December already! Where did 2013 go? Really. I swear the days seem to last forever, but the years seem to fly by. I'm still trying to figure that out.
This year was our first Thanksgiving with just us (Paul, Kristen, Lauren, Dallas and me) at our house. I was excited to cook my first turkey...EVER...even though I hate everything about turkey. The taste...the smell...gag. I did eat two bites and it wasn't dry at all. It turned out as good as turkey can turn out. While I was preparing the turkey Kristen asked if it was a real turkey. Why I would have a fake one I am not sure. She then asked if we were Amish and at that moment I was pretty thankful we weren't.
Our Thanksgiving feast consisted of turkey with gravy, cooked seasoned cabbage, stuffing, macaroni and cheese and a sweet potato casserole.
Of course...no meal is complete without dessert, which was made by my wonderful hubby...and it was delicious. You can't go wrong with an apple cobbler.
I also got to sleep in until 8:30 on Thanksgiving day, Paul made breakfast and I got to watch the Macy's Thanksgiving's Day parade from start to finish while perusing the black Friday sale papers. It doesn't get any better than that!
I was one of those crazies that went black Friday shopping. It's usually me, my mom and my sister, but my sister bailed on us because she has a new puppy. It really wasn't bad at all and I was able to get most of the presents bought for the kids. Paul and I went back out shopping on Saturday and got a little more. I think we will be finished this week. We only have about 5 more things to get. Now we are broke...oh wait...we were broke before we started.
I came home and got a couple hours of shut eye to wake up on Friday and decorate for Christmas. I always have this vision of us singing Christmas carols while drinking hot chocolate and hanging ornaments on the tree and it never happens quite like that. This year our day started by lugging 569 bins out of the attic. It was actually only 7 bins, a Christmas tree box and a wrapping paper box, but it felt like 569 bins. Really....why do I need so many decorations? And then with every trip I had to say "No" and "Get back". I found myself saying this even if no one was around or if they were making a move in any direction. It was like I was a broken record and I was annoying myself. Once operation Christmas decoration retrieval was complete we started putting the Christmas tree up...and that is pretty much where it went down hill.
Now, if I were going to design a pre-lit Christmas tree, I would make sure that if one light went out the others did not. In fact, I thought that was a given, but apparently not. Instead of coming out with a new and better cell phone with 10,000 cooler apps, someone needs to work on a different design for Christmas tree lights. Anyways, the top half and bottom half of our Christmas tree lit up, but the middle did not and after spending an hour figuring out nothing, we went ahead and threw some color lights on the tree and called it done. This is where Paul goes outside to put up the outside lights and gets even more frustrated while I am stuck inside with three kids asking 800 questions all while trying to "help" unpack bins and put ornaments on the tree. I would like to tell you that I let them put the ornaments wherever they wanted and we sang Christmas songs and drank hot chocolate, but that would be a lie. My OCD kicked in and after about three ornaments being put on the same branch, 4 getting dropped on the floor and two broken ones I forbid anyone to touch another ornament. I kept trying to remind myself that we were making memories, but it really just felt like one big nightmare to me so I put in Happy Feet Two, gave them a snack and told them not to move from the couch. They ended up running laps around the house, stepping on their snack and completely ignoring the movie. Where is Eric the elf when you need him? At one point I just needed a break and a snack so I hid sat down in the kitchen floor behind the cabinets praying I wouldn't be seen. I was found by Dallas while eating my peanut butter crackers and that evening when I gave him his snack he went and sat down where I had been sitting earlier. I guess he figured it was the new place to eat.
I did get everything decorated, except for the bathroom. I just couldn't find the motivation to put up a shower curtain and take down and put up new pictures on the wall just to turn around and take it all back down in four weeks. Our day ended with carrying the 7 bins and one Christmas tree box back up to the attic and wrapping some presents.
Next year I am going to decorate when the kids aren't home and then when the come home we can sit back, drink our hot chocolate and sing some Christmas songs while admiring our beautiful tree.
