Pearly Words of Chaos: Thanksgiving and other Holiday Shenanigans

Sorry I am posting this late. Our computer finally bit the dust and so we shall be computer-less for a while. The good news? You can count on a regular Saturday post going forward as I blog "live" every Saturday morning from Nana's house.

Happy week after Thanksgiving weekend all! I hope everyone had safe travels and sweet times with family. Overall, we had a great weekend in our neck of the woods. Emma and I are getting over the cold we manage to get at this same time every year although this one is a duesie. It started off by taking me down for the count last Sunday and Monday and just when I started being able to breathe through my nose, the hacking cough came. This cough is like a million horrendous aftershocks from an earthquake that happened so long ago you barely remember the actual main event. It’s like the congestion left and now I am stuck sounding like a 90 year old bronchitis patient. Emma is at about the same stage and it just seems this mutant mucus that won’t leave.

So that about sums up how we were when Thanksgiving day rolled around. I pretty much lay in bed all day up until dinner. At dinner, I tried to avoid everyone as best as I could. No one wants to be the plague passer oner at a family event. It was like every time I burst into a fit of coughing hysterics everyone looked at me like I should be wearing an Ebola hazmat suit. This is why there are no cutesy family pictures from the day. By Black Friday, I was feeling well enough to hack my way through some stores but after a nightmare shopping experience (standing in line for over an hour with the threat of losing out on time sensitive deals) I was pretty much over it. Thankfully (see what I did there), my gracious and loving sister went into battle with me and we ended up watching bad/ hilarious infomercials in line (a good way to pass the time if you need one!) Thank you YouTube! Suffice it to say, although Black Friday has been a fun little tradition I’ve shared with my sister and aunt for years now (mostly in celebration for no longer working in retail after over 7 years in the biz) I think this *might* be my last one. It was still fun but crowds of people are becoming less and less my thing (ok they never were.)

Once again this year, I realized that December started right after Thanksgiving….(imagine that) and thus we needed to get a Christmas tree. Why do I feel like December started a week after Thanksgiving when I was younger, like there was more time to decorate and get a tree, a little breathing room between the taste of turkey and the smell of pine needles? I guess before I had a kid decorating just sort of happened when it happened but now, I feel like there is a real need to capture every single second of holiday cheer and by December 1, I want everything to transform into Christmas Merriment for my child. So with that, we set out to find our Christmas tree.

Now for the past two years, we have all been plagued with terrible illness to the point where we were unable to leave the house thus we were at the mercy of getting our tree from a big box store. Both times they turned out really well and I was pleased that we did not lose Christmas magic because our trees were pre-cut, sitting in a pile rather than hand sawed direct from the tree farm to our house. This year, even with the aforementioned hackers cough, we were all in reasonable enough good health to make a trip to the magic tree farm! The crazy thing of it all was when it came down to it, when all was said and done, when the line between tree farm tree and store bought tree appeared in the distance, I suddenly remembered the joy of picking our tree out at the store. It was a 5 minute trip versus a 45 minute trip, we could be in and out of the store quickly so we wouldn’t have to be out in the cold too long, and I really liked their tree selection. So incredibly, this year, we continued our tradition of skipping the farm and having a good time frolicking through isles of trees and garland.

Of course as it turned out, my toddler decided to act like a two year old and my husband was more interested in football once we got home ( in his defense, I did make him hold up EVERY single tree in the place so I could judge and scrutinize every single branch so I guess he was tired when we got home) but I managed to be as merry and cheerful as I could through it all. I’m hoping this lack of interest in all things holiday on the part of my family ends at some point but maybe it was just the day or perhaps we should have slugged our way through the Christmas tree farm, at least there are no shopping carts to lounge in ( see picture explanation below) and you don’t have to unravel 20 trees to find one you like even though it’s already half dead. Yes, after meticulously inspecting every tree for perfect height and fullness, we picked the best looking and most impractical tree on the lot, the one with a bunch of dead branches on the bottom. Of course we might have a dead tree by December 16^thbut by goolie, it will look amazing until then.