We had such a fun weekend with my parents! When my mom asked about coming out the Friday after Thanksgiving I was really excited – when we get a Christmas tree, that’s when we get it, and I knew she’d love to be a part of that, and that I could really use her help decorating it!

So after lunch at El Famous (a mandatory stop) on Friday we went to pick out our tree at Kroll’s Harvest Farm near our house. We’d gotten a Canaan fir the year before and didn’t care for it and decided to go back to our old standby, a Fraser fir. We went tall – our tree is between 10 and 11 feet!

Ha, the guy who works there tried to sell us on a Canaan again. That must be why we tried something new last year. 

We picked out our tree in record speed and got home and realized the trunk was too big for our base, so Steven and dad cut some of it off, then stood it up. We let the branches out and gave them the night to settle before we decorated.

The cats immediately checked it out, of course.

Mom and Dad brought this cat scratcher truck for the cats and they love it!

For the rest of the evening, Mom wrapped most of my Christmas gifts. I hate wrapping, and she loves it, so I made sure to buy as many gifts as I could before she arrived. I only wish I could have figured out a way for her to wrap her own!!!

Steven and Dad hung out with us while we were wrapping, then we had chili and cornbread for dinner, then watched Love Actually, and went to bed quite late. Oops.

Dad and I were both up early on Saturday and he rode his bike with me (it was 24°F out!) while I ran.

After I got home and cleaned up, I got some holiday decorations up and put Judy (our garland) up on the stairs, then got to work on prepping a giant appetizer spread featuring foods Steven sells on FakeMeats.com. Steven and I cooked and prepped it all, while taking video and film, and Mom set the board up (and Dad worked on figuring out which of our Christmas tree lights were good). It took about two and a half hours. Crazy, right?

I’m so glad Mom was there to make the board look so nice, and that Mom and Dad were there to help us eat it, and Josh (Steven’s flight instructor) came over too! Whenever we’re eating a meal with him he asks if the food is from FakeMeats so Steven figured he might like to come over and try all the products. And he did try everything – even the vegan caviar and shrimp.

It was fun to have Josh over and visit. Mom kept saying we needed to have people over to see our tree and I was like “this is it! Josh is here and seeing it!” Ha ha. (We rarely have people over – not because we don’t want to, we just don’t hang out with a ton of people around here and none of our family lives here and our friends are spread out all over the states/world. COME SEE OUR TREE.)

We hung out and chatted then headed out for Dad’s birthday present. In his (October) birthday card I had written that we’d give him his present when he was at the house in November but he must have forgotten, because when I said it was time to go for his birthday surprise he was very “huh”? Ha.

The present was a sunset skyline tour of Chicago, with Steven piloting. On the way to the airport we asked Dad if he knew what his surprise was, and he said yes, and we asked what gave it away, and he said it was when Josh left the house and said he was going to the same place as us, ha ha ha.

We took the Cessna 172, which is what Steven flies most often.

(Mom didn’t want to fly, so she went to the outlet mall while we did this)

It was a tight squeeze for two full size adults in the back, but totally fine for a less than an hour flight!

Steven had never done this flight before, and said it was nice and easy – you just follow the shoreline down to the city and back. You have to stay below a certain altitude because of ORD traffic, and watch out for other sightseeing aircraft, but we only saw one other plane near our altitude.

I have done helicopter tours over downtown, but hadn’t done anything like this, and I really enjoyed it. It was fun to see all the landmarks from the sky, and we saw a beautiful sunset too.

And Dad really liked his gift, yay!

After we got back home we had Thanksgiving leftovers for dinner, then got to decorating the tree.

I always feel like out tree is a bit plain with only lights and balls and asked Mom to bring some ribbon and I think it really spruced it up!

On Sunday we woke up to snow, and it was still snowing. Dad and I went on a walk, then came back and I filmed a reel for Fake Meats, then we all had breakfast and hung out for a bit. Steven and Dad did some switch projects in our bathrooms (installing a fan timer), and Mom and I looked at sunglasses on Goodr that we don’t need, and she made ribbons for Judy, then they took off around 1:00.

I got a little less than 6 hours of sleep each night they were here and it really hit me hard. I was a bit delirious and out of it before they left, so after they left and I ate some lunch I took a two hour nap. I hadn’t done that in ages and it felt amazing. I was even able to fall right asleep at night. I must have really needed the rest!