Most of you probably know our annual Waterstraut Christmas Tree Tradition by now: chop down the ugliest/worst one we can find, because every tree deserves to be a Christmas tree. It's a good tradition to have in a year where there are 'tree shortages' and all that. So on Saturday, we headed on out to Dade City to visit Lazy Lay Acres to find the worst tree they had.
Of course, they also always have a nice little pen full of animals to pet. I thought going on a Saturday would mean a ton of screaming kids in the pen chasing animals, but turns out there was hardly anyone else there. (Calib's schedule really only allowed us a Saturday visit instead of a weekday).
Still, we had the animals all to ourselves.
And the piglet was the chillest I've ever seen one be. Usually they run from you, but this one flopped over for belly pets.
Calib still didn't trust the chickens, though.
After a visit with the animals, it was off to find our tree.
We canvased up and down all the rows,...
And found some real good contenders. I wanted the one Hayden is standing next to, but the boys said that didn't count as a tree, because it was more like a dead weed, and they thought it might be a fire hazard anyway.
Eventually, though, we settled on this one. Do you know what it looks like? We're calling it our Trufulla Tree, which everyone needs (I realize the fact that we chopped it down made us the villian in this story, but it would have gone into the chipper anyway).
In fact, they usually don't even sell trees under five feet, but once they saw this was the one we wanted, they allowed it.
Every year the employees on the farm laugh at our tradition. But we usually get them on board with it. As a bonus, they usually give us a discount- and this year was hefty, just $5 for the tree!
So, we chopped it down, and brought it home. We insisted they didn't need to tie it to the top of the car, that it would probably even fit in the trunk, but they insisted. (They also took a picture, explained our tradition and posted it to their Facebook group, so we're kind of famous).
And of course, every tree looks pretty decorated. I added the red lights to the top to give it some interest.
And then we picked out a few of our favorite ornaments, because the truffula tree obviously won't fit them all.
And see, any tree looks pretty decorated!
The boys all got their new ornament on tree day, per Waterstraut tradition.
Hayden got his from Hamilton (thanks, mom!)
I got Calib a burrito.. because you know, Chipotle!
And Peyton got a sushi ornament. Less reason behind it, but you know, covid... we didn't do a whole lot this year. And it's cute.
Of course for dinner we had the Ainsworth family tradition of pizza and Chinese food.
Which keeps everyone happy.
We've been working our way through the Christmas punch board, in this game, they had to guess the items in the stocking by only feeling around for them.
It was hilarious to watch. Hayden won, with five out of the nine correct, so I wouldn't say people were *great* at this one.
Since it was a new month, Hayden had a review day and used his chips to buy some perks. The day after we got back from CEO, he was like, 'yea, I'm going to be using my free day pass to not do any school work, and if Calib could pick me up a free Hot N Ready, that'd be great'. Bougey.
He also lined all his CEO stuff out on his keyboard.
Speaking of school work, Asa and I got our year in review from Duolingo. Of course Asa would do better than me.
Tuesday I had errands to run, and Asa had a break in his student calls, so he came along. We swung by Wawa for our free coffees, and I had a reward for a free shorti hoagie, so the whole lunch with coffees was under 10 bucks for the two of us!
At our trip to Costco, free samples were back out. They've been there for awhile now, but nothing intrigued me enough to pull my mask down, until the mozzarella sticks were on sample.
While we were over there, Asa realized Calib's fruit snacks he stole to take to CEO were still in our car (despite how hard Calib tried to make sure we didn't take any to Orlando, Asa did in fact sneak some, but totally forgot to take a picture).
So, we took a little detour across the street.
And dropped off some fruit snacks in Calib's car.
Friday was more errands. I had a curbside pick up from Petsmart (I got all the pets their Christmas presents for $11 thanks to sales and coupons!!), so we also got take out from King of the Coop. Fridays have extra tenders for just $1.25 after all!
Last weekend at CEO, we also missed Porkchop's 11th birthday. I made it up to him with pupcakes just a week or so late.
He did not seem to mind.
In gardening news, we're going to have to find something to do with a crap ton of lemons. Last year they all ripened at different times, this year they're all coming at once.
Christmas has also come early. Yesterday a very heavy box arrived from Nate and Allison.
Turns out there were three 12 packs of Cheerwine in there- one for each kid! Asa took the pack to go hang out to Calib but then got a message from Nate telling him to make sure he checked the note in the box,and there were three.
The first one was obviously from Allison.
The next two were clearly from Nate.
When Asa saw that he could give them out based on merit, per Nate's wishes, he took the 12 pack back from Calib.
Fun story: Calib earned one for putting away the dishes. But Peyton was asleep during this whole ordeal, and Peyton has a habit of drinking other people's stuff (especially soda/pop). So, Calib complained he couldn't even put it in the fridge because Peyton would take it when he inevitably woke up at 3 am.
So, then this morning, Peyton was like 'why is there a cheerwine can in the recyclable bin? He said he looked all around the garage for more, and we had to explain to him the whole thing.
And then later this afternoon, Asa got himself a special delivery from Nate. Those Fosters, they know how to gift give, I tell ya.
In other Christmas news, my mom was hoping to get us all fun NYE tshirts like we had last year. I couldn't seem to find any, but said I could make some if I had one of those fancy cricut machines that just happened to be on sale, like half off! And guess what? She used all her Amazon points to get me one for free!
I did the tutorials for the cardstock that came with the machine, but I'm still waiting on all my tools and vinyl and such to get here to do some more with it.
Ok, now, through all of this, we've had some sniffles/headcold going on throughout the house. It started with Asa midweek. I was slightly concerned, and told him we might want to get a test. When Calib started sniffling this weekend, I said we really needed to get one.
So, we aquired some rapid at home tests...
...and took some swabs (which is not very pleasant)>
Everyone tested negative, which I figured might be the case. Nobody had a fever, nobody had a cough, nobody lost their sense of taste or smell. (Well, except for me, who has never had a sense of smell in my whole life!) And it seemed more likely germs were picked up at CEO for the common cold than anything else. Still, taking the at-home tests seemed like the responsible thing to do, because you don't want to be going out into the world if you've got Covid.
And, I wasn't sure, because everyone says breakthru infections are so mild, I thought was sneezing and a sore throat all of us vaccinated and boosted people would get? No idea. So, peace of mind. No positvie Covid tests here.
But, even with runny noses and scratchy throats, Calib decided to call into work Monday. He was off all weekend, and today (Tuesday) anyway, for his USF orientation that was all online. But now, he can't go back into work for 10 days.
Apparently with a few negitive tests and a doctors note you can, but since he was off all those days, he's already on like Day 4 of his 10 days off. I told him we could do whatever he wanted, and do the extra tests and stuff, but he seems like he's content to just take the 10 days.
He's currently out on the couch watching all the Spidermans before No Way Home comes out with Hayden, and talking about all the things we could have for dinner, and all the Christmas activities/movies we can watch over the next week.
And, I think that's where I leave you. I am caught up with all the blogs! I still haven't wrapped a single present, but I'm feeling the sniffles hard today, too, so I'm just taking a few days off. I told Hayden I was calling in sick, too, and Porkchop could be his subsitute teacher. He actually had his orientation for PHSC to do online too, so he just did that and passed his first checkpoint on Duolingo and we're calling it a day.
As always, I end with a couple of cute dog pictures. Porkchop, trying to get in on Phenom's bed,
And a sleepy Ellie. 
Next Up: I guess some days of everyone being home for movies and Christmas activities!
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