thankful and decking the halls...

what a fun thanksgiving week we had!  rick and brienne drove out from denver last sunday and stayed with us for the week - what a treat! and then grandma rosie, grandpa rick and kim joined us on thursday, friday and saturday - yeah fun!  it's been a major zap back to reality here for the boys, after having all of these fun people around, and then it's *just* mom and dad.  haha.  (we know that they love us!)

we had a smorgasbord of yummy deliciousness on thursday, and then continued to eat it until it was gone (or packed into freezer bags for the next few weeks!)  roman reported to me today, that he told his preschool class that his favorite thing to eat for thanksgiving was corn, which i think is the one thing that we didn't have for thanksgiving dinner!  he told me that he remembered it from when he was a little boy.  :}

on saturday morning, we squeezed into our minivan and drove to the kidman tree farm!  this is something that we, the jake stotts family, have never done, but i think it may be a tradition we try to carry on!

yes, we literally squeezed into the van... I think that Brienne
even needed a helping hand to get up off the van floor!

the boys and grandma rosie, ready to find a great tree!

Benjamin did come along but was snuggled
in his rolling cave most of the time!  :)

The tree-cutting crew!

Uncle Rick with a tree on his head.
(very funny to roman & josiah!)

roman and josiah with grandma rosie, running back
to the van to shake/wrap up the tree!

The tree-picking crew!

The boys with uncle rick!

Our master tree decorators... 

Josiah adding the star to the top!  

Take one...

...and take two!  Much better!  :)

Later this night, we popped popcorn and I showed the boys how to string popcorn for the tree, while we watched a movie. We had (what I thought was) a good system... I was threading the popcorn and Roman was sliding it down to the bottom of the thread.  And then I looked further down the line to see Josiah attempting to eat the popcorn, but was very confused when he started chewing at it and had the thread caught in his teeth... oh boy.  So we ended up with a 1-foot string of popcorn on our tree and called it "good" for this year!  

I attempted to take a pic for our Christmas card -- this was not the one we went with, but just a taste of what it was like!  (Wish this had an audio clip with it!)