November miscellanea

Hannah couldn't even put her book down to do her clean up chore after dinner.

Laurel didn't feel like giving a smile for a picture this time

The girls are getting geared up for Christmas already with their book reading

Christmas tree cutting

This year we did something we haven't ever done, but was something I had wanted to do. for a long time. Instead of getting our christmas tree at Home Depot, we went and cut it fresh from the mountain. Some friends of ours invited us to join them on their annual tradition. They always go the day after Thanksgiving. So we drove into the Santa Cruz mountains to a Christmas tree farm and spent some time wandering the hillside in search of a perfect tree. The kids weren't used to it and the little one's thought we tromped around much too long. We discovered none of them were "perfect" so we looked for one that was close enough. We had been given a saw to cut it down and each person wanted a turn to use it. Derek probably did the most of the sawing though. After we dragged our tree to the truck, we enjoyed a picnic lunch with our friends. Homemade leftover turkey sandwiches. Yum!

the hill, with so many choices!

At last, we found a tree we liked.

cutting the trunk

Lunch!

Katelyn being cute as always

family picture time

When we took our tree home, we discovered it was the biggest one we'd ever had. Derek had to keep cutting it down to get it inside. And with our tree topping, it touched our ceiling. We decided that we liked getting our tree that way, so hopefully we do that again next year.

Thanksgiving

We had a fun Thanksgiving this year. During the morning, Derek and Adam enjoyed another year of ultimate frisbee with friends from church, to help work up an appetite. We had a couple of families join us for the dinner (the VanDams and the Huangs), and one set of friends visited later for pie (the Lanyis). We were treated with a fun play put on by Hannah, Adam, Mackenzie and Jamie and the VanDam girls. If you've got the time, you can enjoy videos of that below.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Hannah also got creative and wrote a Thanksgiving song and used a Christmas song for the tune. She convinced all but Adam to sing it for us. I've included the words:

Verse 1 - Every year it comes to town, Celebrated all around. Started 1621, Held in Plymoth, Lots of Fun!

Chorus – Yu-ummy food. Lots of yummy food. Gra-ateful hearts. Thank him on Thanksgiving Day

Verse 2 – Thanksgiving's known for lots of food, It gives me a happy mood.Turkey, tatoe's, pumpkin pie. Every year I think I'll die.

CHORUS

Verse 3 – God gives us a lot of stuff. We should thank him every day. So we have this holiday. That is all we have to say.

CHORUS

Laurel singing the Alphabet song

Laurel loves to play the piano for us and sing a song at the same time. She can do this with many songs, but the piano music is the same. Here she is singing the ABC song.