Happy Belated Thanksgiving and Bring on Christmas!

We had a great time this year with the Cunicelli's over and able to spread out at our house for once! They arrived Wednesday night, but we still spent most of that day in anticipation cleaning, dusting, and twiddling our fingers. Can't explain why we were so excited. It's not like it was their first time here at all, but we just couldn't help ourselves!

That night, the boys all slept over at our house. Between our guest bedroom, sleeper sofa, and couch, we for once had enough space for all of them. Sometime just before midnight, they were taken with a sudden need to go bowling. And this being Las Vegas, off they went.

Actual Thanksgiving was different, but so nice. In the past years, we've always had to party hop, but the Mr. put his foot down. This year, we would stay put and we thoroughly enjoyed it. Everyone came over to our house before the big meal and played badminton in the back, video games, and with all of Dianna's toys.

During the course of the weekend, our little one just began to grasp walking as a real transportation option. Before, she would only do so if she were walking back and forth between people who had their arms outstretched to her. Now, she's just truckin' along everywhere! I think it had a lot to do with seeing her cousin Tony, who is three and around her size, walking. Isn't family great for that?!
This last Saturday, we seemed to spend the entire day trying to put up our Christmas lights. Half the time, the Mr. was arguing against it, because "it's too early!" The other half of the day was spent trying to find everything we needed. First, we didn't have the right nails, then it was having enough nails, then "gosh, those nails were a little pricey!" When we finally found ourselves actually in front of the house and were nearly finished, we realized that we hadn't fully thought out how to connect it all to a power source. GREEAAAATT!

But ya know what? My man was such a champ. He pulled off everything in a few minutes with my help and switched the way we had put it up so that the male end of the lights was on the left of the garage. All this just in time for the sun to set! And we literally started in the morning. I think we had everything against us that day.

I was in such a holiday mood that after dinner, I was ready to put up the tree! When I suggested it, the Mr. muted the TV and turned his head to look at me slowly. "Only if you set up the tree", he said. Which I did.

I then asked him to put the lights on, and he put his foot down. It was past midnight and he was calling me crazy. Pshh. Crazy...

The next morning, they did go up and I was a happy lady. It was nicer that way, I came to realize, because our little lady was awake to see the ornaments go up and both our childhood moving Santas placed just so. These are our Santas.

The one on the left was the Mr.'s Nanny's (grandma's) and even his dad remembers it from his childhood. The one on the right is from my side of the family.

And here's our tree. While it's not loaded down like crazy, I love it this way. It's minimal and we like to call it our heirloom tree, because we can honestly say that over 80% of the ornaments are from both our childhoods. That's important to us. There is a story behind most of our decorations, from the Polaroid of the Mr. as a boy with Santa in a handmade popsicle frame to our shell ornament from our wedding.

To ring in even more holiday happiness, I made beef stew that we're still working through, got a cool, new (to us) coffee maker from Poppi and Grammy, and got our beautifully blossoming amiga Alex and her mother belated Birthday/early Christmas gifts.

Oh, its' been a heck of a weekend, and I'm just getting started. Today, I just found some wintery cupcake recipes for gift-giving. I love Christmas.