Russel and Julie

Today we went and bought our Christmas tree. We went to the same place as last year, in the Heather Farm parking lot, Toby’s Trees. We looked at their “below average” sized trees and weren’t too happy with the selection, or the prices ranging from 40 to 50 dollars. A friendly employee asked us if we needed any help and they directed us to the back of the lot where the trees that had not yet been unbundled were. We found a tree that was a good height (not too tall) and someone unbundled it for us, it looked great! There wasn’t a price on the tree since it hadn’t been unbundled yet, so they had to call for a price check, we got the tree for only $19.99! Woohoo! When we brought the tree home I set it up and put the lights on it (with some help from my Dad), I also setup all of the lights on our balcony. Now we just need to decorate the tree, we’ve only placed about 5 ornaments so far.

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We made it! We had tons of fun! On the way up to Julie’s aunts we stopped at a rest area and took a short nap, we arrived at Julie’s aunts around 9:30 AM. We had a fabulous Thanksgiving dinner, then we headed to Silver Falls State Park, which was awesome. We saw several waterfalls and took a short hike to a waterfall which you could walk behind! That evening we drove up to Julie’s parents house in Vancouver Washington. We went to bed at about 11 PM.

On Friday morning at 4 AM we got up and headed off for the after Thanksgiving sales craziness. We went to Kohl’s first, the line wrapped around the entire store (I’m guessing it was at least a 2 hour wait), but we used the jewelry counter instead of waiting in that line. We went to Panera Bread for breakfast. We hit several other stores for more Christmas shopping, at Cost Plus World Market we arrived just in time to get the last couple free chocolate bars (they were giving them out to the first 100 customers). There was a scratch off game on the sleeve of the chocolate bar and I won a free bag of Ghirardelli chocolates!

We were planning on coming home on Saturday morning, but with all that we had done over the weekend were were exhausted on Saturday morning and we decided to get some more sleep before the 10 hour drive home. We left Julie’s parents on Sunday morning and we’re home now!

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We’re going to be driving up to Julie’s aunt Jenny’s house in Mt. Angel Oregon, outside of Salem. We’re leaving tonight at around 11 PM, we should be arriving at Julie’s aunts around 9 AM on Thanksgiving day. It’s going to be so much fun. Julie can’t wait to see her family, it’s been awhile since we went up there. Our bags are packed! I went and got a bunch of snack food for the car ride, now it’s time for a quick nap before we head out.

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Before we went to the castle we took a trip to Morro Bay where we walked around downtown and check out the shops. Then we headed to San Luis Obispo to hang out and to have lunch, we went to this place called Bel Frites – they only served ”Belgian” fries with gourmet dipping sauces. Since we were having a late lunch it was great that it wasn’t too big of a meal. Before we went on our tour we had dinner at El Chorlito, it was excellent.

We took the evening tour at the Hearst Castle which was cool since there are people dressed in period clothing wandering around inside and around the castle. Since it was dark out and they keep the lights very dim in the castle to preserve everything inside our pictures didn’t come out very good, but we had a lot of fun checking everything out.

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We went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium today on our way to Cambria. We ate at the resturaunt inside to aquarium which was great. We spent over 3 hours wandering around checking everything out, it was really cool. Tomorrow we’re going to go on a tour of the Hearst Castle.

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Today was a wonderful day! Papaw and Ellie got married! It was great to meet Ellie and her family. I am glad to see Papaw so happy and I think that he has found the perfect bride. It was a fun time for everyone.

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Our brand new LG TROMM SteamWasher (clothes washer) and dryer arrived today. We decided to replace our old washer and dryer (we’re assuming it’s from when the condo was built, 18 years ago). Of course we had to have the best, and that’s what we got. Thanks to everyone who gave us money for Christmas to help buy our new washer and dryer.

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This Christmas we went up to see Julie’s family in Washington State. The festivities took place at her sisters’ house. We had tons of fun and it was great to hang out with Julie’s family.

We brought the Wii with us, everyone had fun with that, some people tried to beat up the furniture. See the video:

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