Holiday Weekend

Now that I'm done with the Fall quarter, life has been full of non-stop festivities. This past weekend was full of Christmas events and turned out to be more fun and less tiring than I thought it would be! Friday night Danny helped officiate a vow renewal of friends from First Covenant who have been married for 10 years. It was really a beautiful event and we had some rare time to catch up with church friends we don't get to see often.

Saturday was the Hall family annual "Tree Day." This event started when my family would drive into the Santa Cruz Mountains every Christmas to cut down our tree at one of the MANY Christmas tree farms, and it's now morphed into the biggest event of our holiday season. Even when my sisters and I were away at college and I lived in Japan, no one has missed Tree Day in about 10 years, maybe longer. There is often bickering about the size of the tree and if it's too thin or full of holes, but we always have a blast. This year we took three cars and brought home three trees, one for my parents and sisters, one for me and Danny, and one for Eve and her roommate Rebecca. We spent the rest of the day decorating the Hall family tree and then Danny and I brought our tree home and decorated it. Christmas trees always look smaller out in the woods so we were a little surprised at how huge our tree was - it barely fit through our front door! We were really happy with how it turned out. Both of us grew up with eclectic and sentimental ornaments on our family trees, so we inherited lots of ornaments from our parents that bring back fond memories! We found FOUR "Our First Christmas" ornaments that people gave us last Christmas, and each is unique so we love all four. We also have Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, Rainbow Bright, and several Dallas Cowboys ornaments, as well as a few from trips we've taken together to Niagara Falls and New York.

The hunt...


The Hall family tree before (My sister Grace always does the cutting with her big biceps!)


The Hall family tree after


Our tree before


Our tree after


My sister Trisha is hilarious!


Sunday we hosted about 20 people in our small apartment for the annual youth group adult staff and student staff Christmas party. That was a blast. It gets easier every year to cook for 20 people and we love having our house full. We appreciate these folks beyond words for all they do for the youth group. A tradition at this party is a white elephant gift exchange, and the nature of the white elephant gifts is undefined. Some people bring garage sale finds while others actually buy real gifts. It's not fair, but that's part of the fun. I gave away a glass hummingbird figurine and Santa socks and got back what looks to be a new trifle bowl with mini trifle serving dishes! I will definitely be looking up some fun Pampered Chef trifle recipes to show off my new bowl, haha.



We tried to get a picture with our tree, but the only one in focus makes Danny look half asleep! This one's out of focus but the best we could do!


Merry Christmas to all!