Holidays!!!

I freaking love the holidays.

Kicking it all off was a pretty sweet Thanksgiving. We were lucky enough to have my parents come visit for the week. We haven't had Thanksgiving with family for a really long time. 8 years? Well, I guess I can count Rob and Laura joining our feast last year. But that's sorta cancelled out by the year that he lived in our house and didn't even have Thanksgiving with us. Something about getting engaged or being all in love or something? I don't remember all the details. But anyways, I'm totally off on that one....

So Thanksgiving. With Family! How fun! I think my parents were actually so relieved when they left because we took them on some stunningly beautiful hikes nearly every day. I think their old bones were aching. You gotta make room for that turkey somehow, right?

And the turkey. Let's just talk about the turkey. Some might say I've lost my mind. Keith thinks I'm a hippie. I found myself a free-range, organic heritage turkey. You see, regular old grocery store turkeys are pumped so full of hormones to get them all big and fat in the shortest time possible that they are genetically messed up. They get so breast heavy that if they lived any longer than Thanksgiving, their legs would actually collapse. The poor things can't even walk. They have also been engineered so that they can't even reproduce. Every turkey in the store is made out of a test tube. It's all a science project. You see, if those turkeys could mate, they would waste precious energy trying to flirt with other turkeys. Instead, without that instinct, they can sit around all fat and lazy and just get bigger and bigger. Until their legs collapse.

So, call me a hippie. I found a farm nearby that raises organic turkeys. I'm trying to save the world, folks. One thanksgiving dinner at a time. And it was yuuummmy.

So now we have Christmas to look forward to. Yahoo! We just bought a big huge Christmas tree this morning. Almost 10 feet tall. We've got big ceilings so we gotta take advantage! It's all smelling of fresh pine, the music is playing, I even have bread baking right now. I'm trying to keep my eyes above eye level though. I'm only looking at the top 5 feet of the tree and only at the mantle of the fireplace with the pretty lights and Christmas stuff. Otherwise, this perfect scene would be spoiled by the pine needles all over the floor, the food pile under the Leah's chair, the mess I left from making the bread, the toys and bikes (yes, that would be 2 bikes) laying around, and the dirty dishes screaming to be washed. And I would also notice the one and only present under the tree. That would be the present that Keith retrieved from the mailbox today. That would be Keith's present, actually. The one and only present that I had planned to buy him. One that I knew he wanted really bad and I told him there was no way. And now he knows exactly what it is.

So much for surprises. Bah humbug.

There's only one cure for this funk. I gotta go chug some egg nog.