Thanksgiving, The Day After

My husband is gone taking my oldest daughter to spend the day with his mom, then on to Lowe's. I am here holding down the fort, which mostly means hiding out in my room catching up on blogs. (With the cruise and the writing of the ebook, I have fallen horribly behind in that department.) I did update my blogroll over in the sidebar. I added and moved around some. None were cut. No not one. Which is why I have now had to make four lists, just to keep them all straight.

The two little girls are upstairs "pay weggos," which in two-year-old speak can be translated to "Playing legos." They were admonished not to put any in their mouths, and I am hoping for the best. With five other children of various ages and interests in the house, child-proofing for the sake of the two-year-old is just not really possible.

The five year old is begging to go outside though it is still too early and quite cold-- and is not taking no for an answer. He is already in trouble for asking me for something that his dad had already said no to. (I said yes, and the seven year old was only too glad to inform me that he was told no by dad. I just know we are not the only parents who occasionally fall victim to these type of tricks-- are we?) He is destined for some punishment-- some days just start this way for reasons I can't explain.

The 11 year old is watching Home Alone behind the scenes dvd extras. (He is my one that says he wants to be a filmmaker when he grows up. I believe he will. He watches the behind the scenes/how they made the movie extras for every dvd we rent for him. I am not kidding.) We held onto our annual tradition of watching Home Alone last night, as a family. Since we discovered the day before Thanksgiving that the dvd was already checked out at our local video rental place, we had to go to a Target far, far away (not to be confused with where Shrek lives) to buy it, just to hold onto the tradition. Do you think the children appreciated this? Probably not.

And the biggest boy is still asleep, somehow blocking out all the chaos.

And that is our Thanksgiving, the day after, report.

Our Thanksgiving was calm, and basically involved me cooking the meal from the moment I woke up until we ate at 1:30-- then cooking desserts until my parents arrived to eat with us at 4. My husband took a nap-- but after watching the kids for me to go on a cruise, I figured he had that coming! I did sneak in a bit of time to go through the ads that were in the newspaper. That is my personal Thanksgiving tradition, I will admit.

We are all dealing with some stage of the same cold that has been lingering around our house for weeks. It is getting to the point of ridiculous. Oh, the coughing! The horrible, horrible coughing!

I am not going shopping today with the rest of the crazies. Probably because God is sovereign and did not see fit for the Kohl's ad to make it into my Thanksgiving day newspaper. And so, I was not tempted. It is for the best.

At some point today I hope to drag out all the Christmas stuff from the attic and begin the process of decorating for Christmas. I love transforming our "little house" into a "Christmas cottage." That is how I feel when it is all decorated-- with red and green trimmings in every available spot. It helps propel us into the season.

And so, dear reader. I know you are out there. And I just know that you want to buy my Christmas ebook. Even if you don't really want to, it would be good for you to, seeing as how the Christmas holidays are now, officially, upon us. I know it will inspire you-- and it will help me feel like all my hard work was not for nothing. As my friend Lysa reminds me often, it was not for nothing if my kids will have it as a part of who I am and what we believe. But selling lots of copies would also be really, really nice.

(Just click on the button in the sidebar to order! I would promise that this will be my last plea, but that would be a lie. I will probably beg for at least a few more weeks. Sorry.)

Thanks to all of you who have bought one!! My family thanks you, as do the two organizations who will benefit from the donations we are making from the proceeds.