Happy Thanksgiving to all my readers!  I was looking forward to having a day off for Thanksgiving, but it didn’t exactly work out like that.  We had a delivery of trees this morning, so I called in one of our employees.  While he and Mark dealt with the trees and some other set-up stuff, I tried to find a Laundromat that was open.  It’s been over a week since I’ve had time to wash clothes (let alone dishes)!

When I returned, I took a shower and Mark and I changed into some nice clothes.  We were invited to celebrate Thanksgiving with one of our employees and his very large extended family.  They had roasted the turkey in a pit they dug in their back yard.  Mark says it was very good.  I thought I was getting the dark meat, but I actually got ham.

After dinner they had a pie contest.  All the women in the family had made pies and they had a trophy and $100 riding on which pie was best.  Mark and I and one other guy who was a friend of one of the family members were chosen as the most objective judges.  There were eight pie/cake desserts laid out on one table and they cut a slice of each.  We were given paper and pens to take notes and then we went around tasting everything.  When we finished we went outside to confer.  Mark and the other guy chose the same cake-like thing.  I had chosen something different, but was glad to find out when we announced the winner that it was our hostess…the Nana of the lot!

We left right after the contest and came back to get more preparations made for tomorrow when we officially open.  The thing that took the longest was stringing Christmas lights.  We have single strand lights all along the fence and icicle lights on the tent.  The icicle lights are plugged into a music machine that makes them dance with the music.  It’s going to be very eye-catching!

There is still so much to do.  We now have Nordmanns and Douglases as well as Nobles, but we haven’t got most of them up.  Here are some pictures I’ve taken of some of the things we’ve done in the last couple days:

I actually added these ribbons to a candy cane wreath I thought looked too plain

I also added this ribbon.

Here’s my finished booth. See the little map on the nearest corner?

Mark suggested this little educational piece!

These are tiny trees kids can pick for free. I wrapped the pipes with red and white safety tape from Home Depot! You can see a sample of Mark’s flocking in the background.