Thanksgiving +

Apparently last week's blog never got published and was sitting as a draft so I guess today is a two blog post kind of day.  It seems par for the course for life right now.  I feel like I am kind of getting steamrolled by everything, but I am running as fast as possible and there are brief moments where I actually feel ahead.  More on that in a second.

This week was Thanksgiving and we truly have a lot to be thankful for. Things are good for both Jeremy and I at work and all the kids are thriving in school.  If it wasn't for Merrick's pesky heart condition, things would be really great right now.  I so appreciate this time of year to come together with family and count my blessings.  This year, we celebrated the day at my sister, Emily's, house with her kids, my parents and my nephew and his girlfriend. We had delicious food and Carrigan even helped by making the baked beans this year.

Post Thanksgiving, we finally made the girls' Christmas decorating dreams come true.  All of our neighbors have had their lights up since Nov 1st and it has been making the girls crazy that I wouldn't let them decorate until after Thanksgiving.  Friday morning, however we were all in.

We started by getting all the Thanksgiving decor put away and then got all the indoor and outdoor decorations put up.  The girls were super excited because Auntie stopped by with a new blowup for us to put up in the yard.  Well actually she brought three, but since we have zero exterior outlets and we are trying not to overload the outlet in the garage and burn the house down, we settled on just one big one.  The girls also enjoyed creating a "tree theme" on one buffet, with all of our tree themed decorations.  They were tremendously helpful in getting the decorations up.

Saturday, the holiday theme continued with an outing to get the star of the show, the Christmas tree.  The farm we went to was a bit of a drive, but worth it with hot chocolate, cider, and ornament making.  Jeremy kept vetoing trees for being too short, so we hiked all around the farm and ended up with a nine foot beauty.  We waisted no time in getting it home, getting lights on it and getting it decorated.  Again, the girls were super helpful.  There is no way I could have gotten it all done without them.  I guess it's time I scale back my ODC and hand the reigns off on more things.

We ended the night on Saturday with a trip to see the big guy himself, Santa.  My big guy, Merrick, was not sure he wanted to go and refused to get dressed up, but was a good sport and participated none the less.

It's just under a month until Christmas and I actually feel ahead of the game in checking off the Christmas "must dos".  That was by design though because I feel like we will lose some time around Merrick's surgery.  We have just under two weeks until that and we are all looking forward to getting it in the rearview mirror.