holidazzle parade

On Thanksgiving, the big kids made a plan for all of us to go downtown to the Holidazzle parade on Friday night.  First we had to get there way early to find good spots, and to get in a parking ramp where we could get back out of it again afterward.

The kids were all bundled up, and this is a good spot with Caribou Coffee right upstairs.

This is Nicollet Mall.  Normal traffic never goes down this street, only buses and sometimes police.

They had light wands for sale.

Everyone was excited.  Look at t.c.

Finally, the parade!

Here are people lined up in the skyway to watch.

Anyway, it was a fun night, and since this is the last year for Holidazzle, we lived it up.

Today was lunch with a friend, Christmas shopping, and more decorating.   The girls worked on the Christmas Village. 

Jay put up lights this afternoon, and I think we're ready.   Just the shopping and baking left to do.

Woo hoo.

Thanks you guys for a beautiful Thanksgiving weekend.  love you all so, Mom

thanksgiving, 2013

We found this on the front step in the morning.  It's a plastic ball Jay and the neighbor goof around with, put it in odd places in each others yard.   This morning it turned up attached to a turkey cut out and a bag of Hershey's Kisses.  That's pretty nice.

Here we're working on the tables.

And eating.

After dinner:

This is my sister's family, all grown up.

They tried to get a picture suitable for a Christmas card, but we can see who wasn't cooperating.

Video games:

Here I asked John to smile with the beard.  He said, "Smile?  You're asking a lot."

And then the place was un-Thanksgiving-ed again.

And we put up our inflatable Santa.   This year he has better ties so the wind can't keep knocking him down.  A few bulbs are burned out inside, but that's tomorrow's problem.

Onward.  It's only 25 days until Christmas.     love you all, Mom, aka Grandma, aka Val

a team effort

 

Not these two. They were pretty much no help, just sat there and smirked.

I have some truly goofy Thanksgiving decorations, but I like them.

 Here's Maria arranging the flowers.

 After she got done, she announced they looked like shit.

What? Do not tell me $40 worth of fresh cut flowers look like shit.

She sighed, just not satisfied with the arrangements. (She's kind of a perfectionist.) They look fine, festive, beautiful.

We are ready.   Everybody's bringing side dishes, and the turkey is ready to go into the oven at 5 am.

 Today we dusted and vacuumed and put away random clutter.  One item on the to-do list was to clear off this table.  

Usually it's full of clean clothes folded in stacks, and papers of every kind.

 This corner is where papers normally go when I move them from the table.  So this was a pretty major heap too.  It's better now.   A garbage bag was involved.

Same with this spot.  How many Target receipts does a person need?

 My car is being worked on this week, fixing the bumper, so all the stuff normally stored in the trunk was being stored in the living room.   That would include bags of old clothes to donate and also a huge laundry basket of pool toys.  Well, they've been relocated.

Clearing off the buffet was another item on the to-do list.  Ta-da!

 We even went nuts and replaced all the burned out light bulbs.  Why do they all burn out at once in the fall?

Tim and Julia are sleeping over at John and Dannell's tonight.  Dannell suggested the sleepover and I told her this:  "This is the same problem we had with sleepovers in the summer.  The kids are on totally different clocks."    Their kids sleep from 7pm until 6 am.   Tim and Julia sleep from about midnight until 11 am.

She said to ask them.  They don't have to go to bed early, but they sure won't be able to sleep half the day.

They considered the situation for a couple minutes, Tim had his hands shoved down in his pockets and walked around a little, and Julia was kicking around on my bed.  After a little discussion they said it'd be fine.  They could go to bed at 10 if they had to, and they knew the kids would be loud in the morning.

Dannell came here late in the morning to pick them up, and I was afraid she's just grab them and get back on the road, but she didn't.  They all came in and were in my arms, silky hair against my cheek, and ran off with Tim and their video games.  Dannell, Maria, m.c., and I had a half hour together, which is rare.

So tomorrow we'll hear how this optomistic mismatched sleepover went.  (I do hope it went well.)

And we're going eat turkey and pie, and be grateful because we really are:  in so many ways, for so many things, tangible things, and also things not so much so.

  love always, Val