The Advent of Advent

This morning I moved an upholstered chair out of our living room and into a storage room in the basement so that we'd have a clearer path to the area where we like to set up our Christmas tree. Well, I write that as though we have a long history of putting up the tree in that particular spot, but truly this is only our third Christmas in this house, and last year we didn't put up the tree at all because over Thanksgiving weekend (the ideal time for decorating one's house for Christmas) we were at Disneyworld with our kids. In any case, this year Suzanna and Abigail helped me set up the tree along the east wall of the living room, a perfect spot for it. We wrapped strings of multi-colored lights within the layers of the branches while Susan and Hillary unpacked Christmas tree decorations. Then I left the hanging of the ornaments to the ladies while I retired to the office to work.

Susan and the girlies did a terrific job of decking the halls for the holidays, being restrained and selective in their choices of what decorations to put up and to what extent to decorate. Susan even left seven tubs of Christmas decorations entirely unopened! (We really can't figure out how we have managed to accumulate so many Christmas decorations, especially considering that our entire stock was wiped out about a decade ago during The Flood of '97.) Here are some of my favorite vignettes from around the house:

I probably should have snapped a pic during the nighttime to show better how beautiful the tree in the living room upstairs looks when it's just a pyramid of colored lights reflected off the balls and glass ornaments.

We have quite a collection of Santa Clauses, which Susan grouped together atop the piano.

The girls decorated this little tree in the family room downstairs with our Mickey Mouse ear ornaments (souvenirs from last year). It's quite pretty when the rest of the lights are out and the strings of Christmas lights are the center of attention (see the pic below). [Each of the girls has a miniature tree in her bedroom, too, decorated with ornaments that she has received as gifts throughout the years.]

This evening Susan's dad, Roger, joined us for a Thanksgiving meal (yes, even though we've had this Thanksgiving meal and this one and this one already!). Susan bought just a turkey breast on the bone rather than an entire turkey, and it was moist and tasty served alongside savory dressing. She cubed potatoes and sweet potatoes, tossed them in seasoning and olive oil, and roasted them together in the oven (to offer a change from the usual mashed potatoes-'n'-gravy and sweet potatoes in brown sugar with marshmallows on top). She made buttered whole-kernel corn, baked some crescent rolls, and made cranberry Jell-O with mandarin oranges. For dessert she baked apple crisp and topped it with cinnamon ice cream from Schwan's. It was, of course, another delicious meal.

I think we might be done having Thanksgivings now, so we can shift into Christmas mode. Having the house festively appointed should help get us into the mood. Tomorrow: the first Sunday of Advent! Bring it on!