November 24

Today I am thankful for friends. Don't know what I would do without them!

It has been a good day. I have kept myself semi-occupied. Nick worked cleaning the garage and helping me with the Christmas decorations. I put up the tree today. I love Christmas. We always had a tradition of putting up our tree the first weekend after Thanksgiving that I had off from work. Now, though it was a tradition, boys and Val carried up all the stuff, I placed it. They watched. Rick's and my first tree had all blue lights on it. I used those lights for a couple of years, then I decided I liked all clear lights. So, from our first Christmas in Massachusetts we had clear lights. Last year, I put the tree up before Thanksgiving. My clear lights all burned out within 2 weeks. Color lights were all I could find to replace them with. Boo. I really love my clear lights.

There are 380 lights on this tree. It took longer to place the lights than anything else. So far Miss Luna has not tried to climb it. I hope she doesn't. She did play with the twist ties that came on the light strings. She went plum crazy chasing it all over the living room and kitchen.

This is my primitive tree that stays up all year. It currently has all my Mary's Angels from Hallmark. It still needs the 2012 angel. I have to get her still. I started collecting these while we still lived in Massachusetts. I have not missed even one, I did have to order one from Ebay, but I do have them all. It has 100 clear lights on it, I try to keep them on all the time but it is very difficult. Some strings don't last but a few weeks, some strings last 3 or 4 months. I love the ones that last for months!

Christmas time is one of my favorite times of the year. I love what the holiday stands for! I really don't like that people across the land have tried to take Jesus from Christmas. He is the reason we have the season in the first place. Had it not been for Him, we would not have a holiday to celebrate. Please keep that in your heart as you begin your holiday traditions, and please keep Him in your celebration!

I love all y'all! 

To be continued........