Thankfulness And A Behind The Scenes Look At Our Christmas Tradition

Every year at this time, I'm thankful that I don't have rabies.

Well. It's hard to come up with a new blog post introduction sometimes, and that was the best I could do. Now I can move forward without the pressure.

Dawson and I look for a 1,000 piece Christmas puzzle to do each year while shopping at Hobby Lobby with the intent to start it while he's on Thanksgiving break. But this year we got a little anxious because the puzzle was just sitting around in the box and it was getting upset. I think we actually finished it before Thanksgiving break started. Then I was going to open the puzzle I got my mom for Christmas and do that one and ship her this one, but I changed my mind because I'm her favorite and I didn't want to impede on that.

Yesterday was Thanksgiving. I got up, made cupcakes, went for a 3 mile run in order to earn my turkey badge, then made frosting for the cupcakes, took a shower and made green bean casserole. That whole sentence was just to over use commas. 

Jason was determined to frost the cupcakes and he ended up choosing a frosting tip that made the design look like brains. Brains with caramel ooze.

We celebrated at my sister-in-laws house, which is perfect because the kids all go downstairs to their basement and play and we don't see them for hours. I asked her if we could just move in and she said no.

After our Thanksgiving feast we all moved into the living room to settle on a Christmas movie or just any movie really, that would calm the kids down because they ate 3 cupcakes a piece and the aftermath was a display of crazy we couldn't tolerate in our state of turkey slump.

 Dawson got to fulfill his dream of becoming a merman when his cousin let him borrow her mermaid cozy. 

All of my other Thanksgiving Day pictures went on FB so I guess now I have to move on to our "day after Thanksgiving decorate for Christmas" tradition.

First. It was very hard to get into the Christmas spirit because it was 72 degrees and sunny outside. If I were back home in gloomy Indiana, this would be a non-issue and I would have seasonal depression by now. 

This is me annoyed with said weather.

Second. The holidays have sabotaged my good eating habits this year. Just before we left for Disney, I was at a weight that I hadn't seen since before having children. It was all because of this awesome high fat low carb eating plan I was doing. Today when we went shopping I was starving and decided to really hop back on that band wagon and came home with this. Success.

 The boys were surprisingly patient this year, while waiting to decorate for Christmas. Ordinarily I'd threaten all manner of "no Christmas presents for you this year" dither to demand compliance to my "we can't decorate yet" blabbering... but they stayed busy doing other things all morning so it was moot.

Third. Evan was watching Shaun The Sheep, rather than a Christmas movie which didn't help the 72 degrees, sunny outside bah-humbug feeling I was having.

Down in the deep dark recesses of our basement is a blue curtain. Behind this curtain is OZ a random assortment of items that we have no other place to put, including Christmas decorations.

 For you, my valued blog reader, I'm prepared to pull back the curtain and give you a glimpse into the organized chaos of our basement shelves.

 Yes. I'm available for your small space organizational needs. 

We pile all of the decorations on the floor and have the boys carry them up to the living room. This is the living room before decorating:

This is the living room during decorating:

Yeah I was pretty proud of the way the boys lined everything up all color coordinated by staggering the silver ornaments with the maroon ornaments. It's aesthetically pleasing.

Jason sets up the tree, and he doesn't let me help with that part, because he likes to bend all of the branches a certain way in order for it to look full. Apparently I skinny up trees.

So while he's doing that, I set about loading the CD player with Christmas music. Dawson didn't tell me he was going to take my picture during this important part of the festivities.

 Since I'm all about thankfulness, I can share here that I'm grateful my butt crack wasn't showing.

Currently, my 2 favorite Christmas albums are these:

Eventually it was time for the mess. My least favorite part of this tradition.

 Evan found his stocking and said "Why do they have to be socks"? Jason and I couldn't answer that question.

 Dawson found the art project he made for me when he was in kindergarten. I'm not a hoarder. He's lucky I kept that.

Finally it was time to decorate the tree.

No one bothered capturing the memory of me decorating our tree, so I took it upon myself and got photo bombed.

Even fake trees leave behind a wake of irritating pine needles.

It wasn't long before Evan got mad about something and pouted, so Dawson snagged a picture.

 And then... the decorating was complete. Maybe that's why he was pouting.

