Oh my word life has been crazy...not with all super, super fun stuff mainly just normal, daily life and responsibilities that make it very hard to keep up with blogging. Twice now I've planned to blog during my day and had that idea fly out the window. Once due to a power outage and the next time due to taking Zeke to the ER...both of those I'll be posting blogs about in the future. Anyway...I'm back now and hopefully I'll be able to etch out time to post more blogs more regularly.
Our Thanksgiving this year was very different than normal. Michael was on-call at work so we couldn't go any further south. That meant not going to Oregon to see his family or going to Graham to see mine. I knew that I wasn't going to make a big Thanksgiving dinner for us since our kids wouldn't actually eat any of it. We decided to put up the Christmas decorations to get in a festive mood. Michael brought in all the indoor decorations and then he got started on the outside lights. Michael hates putting up lights, but he does it because he knows that the kids love it. It is kind of weird to spend hours outside working on your house where you spend most of your time inside not getting to enjoy your hard work. I've tried really hard to make sure the lights are always on for Michael when he comes home at night so he can drive up and see his hard work!
The kids had lots of fun helping me decorate. The first thing they did was gather up all the Fall decorations. Of course this turned into a competition to see how many each of the kids could gather up. While we were taking out the Christmas decorations the kids found their stockings. Ella got a special surprise...she found her candy filled candy cane from last year. It wasn't even opened! You would think she'd want to open it and chow down, but she ended up wanting to put it back in her stocking when he hung it on the mantle! Silly girl.
We decorated the whole house except for the tree! Our old artificial tree had been on it's last leg literally for a few years. When Michael and I were remodeling our house there was a pile of stuff in the garage that needed to go to the dump. I remembered seeing this funny plastic piece, but I thought it didn't go to anything special. Turned out it was one of our tree legs! Michael ended up fashioning a leg from some plywood. It worked, but we usually had to prop the leg up with some books to get the tree straight. Last year the kids and I came home from IKEA and the whole tree had fallen over. The time had come to say goodbye to our gimpy tree!
On Black Friday my mom and I went out shopping. I had seen an ad for a 7.5 ft tree with both white and multi-colored lights with a remote for only $79 at Home Depot. My mom and I are not crazy Black Friday shoppers we usually don't get out until 10am, but we've always been able to get everything we want. When we showed up at Home Depot there was one tree left...the display and one of the workers was holding it for another shopper. I was bummed, but oh well I figured we'd find another one at a different store for maybe a little more money.
Off to Walmart we went! We went right to the tree section and lo and behold we found a 7.5 ft tree with both white and multi-colored lights with no remote for $77! Score!!! We snatched it up! One thing we noticed while shopping was that there were barely any people out. We went to 3 places Home Depot, Walmart and Fred Meyer's and got front row parking each time and we were only out for 3 hours! It's kind of sad....I really enjoy being out shopping with a bunch of other people....not crazy stampede people, but it is nice to participate in some rushing around. It's fun to chat with other people and it just feels like the beginning of the Christmas season. Since so many of the stores are opening at such crazy hours....as early as 4pm on Thanksgiving night....ridiculous...it's not nearly as fun anymore. Not to mention those poor workers should be at home celebrating with their families instead of working. I heard that Black Friday shopping was down this year due to so much online shopping...not sure if that is accurate or not, but I definitely did buy more stuff from Amazon this year than I did the year before. Maybe the stores will figure out that those extra hours aren't really worth it and go back to opening at 6am on Friday instead. Not likely, but wishful thinking right!
On Saturday morning we went and decorated our church and then came home and put up our tree. Oh my how they have improved artificial trees. It was so easy! Click, Click and Click and it was up! A little fluffing of the branches and it was done!
After we decorated it Michael helped Jack put the star up. This is a tradition that we let Jack do every year. It's his special job! The other kids...mostly Owen gets really jealous about it, but Owen gets to do lots of things before Jack does just because he's the firstborn. So this is all Jack's!
Turns out a 7.5 ft tree was the tallest possible tree we could have gotten. The star literally touches the ceiling!
Sadly our light up star had a malfunction and it stopped working. Michael changed the fuses and replaced the bulbs that turned black. A few days later it burned out again and all the lights were black. Michael decided it would be safer to just toss it because there was definitely something wrong with it. Since then we've put my old wooden star on top.
On Sunday while we watched the Seahawks game my friend Desi came over to work on Christmas cards. I had just gotten a new Stampin' Up set to make gift tags with. Once we were done with her cards I got to work on making tags. They were so easy and so much fun!
On Thanksgiving night I got really depressed looking at all the pictures people were posting on FB of their families and all the good food they enjoyed together. I did make a nice pork roast for Michael and I...the kids ate something kid friendly that I can't even remember now. It smelled amazing, but unfortunately tasted gross! You win some you lose some! I was a little bit down in the dumps for about a week and then my mom suggested that I play Christmas music during the day to get me in a festive mood. I also pulled out my diffuser and made the house smell like Christmas by using my Holiday Joy oil. Since doing that my mood has really been lifted and I'm definitely in the Christmas spirit!
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