Holiday Preparations 2013

So have you begun your holiday preparations yet?  I normally wait until the day after Thanksgiving to put up my tree, but this year, the holiday bug bit me early.  If I’d had my way, I would have put up my tree last weekend, but it was all I could do to beg and barter to get hubby to get it all down from the attic THIS weekend instead, LOL!  It was even late on Sunday when he got it down, so I was only able to clear the spot where I wanted it to go, assemble the tree, string the lights, set up the tree skirt, and put the angel topper on the tree.    I’m secretly hoping to convince hubby to put lights up on the house next weekend.  We shall see.

We had a little emergency overnight…a pipe to the hot water heater spontaneously sprung a leak…seriously, a braided pipe!  Go figure.  Anyway, hubby was luckily nearby and caught it within minutes of it happening…good thing he made one last trip into the recreation room to make sure he’d turned off the tv, ‘cause that’s when he heard the leak.  So once that was fixed this morning and hubby headed off to work late, the rest of the work on the tree happened first thing this morning.

Next came the other interior decorations, including my extra dining table in the school room.  It looks so festive!

I will wait to decorate my main dinner table until after Thanksgiving…gotta get that pesky little holiday over with first!  LOL.  Actually, I love Thanksgiving.  But I’m in Christmas mode already, so there’s a little conflict there. 

So then I packed up the kids and headed off to do my Thanksgiving dinner shopping…I had quite a grocery list and had to go to a couple of different places to gather all that I needed.  We’ll be having turkey breast cooked in the rotisserie, steamed green beans, sliced smoked ham, stuffing, mashed potatoes, homemade whole cranberry sauce, homemade dinner rolls, homemade fruit salad, pumpkin pie, and homemade pumpkin trifle.  Yum!  I can hardly wait!  We only have 2 guests this year, so it will be a total of 7 rather than the usual 10 or more.  But of course, that just means more yummy leftovers!

I took care of some other errands like making a couple of bank deposits, and then I took the little kids to Mi Casita for their lunch special.  That was a nice treat!  Then one more quick stop to PAY OFF MY VAN!!!!  Yes, you heard that right.  We now own all of our vehicles outright, and our only debt is our house and our townhouse that has tenants in it.  Yippee!  That will surely help ease the belt a little…getting by has been pretty rough lately with the unexpected home repairs we’ve had this year.  I have to say it felt great driving home knowing it was finally ours.

So now I’m ready to sit down and start wrapping presents to put under the tree.  As tight as things are, I’m thankful that I already have some gifts put up from after Christmas sales last year.  The kids are off from homeschooling this week, and Hayden gets out early on Wednesday, so I’m looking forward to some fun family time later this week.  Hayden and I will be doing some limited Black Friday shopping…probably just at Wal-mart this year.  I’m glad the sale starts Thursday night so we can get to bed and enjoy sleeping in a bit on Friday!

My friends know that my tree is only ever up from Black Friday until Christmas Day, so this is clearly a record that my tree is up the weekend BEFORE Thanksgiving.  Everybody take note so I don’t get the Grinch jokes this year…  I’m known for standing up after the last gift is unwrapped and declaring Christmas is over!  LOL.  I just can’t wait to get the cleanup underway so I can recover my house.  Holden’s birthday is just 3 days after Christmas, and we have a big party for him on the first Saturday in January.  My own birthday is January 1st, and my hubby’s is January 7th, so there’s a lot of celebrating going on immediately after the holidays.  I just feel so compelled to get things in order again!  Forgive me…