Thanksgiving weekend
Nov. 26th, 2007 09:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pegkerrI'm truly amazed by all the stuff I got accomplished this weekend.
We had Thanksgiving dinner at my sister Betsy's. We brought a hot appetizer (baked brie, topped with apples and cranberries), pumpkin bread and pop. Delia and I made the pumpkin bread together, which was fun mother-daughter time. The girls enjoyed watching the Macy's parade.
On Friday, Rob and I got up at 4:50 a.m. and left the house at 5:15 a.m. and got ALL of our Christmas shopping done. Yes, I know that participating in Black Friday shopping is giving in to the Evil Consumerist Culture. Shut up. By shopping the doorbuster sales, I was able to stretch our holiday dollars much further, which is an important consideration, given the unemployment situation. It was actually quite fun. This is the first Thanksgiving in eight years I had Rob come with me--ordinarily, he'd be working at CompUSA all weekend and I had to do all the holiday shopping myself. Boo hiss to CompUSA; despite the agonies of unemployment, I'm so glad that he's out of there. It was fun to do it together, and nice to have him there to consult, and if there were long lines, one of us could stay there while the other hit a different store. It all went extremely well, and we got some nice bargains. And we didn't put a single thing on credit cards. All I have left to do is something for my attorneys: I'll probably bake some quick bread or something right before the holiday.
When we got home, there was a nice surprise for us: the girls had cleaned the entire downstairs and set out all the Christmas decorations. Hurrah! We celebrated by watching "Miracle on 34th Street."
I got the pictures uploaded from the belt tests and sent out to the webmaster. I sent out a few necessary emails. I did four loads of laundry and bagged five huge bags of yard waste.
We decided to get our Christmas tree, a little earlier than we usually do, but the house was all decorated already, so we went out for it Saturday night and decorated it last night. I was getting dinner ready last night, feeling unbelievably smug with how well the whole weekend had gone when suddenly--CRASH! The fully decorated Christmas tree had toppled over, dumping the water out of the base all over the floor and littering the floor with broken ornaments. My heart was in my throat as we uprighted it, but after an anxious survey of the damage, we all drew a big sigh of relief. Unbelievable, we only had about three of the ornamments we really cared about broken, and I was able to glue two of them back together. I was particularly relieved that the special ornaments we had made when each girl was a baby survived (with their baby pictures inset in a porcelin ball). A lot of the generic glass balls shattered, but that was no big deal. The tree even considerately missed the coffee table when it took its nose dive. We have it back up and redecorated (with a couple inconspicuous twine tethers to keep it upright).
So, I feel much further ahead in my Christmas preparations than I ordinarily do by this time. I had hoped to start a draft of my holiday letter, but I didn't get to it. Hopefully, I'll start it tonight or tomorrow. From here on out, it's just the cards, cookie baking, and perhaps some little gifts for friends and neighbors. I think I'll make some of those miniature Christmas trees for that. Hurrah!
We had Thanksgiving dinner at my sister Betsy's. We brought a hot appetizer (baked brie, topped with apples and cranberries), pumpkin bread and pop. Delia and I made the pumpkin bread together, which was fun mother-daughter time. The girls enjoyed watching the Macy's parade.
On Friday, Rob and I got up at 4:50 a.m. and left the house at 5:15 a.m. and got ALL of our Christmas shopping done. Yes, I know that participating in Black Friday shopping is giving in to the Evil Consumerist Culture. Shut up. By shopping the doorbuster sales, I was able to stretch our holiday dollars much further, which is an important consideration, given the unemployment situation. It was actually quite fun. This is the first Thanksgiving in eight years I had Rob come with me--ordinarily, he'd be working at CompUSA all weekend and I had to do all the holiday shopping myself. Boo hiss to CompUSA; despite the agonies of unemployment, I'm so glad that he's out of there. It was fun to do it together, and nice to have him there to consult, and if there were long lines, one of us could stay there while the other hit a different store. It all went extremely well, and we got some nice bargains. And we didn't put a single thing on credit cards. All I have left to do is something for my attorneys: I'll probably bake some quick bread or something right before the holiday.
When we got home, there was a nice surprise for us: the girls had cleaned the entire downstairs and set out all the Christmas decorations. Hurrah! We celebrated by watching "Miracle on 34th Street."
I got the pictures uploaded from the belt tests and sent out to the webmaster. I sent out a few necessary emails. I did four loads of laundry and bagged five huge bags of yard waste.
We decided to get our Christmas tree, a little earlier than we usually do, but the house was all decorated already, so we went out for it Saturday night and decorated it last night. I was getting dinner ready last night, feeling unbelievably smug with how well the whole weekend had gone when suddenly--CRASH! The fully decorated Christmas tree had toppled over, dumping the water out of the base all over the floor and littering the floor with broken ornaments. My heart was in my throat as we uprighted it, but after an anxious survey of the damage, we all drew a big sigh of relief. Unbelievable, we only had about three of the ornamments we really cared about broken, and I was able to glue two of them back together. I was particularly relieved that the special ornaments we had made when each girl was a baby survived (with their baby pictures inset in a porcelin ball). A lot of the generic glass balls shattered, but that was no big deal. The tree even considerately missed the coffee table when it took its nose dive. We have it back up and redecorated (with a couple inconspicuous twine tethers to keep it upright).
So, I feel much further ahead in my Christmas preparations than I ordinarily do by this time. I had hoped to start a draft of my holiday letter, but I didn't get to it. Hopefully, I'll start it tonight or tomorrow. From here on out, it's just the cards, cookie baking, and perhaps some little gifts for friends and neighbors. I think I'll make some of those miniature Christmas trees for that. Hurrah!
