Thanksgiving 2009

Thanksgiving weekend was nice for us.  We had a small Thanksgiving this year-just our little family, my two nephews from Oregon who are at BYU, and Mark's grandpa.  We missed having more family to spend it with, but Mark's parents were out of town and his sister who lives here was with her in-laws this year.  By the way, we broke out our wedding china for the first time ever since we have been married (for almost 14 years)!!!  We didn't take it with us when we moved away for school and it sat in Mark's parents' basement all those years and then got brought to our house and put in the basement at some point.  It's definitely a style from the 1990's, but we have a complete set for 12-might as well use it!

We have hosted many a Thanksgiving dinner (and a few Christmas dinners too) living out of state for a decade.  Funny thing is (and I learned this the hard way this year) it's A LOT of work to prepare the entire meal in just one family.  Usually we have other families who come to our house for dinner and bring part of the dinner like the rolls or a salad or the sweet potatoes, and usually more than one thing.  We didn't think about how much work it would be for Mark and I to cook every single Thanksgiving dish from scratch just the two of us.  Fortunately, Mark is an excellent cook and did more than his share of work.  He brined and roasted the turkey with very little help from me, made a pecan pie with homemade crust, made the rolls, and helped me with whatever else he could.  It was an insane amout of cooking and dish doing.   I ran 10 miles Thanksgiving morning in an attempt to earn my yummy, calorie-laden dinner, and after that and all that cooking and cleaning up, I was exhausted.

To complete the weekend, for the first time ever, I got my Christmas decorations all up!! I am so proud of myself.  I find it quite a lot of work to get all that done, but I took a different approach this year.  Since it takes so much work to get the tree up and decorated (our tree is not prelit and you literally put it together one branch at a time) and the rest of the Christmas stuff out, I decided I might as well do it early so we have the maximum amount of time to enjoy the holiday decor.  The kids were so excited as I was getting all the stuff put out, and Brooke and Anna were very  helpful with the whole process. They have been playing constantly with this Christmas carousel Mark's grandpa gave us last year.  It's not exactly a toy, but they love the music and lights.  It's even more fun to have their Polly Pockets ride it.

I thought we might get a new tree this year-one that fits the room better, is taller and thinner.  This one doesn't fit the room quite right now that we have some furniture.  But we decided to save the money and make it work at least one more year.  I have a few more finishing touches to add, like putting the garland on the staircase and doing something with the mantle and a few other things.  And I suppose we need something for the top of the tree.  But the tree is up and the entryway console table is decorated.  The boxes haven't made it all the way back into the basement yet.  But for me this represents good progress over years past.  Putting Christmas up the Saturday after Thanksgiving just might be my new tradition.