On the first day of Christmas...

When I was younger, my mom would always put up all of our Christmas decorations throughout the house immediately following Thanksgiving. Actually, she would start taking down the fall decorations ON Thanksgiving and start unloading all of the Christmas boxes that were stored in our basement. Yes, in Ohio we had basements. I'm sure everyone in California would just LOVE a basement to throw all the extra junk a person accumulates throughout the years. My mom really took advantage of it :) Anyways, I used to think that my mom was crazy for putting up decorations so quickly after Thanksgiving. At least wait until it's December! I'm now starting to think that I'm the crazy one for not getting on the decorating earlier. We came home from Carmel to find the majority of our street already had their lights up! We looked like "that-house-that-boycotts-Christmas". So on the 1st, we went and picked up a rather full tree from Home Depot along with a few decorations. I don't think we realized how big this tree actually was and, while it's beautiful in all it's full glory, we still needed to move the couch to accommodate it. We made a night of it with Christmas country music along with "Jake-in-the-lights" pictures (get it? like "deer in the headlights"? ha ha). Now we really need to get on it with the Christmas shopping...

 I look completely entranced--as if a bomb could go off and I wouldn't notice. I must of been watching True Blood. :)

We have so much to be thankful for this Christmas. Only 24 more days...