Write From Karen

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree …

Okay, I won’t sing anymore – after all, you need those ears to hear your loved ones exclaim over their awesome gifts Christmas morning, right?

We put our tree up Sunday. I put the thing together, Kevin strung the lights, the boys decorated it, and I finished it off with icicles.

It’s a hodge-podge tree and I’m TOTALLY cool with that. Our tree consists of homemade ornaments, or ornaments we received as gifts, picked up at local events or simply went out and bought specifically for that year. All of our ornaments have a story and the kids and I enjoy pulling them out every year and remembering how and why we have those particular ornaments.

I took some pictures of our ornaments last year, I’ll take more this year. I’ll post the pictures and tell you the story behind them (and if I can’t remember the stories exactly, I’ll fill in the blanks. I’m really good at filling in memory blanks – aren’t I mom. hehe).

Other than our Christmas tree? The only other Christmas decorations we have around the house are the advent calendar and stockings, hung up by the fireplace, of course.

And that’s it.

I used to decorate more, but the more I put out, the more I have to put back up later and I’m too lazy to bother with it.

It looks like we’ll be spending Christmas Eve with Kevin’s family and staying home Christmas Day. My parents are driving to my brother’s house on Christmas Day and since that’s the only time we can all get together (my mom has to work the weekends and my brother and sister have to work during the week) and Kevin doesn’t want to drive six hours on Christmas Day (three up there, three back), then we won’t be able to make it this year. I’m trying to talk my parents into coming over one night for dinner at our house and have a mini-Christmas, but I haven’t heard back from them yet.

It’s so hard to get everyone together when we all live in different cities and everyone has to work around their work schedules.

But Kevin and I have decided we are not going to stress over the holidays anymore. We used to divide Christmas Day up between my family and his family and it just sucked – we spent the whole day on fast forward, rushing through our family Christmas in the morning, going to my parent’s house for brunch, then watching the clock and going over to his parent’s house for a late lunch/early dinner.

That’s honestly no way to spend the holiday. So now, I’m trying to talk the families into celebrating Christmas on any other day BUT Christmas Day so we can all have our time to relax and actually enjoy the holiday.

I haven’t been too successful. And now all of the kids are getting older, leaving home and establishing their own lives and relationships, so it’s all changing again anyway – I imagine the dynamics are going to be completely different in a few years.

I spent the entire day planning, shopping and buying Christmas gifts. I haunted Amazon’s Cyber Monday sales and I must say, I landed some pretty sweet deals. In fact, Kevin and the boys are DONE, I’m happy to report. All I need are some stocking stuffers and Kevin and I are going out tomorrow to shop for new computer chairs for the boys. Other than that?

I’m done.

Not that I would dream of rubbing that in your face or anything.

*ahem* 😀

Bring it on, December.

Christmas song #1 Wonderful Time of the Year by Barlow Girl

Are you ready for this … ?

I’m thankful Thanksgiving is over.

There. I said it.

I know! Where is my attitude of gratitude??

Actually, I AM grateful for everything, please don’t think that I’m not. But I have a hard time summoning the gratitude attitude when I have to host Thanksgiving dinner.

This hostess with the mostess gets stressed out!

We had everything under control (for the most part) though. Kevin put the turkey into the oven at 11:00 p.m. Friday night (did I mention we had to have our Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday?) and it cooked until 6:00 a.m. the next morning. We have a thermometer that plugs into our oven that is programmed to shut the oven off once the turkey reaches the desired temperature. Which is nice, because we were able to sleep without worrying about the turkey over cooking.

Kevin then carved the turkey and we had it ready to go by 8:00 a.m. We stuck the turkey in our warming drawer, I woke the boys up, straightened the house while they showered and Kevin and I still had time to sit for about thirty minutes and catch our breath while listening to Christmas music.

Our guests were scheduled to arrive at noon. At 11:00 a.m., we heard what sounded like someone walking on the roof – it was because someone WAS walking on the roof. The roof guy just showed up prepared to tweak the roof. We didn’t say anything at first, but when I saw him go to his truck, pull out a tool belt and start gathering equipment, I asked Kevin to tell him that now wasn’t a good time.

We were expecting 15 people in little less than an hour, after all. (Can you imagine being in the middle of the Thanksgiving prayer and trying to thank God for our abundance while competing with mind-numbing hammering? Exactly).

Everyone arrived at noon, we ate, talked …

had pie …

and me, my brother-in-law, my nephew, and Dude played the Settler’s of Catan game …

which lasted three LONG hours …

seriously, THREE HOURS.

It was like the longest Settler’s of Catan game EVER. (Actually, we played the Cities and Knights expansion pack which added to the difficulty level and of course, extended the game).

By the way, I came in last place. My nephew won, Dude came in second and my brother-in-law third.

Everyone stuck around until about 7:00 p.m. and when they left, I ate more pie and collapsed into a coma.

I think I’m still trying to recover.

Kevin LOVES hosting Thanksgiving. Me? Not so much. And it’s not because I don’t like having people over, oh contrare, but rather, it’s A LOT of work. Of course, a lot of that work is self-imposed, meaning that we don’t have to do nearly as much as we do whenever it’s our turn to host the dinner, but it’s fun to use Thanksgiving as our goal to work toward because most of these home improvements would still just be talked about instead of actually done if not for our self-imposed deadline.

I’m quite sure that made sense.

At any rate, we’re DONE with Thanksgiving and we won’t have to host dinner again until 2013.

This kid? Will have graduated from high school by then.

THAT doesn’t blow my mind at all.