals!)