Our Tree...

We always pick out and cut down a tree but this year was different. Our apartments don't allow real trees so we have a fake one. We spent an evening putting it together, decorating it, and stringing popcorn as we watched Elf. The popcorn was extra small and hard to string so our tree just has popcorn garland on the top half :)

Patrick getting the star ready.

 

Attaching the star. It kept wanting to fall over.

Each year we pick a new ornament. This is what we chose. We bought it at Bronner's when Patrick's mom was visiting us over the summer. We've had our eyes on it for while.

 Sometimes we pick more than one. We try to pick something to help us remember the year and thought this was fitting.

Our tree!

"Elfed"...

Earlier in the month we thought it would be fun to spread some Christmas cheer in our quad. So we put together a few goodie bags and "elfed" our neighbors. It's just like "ghosting" or "booing" at Halloween. You drop off a snack, poem, and sign for someone. In turn they pass it on by making two goodie bags and dropping them off to two neighbors and put the sign on their door so everyone knows the elf has already visited them.Then it just keeps going around until Christmas Eve.

We put in macaroons, Christmas candy, candy canes, and hot chocolate mix in the goodie bags we dropped off.

 

 The bags ready to go.

Patrick getting ready to drop off the goodie bags.

We randomly picked people to elf. We had fun running around in the dark and hope that our neighbors pass it on.

Thanksgiving in California...

This year we packed up and headed down to California for a few days to celebrate Thanksgiving with Patrick's mom. On our way we stopped in St. George to pick up Danielle, Chad, and their dog Rukia.
Danielle and Chad took a ton of pictures but we forgot to get them before we left. So here are a few pictures from the trip we took with our phones.

 Patrick and Chad helped Linda pick out a new computer. Then they set it up for her.

 Danielle loved Linda's dogs, especially Noki. I think she wanted to take Noki home.

 The boys played with the BB guns in the backyard.

 We took a trip to the beach.

The vegetarians decided to eat turkey because it was a holiday. So of course I had to document it.

We had a great time. We had Thanksgiving dinner with Linda, Stephanie, Scott, baby Braden, Patrick's uncle and aunt, a set of sister missionaries, and some other friends of Linda's from the ward.