I don't collect snowmen, but I have these guys that come out every year:

We hang our stockings up on the fireplace mantle. I need a santa hat for the fish.

 The boys loved each other for one photo snapshot.

My newest addition to our Christmas decorating is this miniature Nativity. We've had several nativities over the years, all of which have not exceeded my standards and have been sold. Which is what might happen to this set as well. Especially because I feel that I put the figures too close together and it's smothering the baby Jesus. If he or Mary were claustrophobic, I imagine they would have had to enforce visiting hours, your know?

There you have the 2017 edition of our Christmas tradition. 

Tonight, I'm breaking out The Elf On The Shelf for the first time. Let's hope the Elf doesn't die between now and Christmas.

The Great Colorado Adventure

A little over a month ago, my Momma surprised me with a call asking if she and her friend could fly out and visit.

My mom is 80 years old and has never flown commercially. 

Of course I told her no.

AHAHAHAHAHA. 

just kidding.

She was able to sweet talk her good friend Yolanda into flying out here with her because Yolanda has traveled quite a bit and is comfortable bossing people around in airports. Yolanda was celebrating her 50th wedding anniversary while she was here and her wedding present from her husband was to let her come to Colorado. 

Which is why I'm expecting Jason to let me visit long lost relatives in the Canary Islands for our 50th anniversary. Now it's in writing.

There was a reminder on my calendar that set off an alarm on the 24th of October letting me know that my mom was arriving. 

I jumped all over the airport arrivals waiting room while the TSA agent looked grimly at me like he was ready to taser me if I tripped and fell onto the forbidden side of the hallway where people were rapidly filing off of the plane. In all of my excitement, I forgot to snap a selfie of me jumping up and down while the friendly guy was wheeling my mom closer. 

So I did the next best thing and got a picture of us as soon as we got home. See:

I made a little sign to hold while I waited for mom at the airport but I sort of forgot about it while I was jumping all over. 

I had the entire 9 days planned out. You know. Because I like to make lists.

I let them sleep right after they arrived that evening because I'm a good host.

The following day was a super warm sunny day so we visited Glen Eyrie Castle

Garden of the gods (lowercase 'g' because it's always bothered me that they didn't properly name the place "Garden of the God" because there's only one true God. Just ONE! rant over).

Mom did exceptionally well considering she could hardly breathe at our altitude and I kept her so busy. 

We had just enough time to visit the Compassion building before picking Evan up from school. 

Aren't they cute?

Spending time with "Gramma KK" as she's known to all her grandkids, was very special to Dawson and Evan. There was one time though, that Gramma told an exceptionally LONG story to Evan and he let her know on several occasions that she could keep the stories to a brief time frame.

 We booked a ski resort in Keystone for the weekend because it wasn't ski season yet, so we could afford it.

Jason and I spent a considerable amount of time speculating how they were able to get a hot tub inside the condo which was located on the second floor. I said a helicopter hovered over the unfinished building while firemen hung precariously from the landing gear guiding it into place and a construction worker with an orange hard hat went plummeting to his death because the hot tub cover wasn't securely fastened knocking him off the platform. I won.

There's a beautiful bridge crossing over a brook and a bench located behind our condo.

We went to the Outlet shops in Silverthorne and I got chocolate covered caramel apple at Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory.

This is because Jason nixed my idea of going to the Coach Outlet. I super annoyed that I had side swept bangs added back to my hair. Just needed to vent.

Lake Dillon is nestled somewhere between Keystone and Silverthorne and I'm just guessing about that because I wanted to use the word nestled in a sentence. Regardless, this picture doesn't do it justice:

On Monday, we made the drive back home to our house.

On Tuesday we went to The Arc Thrift store because Tuesday is Senior Citizen Day and all tags but one are marked 50% off for all senior citizens. So I loaded mom's cart up with all the stuff I wanted and she told the cashier she already gave me the money for her stuff. We're a great team.

On Wednesday I took them by our church and we stopped at my office so that mom could see where I previously used to stand all day long before standing at work was cool.

Bright and early on Thursday morning I dropped them off at the airport and I promptly told them to make a pouty face for our photo opportunity.

I called my mom later to make sure she made it home okay and let her know that she's welcome to move in with us.

I've decided to call her every 5 minutes until then so that she knows I miss her.