Can it really be Monday?  It feels like Thanksgiving was weeks ago.  The day goes by so fast in a fury of food and dirty dishes, and then I’m all in a hurry to push Thanksgiving aside and put up the Christmas decorations, that it almost feels like I missed Thanksgiving.  But I didn’t. We had a nice dinner with my sister and her boys (“boys” includes her husband and my two nephews).  My parents even stopped by with my aunt and uncle on the way home from their Thanksgiving dinner at the casino.  It was a nice day.  I even roasted a turkey for the first time.  Now don’t get me wrong, we used to host the annual family Thanksgiving every year, which consisted of about 20-25 guests, we even cooked two turkeys most years, but Luke always deep fried them.  I’ve never gotten to cook one in the oven.  It was very exciting.  I followed the easy recipe from The Pioneer Woman which involves no real basting, but lots of butter slathering.  Yum.  The bird was juicy and delicious, and there were pan-drippings, which meant I got to make my own gravy for once!  So days of planning, cleaning, shopping, and cooking, and we were finished eating in 17 minutes.  That’s just so disappointing.  But still, it was delicious, and afterwards we sat around and played with a new game called Blockus that my sister brought as a gift for my half-birthday.  What?  You don’t celebrate your half birthday?  How sad for you.  Then everyone went home and Luke and I sat down for a quiet drink and both nearly fell asleep on the couch.  Thanksgiving was over, now it’s time for… Black Friday!

I’ve said it before, I really don’t know why, but I love to shop on Black Friday.  The craziest thing is that I’m never going for any deals on Christmas presents.  I think I just like to shop in the early morning and as a bonus, the Christmas carols are playing everywhere and you get nice coupons.  My only goal was to buy a humidifier for the house, hoping I might score an after-Thanksgiving deal, and then I thought I might go to Jo-Ann Fabric where I had a 20% off coupon.  Well, three different store visits to check out the prices and choices in humidifiers and I ended up back where I started at Linens-N-Things.  Then I stood in a crazy long line a Jo-Ann’s to get some deals, realizing when I got home that I had been double charged on a few items.  Humbug!  It wasn’t the usual fun Black Friday trip, but still I got what I went for and was home by 11am.

We usually get our Christmas tree on Black Friday, but things were busy and the wind was gusty and we decided to pitch our tree-cutting plans and go on Saturday.  My dad likes to call it “killing a tree for Christmas” so his spirit was with us as we roamed around Hunt’s Tree Farm in Coventry.  It’s only about a mile from the house and the family is so nice, we love to go there every year to get our tree.

Luke forbid me from picking a tree years ago because my trees were always so fat, they barely fit in the door.  We have a high ceiling in the room we keep the tree, so we can get a tall one, but it’s always so hard for me to judge height in the great outdoors.  Luke liked this one (with the mitten marker) and I agreed.  We circled it, checked it from all angles, and then in my evilest voice I whispered, “Kill it”.  (That’s Dad’s influence there.)

Luke started to cut it down and I said, “Ooh, it smells nice”, to which Luke replied in his evil voice “That’s the smell of death!”  (See?  Dad was there with us the whole time.)  Luke cut while I watched and took pictures.  He dragged it to the side of the road while I watched and took pictures.  He went to get the truck while I waited by the tree and took pictures.  I’ve never felt so girly and wussy.

And now the tree is home, in the stand, in the living room, naked.  My plan was to decorate it on Sunday while Luke was at work.  Oh, there’s another story.  As if Luke’s internal clock wasn’t screwey enough, he decided to get some voluntary overtime and work on Sunday morning from 8am-1pm, then come home, eat and sleep, then go back to work at his normal time, which was moved up a half hour for the holidays from midnight to 11:30pm.  So when he left at 7:30 on Sunday morning, I was going to decorate the house and the tree and maybe sew some things, but as I leaned over the stairs to put some holly on a high shelf on the wall, I had a little spasm in my lower back that somewhat slowed me down for the rest of the day.  I’m fine, MUCH better than the other times I’ve had spasms, but I’m still stiff and sore and didn’t want to risk it too much.  I decorated the house and laid on the heating pad.  I sewed one purse and finished the invitations for the holiday sale.  It was a slow day, but it’s so nice to see the Christmas decorations again.  And I watched back-to-back Christmas movies all day.  <Sigh…> I love Christmas.

And today, I’m told, is Cyber Monday when everyone is Christmas shopping online from their work computers.  Interesting, since I was planning to do the same.  Happy Cyber Monday to you all, I hope your Thanksgivings were wonderful, your weekends restful, and  no one was maimed Black Friday shopping.