thanksgiving week

This Thanksgiving was the first one that I've had off of work in seven years. It was nice to do a normal Thanksgiving dinner and not the tupperware leftovers that I've grown accustomed to. Perry and I did lunch at his parent's house and dinner at my parent's. We weren't as overly full as you'd think since we just ate a little bit of everything. His family does a potluck, every one brings a dish type thing and my parents...don't. In fact, I made two pumpkin and one key lime pie to bring to Perry's parents and Perry suggested that we bring one over to my parent's house. I laughed. As far as my mother is concerned, bringing food unless specifically asked is a breach of etiquette. Most people would welcome an extra pie at dinner, but to my mom it's a thinly veiled critique of her cooking and/or party planning skills.

Anyway, it was a happy Thanksgiving all around and the following day I got to participate in another family tradition that I've missed out on for quite a while due to work: visiting the tree farm down the road and cutting down a Christmas tree. Everyone went except my youngest sister who was in College Station.

I've never put up a Christmas tree before, but I made an impulsive tree purchase while we were there.  My brother dropped it off at my house and was kind of enough to immediately take me to Lowe's so I could go lights and tree stand shopping since I had neither.

Perry is an atheist (like myself) and he thinks Christmas decorations are a waste of money and space. I mostly agree - which is why I have no holiday decorations and have never put up a tree before. But I really am enjoying having a tree this year. I did most of my Christmas shopping online a few days ago, so I'll have lots of packages to put underneath it soon.

I had to give myself an early Christmas gift last week. My desktop computer died. It was six years old which I feel like was a respectably long life. Actually, the internet says about 3-5 years is average and looking back on it, I was really in denial about my need for a new computer for the past two years. In those two years I had to restore it to factory setting five times and it was soooo slow. For the past two months it was taking an unusually long time to start up and simply open an internet browser. I thought it just needed another factory restore. Wrong. It needed a bullet to the head. So I got a new tower.

I realize now that this old vs. new computer picture has a deceptive perspective which makes the old computer look even larger, but I think you get the point. My new CPU is super smaller. And I can open chrome in under ten minutes now.

Oh, and the day after the Christmas tree farm my mother, middle sister, and I went to the Dallas Arboretum for our annual Holiday Tea visit.  We've had a few freezes in the past month, so everything wasn't still (creepily) blooming in December like last year when we went. It was still a beautiful day though.

I am hereby putting a new camera on my Christmas wish list since I took about 15 pictures while were were at tea and this is the only one that turned out unhorribly.

And it's just a shot of the decorations in the room. I guess my six year old camera is as obsolete as my six year old desktop.

And just because (I've turned into a crazy dog owner), I tried to take a picture of Reggie with a Santa hat and beard. Yes, I've become one of "those people." And I want to say that I have no idea how people manage to pull this off, because even my mild mannered, lazy dog simply was not having it. Actually, it was easy to get it on his head, but how do people get their pets to sit still long enough for a posed picture?