Thanksgiving Weekend

It seems hard to believe that it's already been a week since the long Thanksgiving weekend. As with every year, we spent the day out at my parents' house, with a good portion of my mother's family, plus my dad's brother and his wife that live up the road. My mom's mother, brother, his wife, their three sons, and the wife of one of the boys means that there are about 15 of us all around for the afternoon, enjoying the food and just relaxing. It's always nice to sit around, waiting on the meal, looking at the shopping circulars that are in the paper, even though I'm not crazy enough to actually go out on Black Friday.

This year, both Benjamin and Sarah stayed with my parents for the night and went with them Friday to take my grandmother back to her house in Newark, on the other side of the state. So for only the second time since Sarah was born, we had the house to ourselves. Boy, it's quiet when the kids aren't there!

We used that time to get started on the Christmas decorations. I got all the boxes out of the garage, which is quite a few. We put up both trees, the taller one that goes in the den and the shorter one, passed down to me by my parents, the tree older than I am, in Sarah's room. Most years, we've put it up in Benjamin's room, but since Sarah never spends time in her room, we had given her toddler bed back to the people that had let us borrow it, and there was much more room in her room, we went that route. (Benjamin got one of those table-top trees in his room with miniature ornaments.)

Friday, we slept in, which was lovely. No kids in the bed, no reason to get up and around, just not something you have very often! When we did stir, we started putting other decorations around the house then, after a lunch out, we came back and worked on the outside of the house. We are people that love lots of lights, so it took the both of us working on it to get it done before it got dark and the kids got back. We didn't quite finish, but the majority of the work got done then.

Saturday, the kids went to spend some time with a couple from our church that have basically adopted them as grandchildren. That gave us time to finish working on the outside (save for a lighted arch that I still haven't gotten up yet). After that, Meron went to pick up the kids while I went over to my friend Andy's parents house to watch the LSU/Arkansas game. It's been a tradition in our high school friends group to watch that game, but the power that be moved it from Friday afternoon to Saturday night, so I was the only one that made it, and I had to leave at halftime. Still, it was good to see Andy again for a little while.

Sunday, we let the kids help put ornaments on the tree. They decided which ones were going in Sarah's room and which ones were going on the main tree, then Benjamin especially got into hanging them on the tree. So if you come to our house and notice it's a little ornament heavy in one spot, you can thank him. Sarah tried a couple of times, but then lost interest and let us finish it up. Meron helped Benjamin on the main tree while I put on hooks, while we flipped assignments on the secondary tree.

For the most part, the house is all Christmas-fied. Which is good, since we have two holiday parties to host in the next couple of weeks!