It's officially December

Our Christmas tree looks more chaotic each year.  Everyone wants to help and they all want to put their own special ornaments up and the traditional glass balls get left in the boxes.  Oh well, it still looks beautiful in a disorganized, random way!

Thanksgiving

We decided to spend the Thanksgiving holiday in Vermont and I think we may have the makings of a new tradition. We stayed in Newport a couple of years ago during Thanksgiving and that was enjoyable and the mansions were beautifully decorated but I think Vermont was even nicer. Things were hectic the previous week so we didn't end up leaving until Sunday and made the trip in an uneventful 6 hours. I was concerned at first that there might not be enough to do in the area this time of year and the kids would get restless. It turns out that there was so much to see and do that we could have easily spent an additional week there without skiing and still not have seen/done everything we wanted to. They had a great little water park and play zone at the resort and everyone was incredibly friendly. I was initially planning to go out for our Thanksgiving meal but once we were there and settled in, it just seemed like it would be more relaxing to cook in and spend the day at the resort. It was a little of an adventure in shopping to get the ingredients together for the Thanksgiving meal and it took a few stops at local stores to gather up all the fixings. As it turned out I forgot to buy sugar to make the cranberry sauce and didn't realize it until I was ready to make it. I had to improvise and use honey instead. The kids baulked at the idea at first but soon realized that it still was tasty and went as far as to ask me to prepare it that way next year. The one big downer about this trip was that DJ had a project due for work and ended up spending about 2 days on the laptop and phone in order to make the deadline. That left me to play lifeguard to the kids, which was no simple task when everyone wanted to be doing something different and they had no real lifeguards on duty. Personally, I think they should have someone on staff there at all times. I was shocked at how little some people watched their children in this potentially dangerous environment. The other bummer was that it was unseasonably warm when we arrived. This was perfect for hikes and sightseeing but not conducive to skiing. We will hit the slopes later in the season. We did get snow the day before we left that transformed the mountains and gave us a taste of the winter to come.

We arrived home with Christmas on our minds and in our ears from the holiday songs on the radio. We decided to pick out our Christmas tree early this year since the calendar was not looking friendly for the month of December. It has been trimmed and the house is decorated. Now it's time to add Christmas to the yard but we still have more leaves to rake.

Less than 24hrs on the job and Gavin has fixed our old elf on the shelf.

Raking leaves

An ongoing project!