Oh the holidays are joyous

Technically this one should have been amid the November pictures, but it was taken a holiday weekend, so it fits in here. Hayden and Jennifer came to visit for the Thanksgiving weekend.

Pretty self explanatory here...the Christmas tree of choice.

Karina passed the light decorating portion of the tree. I actually let her take over for the bottom part.
Garrett and I headed outside to hang the lights on the outside of the house.

The Amish bread experience. I was given an Amish friendship bread starter this year. I decided that people would much prefer a finished loaf of bread, rather then a starter. So I did the math and figured out how much I had to increase the measurements to cook up all the starter. It turned out to be such a funny adventure.

When I measured out the wet and dry ingredients and they filled both of my largest bowels, it was time to get creative. I finally came up with the idea to mix everything in a large bin I was given for my birthday.
That turned out to be a good arm work out.

Then there was dividing the dough into just about every cooking pan I had.

I ended up with about 8 pans in the oven which I had to be careful to rotate frequently. In the end, most turned out all right. The ugly ones still tasted good. Note, this is not a project to undertake at a late hour. The last picture was taken at 11:40pm and they still had to bake after that.

We had an ugly sweater party to attend this year and so we headed to the local thrift store and picked up supplies. This is me, Karina, and Patrice trying our handiwork. Its amazing what ugliness can be created with a little hot glue.

The whole crowd. I was fortunate enough to take first prize for the ugliest sweater.

We decided to leave a note with some treats on the mailbox for the mail man.

Here they are hanging for him to enjoy. He left us a thank you post card the next day. I am sure we are now his favorite house on his delivery route.

We celebrated Christmas Adam with the roomies and a couple other cool cats. For those who are unfamiliar with Christmas Adam, it is the night before Christmas Eve. Thanks to our friend Ashley J. for introducing us to holiday.

I was able to spend Christmas Eve and part of Christmas day with Jennifer. Apparently one picture was all we could muster.

I drove down to Cedar City on Christmas day to spend the rest of the Holiday weekend with Cambree. We spent some time exploring boutiques on main street. These glasses were just so perfect!