Thanksgiving Recap and Christmas Decorating

I love Thanksgiving.  It is a great day to eat some good food and spend a lot of time with your family.  However, when all your family lives 2,000 miles away, all you are left with is a day of good food- and that is not that exciting.  Thanksgiving is probably the hardest time I have being away from family and it has become not my most favorite holiday.  I really miss our family and look forward to the boys being old enough to travel at the Thanksgiving holiday (when everything is crazy and it all can go wrong) so we can once again spend the day with our family.  We did cook up the whole meal, like we do every year, but I only took this one picture of Rob with the persimmon pudding he made.



On to happier things- like decorating the house for Christmas.  During the summer of 2011, we picked up a Christmas tree at a neighbor's estate/moving-into-retirement-home-and-downsizing sale.  It was a good deal at 5 bucks and it was a good test to see how we felt about going from the real tree to an artificial tree.



I was very anti-fake tree but I found myself growing to like the fake one.  It holds up better with the boys, no watering or drying out, very little needles come off the thing and I can put it up the day after Thanksgiving and it will look the same on Christmas.  To solve the smell issue, Rob found a candle for me that makes the house smell like Christmas tree.  Now I was sold.  The only thing is that I was wishing it had clear lights and was taller.  I started scanning craigslist and waiting.  I missed out on one so I waited a bit longer and found a really nice looking one at a really nice looking house.  I went to peep it out last Friday and it was awesome.  AND it was only $50.  That thing must have cost at least $300-$400 when it was new.  The owner was meticulous about taking care of it and storing it and it is in fantastic shape.  I brought it home and we set it up right away and decorated it.



Most of the decorating around the house is done now, including putting the lights and garlands on the exterior of the house.  I still have some more to do, like decorating the tree in the family room but I need to go shopping for some Rex-and-Wyatt-proof decorations because they destroyed the ones I had on it last year.  I love Christmastime!