Family Tradition

Part of our family tradition with Thanksgiving is to put up our Christmas Tree the day after Thanksgiving. In all of our years in Florida, we always spent Thanksgiving with Hunter's Dad and Mary Ann. Those are some of the best memories we have from our times in Florida. There are many Thanksgiving stories of our adventures with Big Al and Mary Ann that we will pass along to the kids (in due time). Since we moved to New England Thanksgiving has not been quite as tasty or eventful.

On the Friday after Thanksgiving, we would all load up into the "Old White Van" and search for the best Frasier Fur 8-9 feet. This always involved visiting several lots for "The Tree", and without fail we would end up at Target or Lowe's. Target let us down by not having trees in stock yet for the last several years. Mary Ann would make friends with the trimming guys to get the tree looking excellent and loaded atop the van.

While watching football, we would decorate the tree to utter perfection. Mary Ann had the best mix of classic ornaments (i.e. from the 70's) as well as newer ones. And one of our family secret tricks was to toss out the lights with the old tree the year before. So each time, we started with perfectly new lights that were not tangled and ready to go. Mary Ann learned this after wine was involved one year in the decorating session. Hunter and Heather would put the ornaments on the tree, and I was always the official "Ornament Hooker". It was the job that no one really wanted to do, so when I joined the family it became mine.

Unfortunately with a toddler, we are not putting ornaments on our tree this year. We tried, but within 2 minutes Grace had shattered a glass ball, and we packed the ornaments back up.

Hunter's favorite holiday is Christmas, and he loves to put up the tree and start playing the Christmas music. He loves the music so much that I have to cut him off when the football bowl season is over. If he had it his way, we would listen to holiday music year-round.

At any rate, we are now ready for Santa to come and visit.