Thanksgiving is steeped in tradition in our world.  Paul Marcaccio has joined us to celebrate Thanksgiving every year since 1996.  Black Friday is the crazy shopping day where we struggel through the lineups at Fry’s Electronics.  And, this will be the third annual Christmas Tree event in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

After a dreary day yesterday, it was a beautiful, blue-sky California day today.

Spectacular …

Putting a Deck on Our Bridge

With the concrete in place on the ground floor, we needed to put the deck on the bridge over the atrium.  This will be a temporary deck so we can use the bridge during construction.

Paul, Nik and Bryan went to the job site and were busy cutting plywood for the decking.  A good project for them, prior to the annual Christmas Tree event.

Our mission for the morning - put a plywood deck on the bridge from the Foyer.

Mission Accomplished - Bryan and Nik standing on the deck on the bridge. Yeah!

Cutting Christmas Trees in the Santa Cruz Mountains

As in prior years, Jo-Anne sent an e-mail to our group of friends in the Silicon Valley, inviting them to the ‘Christmas Tree Cutting’ in the Santa Cruz Mountains.  We met at Mike Calise’s house in Los Gatos and then made our way up Highway 17 to Summit Road.

We have used the same location at the Christmas tree farm for three years now.  It has a flat area close to the road where we set up tables and chairs to relax and enjoy the afternoon.  (Some may describe the event as a ‘tail gate party’ in the Santa Cruz Mountains.)  Everyone had fun and the children were able to run around, virtually unconstrained.

This year, Bryan brought our project pickup truck and brought Christmas trees back to Los Gatos that people had cut.

Cutting Christmas trees in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Note the group of people amoung the trees,

Everyone enjoying the fine afternoon.

Note the beautiful, blue-sky California day we had.

It was a bit cool so we had some hot food to keep us warm.

James Fulton (right) holding the tree so Nik could cut it. This tree will be perfect in our house.

Nik takes care of the trees in the back (only to the gate).