The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

I haven’t had to work in 2 weeks. Just call me a bum. It’s been a nice break…like Christmas break a little early! I’ve done some cleaning, organizing, Christmas decorating, Thanksgiving cooking, and I spent a few days at home with my parents and sister last week. It’s been great!

Mom had her 6th chemo treatment last Monday, and Jenn and I went with her. So far, she’s done pretty good except for some aches and pains that I think must be pretty common with Taxotere. She ran fever for a couple of days, but knock on wood, she’s stayed out of the hospital so far. Two more chemo treatments and then radiation, and she’ll be finished!! Yay Mom!!! She’s decorated a beautiful “pink” tree that’s in the dining room. I wish I had her decorating talent!!

Mom’s tree

We had a great Thanksgiving with the Dvorak family. Of course, the food was awesome, and we had fun playing Settlers of Catan and also ultimate frisbee since the weather was so nice outside. I’m thankful to have married into such a wonderful family!

We hurried home after our day of fun, fed the kitties (who were very sad that they didn’t get any leftover turkey!), and mapped out our game plan for Black Friday. Our main goal was to buy a nice Christmas tree that fits our living room better. We headed to Kohl’s around 11 PM since they were opening at midnight, but by the time we got to the back of the store, the trees were all gone. Sad day. They also had some counter height bar stools we were wanting to get for our kitchen, but we could only find one and we were wanting to get two to match. We bought a couple of Christmas presents there to make it worth our while, and then we headed out. Our next stop was Belk, where Travis dropped me off around 1 AM to wait until they opened the doors at 3 AM. Travis headed to K-Mart (which didn’t open until 5 AM). We figured that it would be better to split up than both wait at Belk and potentially strike out again and then be too late getting to K-Mart. Anyway, after waiting 2 hours outside in the cold, I was definitely ready to get inside. People in line were getting pretty vicious too trying to keep people from breaking in line, so that was kind of entertaining. It made the time pass by faster at least. I got a $10 gift card for being one of the first 250 people in line, and luckily they had plenty of trees!

Travis left K-Mart and met me back at Belk, and then we headed to JC Penney and Lowe’s before crashing at home around 5:30 AM. We are definitely getting too old to be doing that! I’m still recovering…

We ended up getting a 7 foot pre-lit tree with clear lights, and it fits great in our living room. We’ve gotten it mostly decorated, but it still needs a big bow on top and maybe a few more ornaments. It’s getting there though!

The tree!

Shhh…don’t tell anyone, but Jenn helped me make some houndstooth decorated ornaments for Mom’s “Alabama” themed tree (she’s got 3 trees this year!). Jenn’s still got some Bama in her! Did you know you can buy houndstooth duct tape??? I had no idea!! Anyway, I brought one of the ornaments back for our tree…

Script “A” on one side…

Houndstooth ribbon on the other side!

The kitties LOVE the Christmas tree…maybe a little too much. No matter how many times we straighten the tree skirt, it never stays in place because they are constantly attacking it. Same for the tree itself. We’ve found several ornaments on the floor so far (thankfully not broken!), and they also like to chew on the branches themselves. So far, they haven’t tried to climb the tree yet (that we know of), but I’m thinking it will be a miracle if it stays upright for the next month. We’ll see…

Gabby loved the box as much as the tree itself

She also likes Black Friday sales :)

The prettiest package under the tree!

Just think how our presents will look after the kitties rip them to shreds!

Needless to say, this Christmas will be interesting with two little rascals living with us.

I can’t ever remember it snowing in November, but it’s supposed to snow 1-2 inches tonight and tomorrow morning. Don’t know if I’m ready for winter weather driving yet!! That was one nice thing about living in Bham and Tuscaloosa…not as much snow and ice.

We watched the Iron Bowl over at the Hagewoods’ house this year, and we had a great time! Bama looked better (except for 2 plays) than they looked the past few weeks, so we were glad to see that. It’s apparently about 95% positive that we’ll be playing the national championship game in New Orleans again! We’ll find out for sure on Sunday I think. It’s a shame that Travis and I weren’t on the 7 year plan to graduate….then we could have gotten “cheap” tickets again like we did 2 years ago! As of last night, the cheapest tickets on Stubhub were $1700 a piece! Ouch. Santa, all I want for Christmas is to go to that game!!!!!

Shocker….I’m working tomorrow and Friday this week…if I can remember what to do! :) I’m hoping to get most of our Christmas shopping done this week (mainly online), so we can start getting some presents under the tree. Whenever I buy our stockings, I’ll have to get those hung too. It’s so much fun to decorate for Christmas!

Hope you’re having a great holiday season so far!! :)

Erin