
06 Dec Family Friday – Thanksgiving and our Christmas Tree

This year I’m so grateful I was able to host Thanksgiving for some members of my Bushnell side of the family as well as Brandon’s parents and his Aunt and Uncle. It was a wonderful day spent soaking up each other’s company!
I love the way my cute Kayla decorated the tables for the big day.

In all the preparations and clean up, I sadly only captured a few photos of the day.
I love having a house full of family and it was so great to have my oldest, Makayla, home from college for the weekend. She brings such happiness home with her and I love having her contagious positivity rub off on everyone around her.
After all the cleaning is done and leftovers distributed, we head out for traditional Thanksgiving movie. This year GrandmaSue and I went with the littles to see Frozen 2 and my olders went with Uncle Mark and Brandon to see Ford vs. Ferrari.

Friday we had our annual hunt to find our real Christmas tree up in the mountains near our home.
The trees themselves are pretty average but the memories we make being together, hiking up the mountain and picking out a tree are priceless.

It’s quite a hike to make it up to the areas where you are allowed to chop a tree down. Brandon and my brother Mark picked out a great tree this year. It was great to have the extra man power to get that big tree down the hill.

This year we are so grateful to have a truck to get up the snowy mountain and down again with our tree in tow.

I just love family traditions! It feels like glue that holds our childrens memories together and hopefully will stick with them throughout adult hood.
Losing my dad at the age of 14 (stories about this are here on #tellitalltuesday) helped me realize how much these moments matter. They are worth all the effort and work!!
If nothing else I hope they have fond memories of the time we spent together and someday I hope they will bring their babies home to spend the day picking out a tree with us.
After we chop down our real tree and have it all set up.
We take the kids out ornament shopping and each child gets to pick out an ornament for our tree. We have been doing this for so many years that our real tree is very full!






Our kids love to decorate our tree and reminisce about the years before. It’s dreamy to watch them interact and squeal as they find an ornament with their name on it and the year they pick it out, and put it on the tree. Every year they forget one or two that they had previously chose and are sometimes shocked to see which ornaments are theirs. It’s just so fun!




We finish the night by baking and eating yummy “Grinch cookies” drinking hot chocolate and watching the movie Elf!


Brandon humors me every year and we also set up our “pretty tree” to shine out our big front windows. This one takes a little more reassurance to get everyone to help but I love it when it’s all said and done.



I hope you all had a wonderful time reflecting on the blessings in your lives this past Thanksgiving. I’m so grateful for the family I have been blessed with. I am loving that our children are growing up and that one day our family will grow even larger and include sons and daughters in law and eventually grandchidren.







I hope they find joy in our home as well! I’m really looking forward to what lies ahead.
XOXO,




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