For the first time in, like, FOREVER – we broke away from one of our family traditions.
Instead of the usual Thanksgiving turkey and variety of side dishes, we opted for barbecue last week.
While I’m not able to recall why we made the switch up, I can say that it went over well.
I mean, who doesn’t love pork ribs and barbecued chicken?
I even made potato salad and bacon-wrapped jalapeno poppers as sides while mom took care of green beans and was in charge of the grill.
Outside of having the whole family under one roof, I was most thankful for the weather holding out so we could actually barbecue.
Between food preparations, we were also engaging in other family traditions – namely deciding which Christmas trees would go up for decoration this year and then me having to fluff the branches out.
I hate to admit that the tree drew first blood almost right out of its storage bag.
And, truth be told, I was fighting leftover ornament hooks, ornament crowns from the previous year’s cat casualties and mom’s favorite scent sticks.
However, I won the battle with the first tree and even got the lights all connected before turning it on and being greeted by a whole section of darkness amidst the sparkling lights that have wonderful halos thanks to my astigmatism.
Now comes the task of hunting down broken bulbs, checking connections and trying to find out where things have gone wrong – I actually gave up at this point and called for reinforcements.
My sister Ashlee and mom took to diagnosing our lighting issue and even then they fixed it, mom wasn’t happy and ordered more lights to add to the pre-lit tree.
The other tree, well, it had so many half-powered or dead light strands that mom just gave up and removed them all from the tree.
Now she’s going to pick up several new boxes of lights and start over on her biggest tree.
Personally, I’m staying out of the way until she’s finished and we can set up the tree jail to keep the cats from bothering the trees and ornaments this year.
Our tree jails are repurposed doggy playpen fencing that surround each tree and protect it from furry gremlins that like climbing them, knocking down ornaments and gnawing on electrical wiring.
Tree jails are a recent tradition, too and have been very successful at deterring the feline troublemakers in the house.
To their credit, the dogs don’t care too much about the trees and haven’t been much of a problem until Santa drops off a few early presents – then they try to be super helpful and open them for us.
Still, we’re just over halfway done with our other holiday traditions and have been baking up a storm to give out gifts to select family friends.
I’m nearing the point where I’m not going to want to make or possibly see any more cookies for at least a month!
Baking is a fun tradition that always brings back fond memories despite being labor-intensive and time-consuming.
Right at the wire, we’re always rushing to finish as much as we can before Ashlee returns to Bryan and won’t be back for several weeks.
The trees aren’t decorated yet, but I blame the lights for that and hope to remedy that sometime this week – even if it’s only a little bit, we’ve got to start somewhere to tick another family tradition off our list.
