This year, Thanksgiving was held at SIL’s place. This required the dinner being pushed back to Sunday due to BIL’s work. The Wife and I both took off Black Friday, so we had a four-day weekend. Well, I had a four-day weekend. The Wife had use-or-lose, so she took off a bit more time.

Thursday, since we didn’t have a dinner, was more or less a standard day – except I didn’t have to work. The Wife’s Halloween/Fall/Thanksgiving decorations went into storage and the plethora of The Wife’s Christmas decorations came back to the house. Then, The Wife fired up her Cricut to do some party favors for the Sunday dinner. Little turkeys with M&M’s in them.

Friday was The Wife decorating the house. Decorations are her passion. While she was doing that, I took my grandfather’s 100-year-old shotgun and mounted it in my office. Yeah, we have different ideas of how to decorate.

Saturday was a cooking day for The Wife as she prepared what she was bringing for dinner. Namely her deviled eggs and “Christmas Crackers.” Which was kind of like peppermint bark on a saltine. Different, but yummy. While she was doing that, I actually finished a couple of scenes on my fantasy novel. Slow progress is still progress. Which helped with the frustration of watching the delivery status of my new iPad go from “By End Of Day” to “Delayed”.

Sunday morning was labor intensive. MIL’s been sleeping on the transformer couch bed since she moved in. She wanted something smaller so she could get a recliner into her room. A new bed was purchased, but we needed to move the transformer couch out to the garage. It will be retrieved by BIL at a later date. Yeah, that wasn’t a whole lot of fun. Particularly when it decides to transform in mid-move. Then I had to put together the new bed. That wasn’t too bad, but it had its moments. Frustration burns calories, doesn’t it?

The Wife’s niece and great niece came over to go with us to dinner. The toddler was generally well behaved. She played well with the kitten. For some reason, she was under impression that the most exciting thing at Ward Manor was to go up and down the stairs. Okay, not a problem as long as there was an adult to go up and down the stairs with her. Except, the only adult that was available was me. Going up and down the stairs burns calories doesn’t it?

My mom, recently retuned from the great white north, and The Brother joined us at Ward Manor. It was a chance for them to meet the new kitten and drop off some items from my grandmother’s estate. Plus that large print of Starry Starry Night that The Wife and I bought up in Idaho. And a box of ammo that I bought. Then we all convoyed over to BIL’s.

Shortly after we arrived, I got an alert that my iPad was delivered. Not wanting it to sit on the front porch, The Brother and I jumped in the Ward Wagon to fetch it. Except it wasn’t there. WTF? I looked at the picture in the delivery photo. No, that’s not my house. Unable to locate it, we returned to BIL’s house for dinner. During which, I figure out the issue. I fat fingered my address when ordering the iPad. It was delivered a few houses down. Jump into the Ward Wagon. Fortunately, the neighbor had the parcel. Success! I returned and we finished dinner.

Relief burns calories, doesn’t it?

1. The Wife and I walked up to the neighborhood’s “Vendor Fair”. Honestly, it was kind of pathetic, but I’m chalking that up to it being the first year. Hopefully, there will be more stands next year. From there, we went up to the local market. That was much more fruitful, as we needed to pick up some gifts for the holidays. We also joined the local civic association – something we’ve been discussing for a few months.
2. We did an initial pull of the holiday decorations. The Wife has a lot of holiday decorations, and we just brought home the first load. The Ward Wagon will require more trips due to its smaller cargo size. I also helped pull out one of her trees. She wanted to put it up to get Freya used to it. Hopefully, that will keep the destruction down.
3. During our shopping, The Wife and I discussed pulling weeds on Sunday morning while it was still cool out. We came home to find the neighbor girls pulling our weeds. Apparently, they offered to pull the weeds for some spending cash. Well, okay, it was something that we didn’t really want to do anyway. They did a real good job too. The Wife asked if they could come over every couple of weeks and take care of the weeds. I do love rewarding entrepreneurship. Particularly when it relieves me of having to do hated chores.
4. We did manage to hang a couple of paintings we bought a few months back. I found a print of Monet’s Impression, Sunrise and The Wife found another print we liked. The hard part is that we hung them on the wall facing the stairwell, which meant reaching out from the second floor.
5. I ordered a new iPad. My current one is getting long in the tooth. I mean, long enough it wasn’t even worth trading in. So, now I get to wait a bit for it to be delivered. Still, it should be powerful enough to last me the next four or five years. Particularly since I don’t do a lot of heavy lifting with the iPad.
6. If you are going to do a gender reveal party with some fireworks, it is considered polite to let the rest of the neighborhood know. Particularly those that sound like shotgun blasts.