Our Apologies to Thanksgiving

Dear Thanksgiving,

You are important to us and you will be observed this Thursday just as you are every 4th Thursday of November. We will gorge ourselves to the point of no return and beyond recognition and we won't regret a single bite of it.

This year, however, we have begun celebrating Christmas prior to your passing. This is a first for us, too, so bear with us, and most especially with Carina. She's new at this holiday thing and though she is a master at schedule adherence in her daily routine, she's not yet aware of the order in which holidays occur according to calendar year. Yes, we her parents are fully aware of the hard and fast facts of the Gregorian/ Western/ American-Mayflower-Pilgrims ( etc.) Calendar in which Thanksgiving precedes Christmas, and, yes, we are using her lack of awareness to our family's collective advantage and impulse satisfaction, but, to be completely honest, we just couldn't wait to see the look on her face once the newest edition to our family, the Christmas-Tree-of-all-Christmas-Trees, had been assembled (yes, it's fake) and lit. Please forgive us this time, Thanksgiving, though I have a feeling it won't be the last.



Carina was appointed Head of Ornament Hanging and Arranging and excelled tremendously...



Jared was hard at work cutting and tying hemp twine to hang the ornaments while Carina continued her arduous task of inspecting and gathering shatter-proof (good thing they were, too...) ornaments. We decided to go with hemp twine to hang them because it doesn't feel like a tiny and annoyingly prick-y knife stabbing into your bare foot if you happen to step on it. Good call.

While Jared and Carina were hard at work, Mama was over-zealously playing with her camera (obviously) because...drumroll, please...IT'S WORKING AGAIN! Turns out it just needed new batteries. Thanks for that brilliant insight, Papaw. LOL! All day Sunday was so completely perfect that not much, if anything, could be done to improve on it. We got the tree up, it came pre-lit (score!) so we just had to hang ornaments, spread out a super-soft, neutral colored, and useable-year-round blanket around its base as a treeskirt, and imbibe. It was the first time I've ever had a beer in one hand and a Christmas ornament in the other and it was such an oh-so-satisfying-feeling. Festive in more ways than one, no doubt!

Our recently discovered and current favorite:

And then there was dancing. There has to be festive dancing whenever the Christmas tree is getting decorated. Normally, families listen to Christmas music and get all wrapped up in "Silver Bells", "Blue Christmas", and rock out with "Jingle Bell Rock", but Carina opted for Jason DeRulo's "Whatcha Say". She loves Pop music: the more complicated the beat, the better, it seems, too. Since Christmas music isn't on the radio yet for this Holiday Season, it was a (somewhat) fair trade off. I'm hoping she takes to overplayed Christmas music as enthusiastically as she does to overplayed Pop music...



One can hope, right?

She cares an awful lot about her tree: she says,"Hi, Tree!" when she first sees it (either first thing each morning or when she gets home from school) and says,"Bye, Tree!" whenever she's leaving the room, even at bedtime. Mamaw said it best,"She's really going to get into Christmas
this year..."

It looks like she's well on her way.