Did We Miss Thanksgiving???

It’s starting to look a lot like Christmas.  And isn’t it a bit early? My mind is more wrapped up in finals and putting homework in the books for the semester than the horror of stringing Christmas lights.  I did make the bold move of tossing my long used faux Christmas tree to the curb a few weeks ago.  This tree seriously wanted to be a real live tree for so long that I was still picking up the fake needles it shed well into July.  Many of my friends have not only started their Christmas shopping, but also almost completed it.  The homes in my neighborhood bear a striking resemblance to the Griswald’s house in “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation”, blinding me with lights every evening when it gets dark at the ridiculous hour of 4:15pm.  One of them even complete with an inflatable snow globe the size of my garage!!!  The foam on the eggnog of all of this came last Sunday.  I stopped at my mother-in-law’s house to pick up some hot sticks and venison sausage from the deer my father-in-law had processed from his hunting trip in Canada about a month ago.  I came home with five small Christmas bags of ornaments, gifts from my husband’s grandmother who passed away last spring, and wanted all of us to have an ornament from her tree.  Every Christmas Eve has been spent at Grandma’s house, so I got a bit choked up at the thought of these ornaments hanging on my own tree, rather than at Grandma’s house this year.  In addition was a large wrapped box, which contained a gift for our 11 year-old daughters Rachel.  My mother-in-law (Grandma Sissy, as we call her) told us that Rachel’s Great Grandma wanted her to have it and her fingerprints were still on it from all of the times she went there and touched it, fascinated by it.  We opened it up when we got home, and it contained a large snow globe, almost as large as a lamp, that lights up and plays music.  It is sitting on an end table in our living room now, and I am having the most fun turning it on and scaring our dog, Beatrice, a 100 pound boxer/German shepherd mix and a big baby! See photo of the snow globe below.

Then there was last night; I decided to use the blender.  I have not used the blender in years so when I pulled it out of that really high cupboard above the fridge that my 5’4” self can barely reach on my tiptoes, a folded piece of paper fell out.  I opened it up and found a letter to Santa from Rachel from our first Christmas in this house. (She was probably 4 years old, not so good at writing yet!) Either Jason, my husband or Cody, my son had written it because their left-handed handwriting is almost identical, no one remembers who did it.  It says: “Dear Santa Claus, I’m not sure what I want this year.  But, I know something I really want.  It is a sleigh bell and a string for a necklace.  I’m not sure what else I want.  But please don’t use the chimney, because we don’t have a fireplace.  When you come you will see me on the bulbs on the Christmas tree.  I’m the only girl in my family so all the girls on the Christmas tree are me.  If you see a picture I made of you please write back.  Love, Rachel.  P.S. The picture of you is right next to the Christmas tree, and I’ve been a good girl.  And there is a pencil on the white beard of the picture.”  I seem to recall running inside that Christmas Eve as we were coming home from Great Grandma Bebeau’s house and taking her note and hiding it (obviously in the high cupboard I can barely reach above the fridge) and putting a note from Santa in it’s place, right by the picture she made of him.

On that note, Happy Thanksgiving my friends, and to all a good night!!!