A season for holidays

This weekend has been a bit of a holiday rush for us. As some of you know Amanda and I have decided to spend Christmas this year on the continent skiing the Alps and shopping the traditional Christmas markets of Austria and Germany. Given that we weren’t planning on being home for most of the holidays we had made controversial decision to not really celebrate here in Bristol.  However, with the arrival of Amanda’s parents the week of Thanksgiving we both started to feel like we were missing out on the holiday spirit. So we did our level best to cram Thanksgiving and Christmas decorating into a single weekend this year.

The madness started early Saturday morning with temperatures in the low teens and a trip to our local Christmas Tree farm.

As it was a wee bit cold outside, we managed to find the tree we wanted without the usual five trips around the farm by Amanda and went on to find a staff member to cut it down for us (Health & Safety regulations kept me from getting to brandish any tree felling equipment). Last year we chose a tree named Limoncella and this year we decided on one named Cocoa. I was able to find one that shares a name with yours truly but it unlike its namesake it was a bit too tall to fit in the house.

Upon the return home (and after an aborted attempt to put the tree stand on) Amanda let me wrestle with fitting Cocoa with a sturdy base and moving it into the house while she expertly documented all that transpired. (Or got in the way -- just depends on your interpretation of the truth)

After getting the tree situated we moved on to preparing for our Thanksgiving dinner.  (This really beat our dinner on actual Thanksgiving Day!)

Finally we all settled down to an amazing dinner consisting of oven roasted turkey, mashed potatoes and giblet gravy with glazed carrots. Not long after dinner the tryptophan started to kick in and we decided it would be best to do Christmas decorations in the morning.

We decided when we were first married that we would purchase an ornament from each place we travelled to every year so we could remember all those great vacations at Christmas.  This plan worked well when we took one or two trips a year.  Now that we're averaging slightly higher than that, we might need to get a second tree!  Look at all the newbies this year!

From there we filled out the rest of the tree and ended up with this.

Not too bad I think. Unfortunately we struggled a bit with the requisite family Christmas card photo…

Eventually we got something decent after more than a dozen attempts.

So, to all our friends and family who have taken the time to follow our adventures over the last year and a half we wish you a very Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas. We miss you all a great deal and hope your holidays are filled with all joy and happiness.