On Thanksgiving Eve we woke up to this. (This is a color picture, not black and white!) With an early-rising Fe, we looked outside our front windows to see this across the street. It was foggy, serene and beautiful. A perfect picture painted by our Savior to remind us how much beauty in our lives we have to be thankful for this season.
Crazy as it seems, we offered to host my family at our new house for Thanksgiving this year after moving in just the week prior. A table to eat at, was all I promised. We split up the food between everyone coming, so by no means was I doing all the cooking. I did want to have at least all of our kitchen stuff put away and semi-organized, so it gave me a goal to work towards. My parents and brother, Ryan came in the night before and we went out to eat in downtown McKinney. They came bearing a few gifts, one of which was a Rudolph nose for Fe.
On Thanksgiving we started things off right with the parade, coffee and Honey's traditional sausage biscuits I had made. Then the cooking began and the rest of my extended family starting filing in.
Mom, Aunt Poo, Honey, me
First big meal hosted in our new home...the island worked great for the yummy buffet of food
Gathered around...
As soon as Thanksgiving ended, Christmas came quickly for us this year...We still have empty walls and lots of boxes, which is driving Justin nuts... and if I'm honest, it's starting to drive me a little nuts too. And I'm the first to admit I'm very slow in making decorating decisions (or any decision for that matter), so it will likely be a while. But I told myself I just wanted to make it through Christmas and then I would focus on getting the house set up. Between Christmas parties, buying presents, traveling, etc. I just didn't have the energy to really focus on decorating when we first moved in. And decorating for Christmas (or any holiday) is something I typically really enjoy, but it took a lot of effort for me to get out the boxes of Christmas decorations this year. I was thinking, "more boxes?!" NO!!" I do not want to get out more boxes, do more unpacking, to put up stuff that is only going to be up for one month and then do more re-packing! But I did manage to put up some stuff in an attempt to make it feel homey and Christmasy...starting with the Christmas tree.
We put up a real tree, so Thanksgiving weekend, we loaded up to go pick out our tree. I usually take my time strolling through the lot, looking for the perfect little guy, but not this year. Felicity fell asleep in the car on the way there and we woke her up to go look at the trees (big mistake)...not to mention there was some sort of bizarre wind storm going on. We literally pointed to the first tree we saw laying on the ground, still wrapped in netting. I have never picked a tree like that, and I hope to do it that way never again. It surprising looked pretty good when we got home (no giant holes or weird branches), but it was a dangerous weapon! I'm not even kidding you, if you tried to decorate it with your bare hands, you would be bleeding. Justin thought I was being ridiculous, but I had to go get my gloves just to put the ornaments on. But Felicity was still caught up in the wonderment of the tree, lights, ornaments and the whole hoopla, which is exactly what I hoped for. Can't you tell?
(Please note my gloves)
(Now please note that Felicity is a smart little lady like her mama!)
I'm pretty sure I'm gonna be crying out of pain when we have to take this bad boy down and the branches are even more dry and prickly.
(Update: Yes, it was horrible. I was screaming and almost crying... Justin even wanted to borrow my gloves. I was nice and let him. Mental note -- next year I'm going to rub all the branches at the tree lot and be sure to pick the softest, nicest tree.)
