Thanksgiving

I haven't posted in a while - things have been so busy & I was out of town for Thanksgiving. My Dad moved in with us the Friday before Thanksgiving, the girls have been having a lot of extra dance practices (every day this week) because they have a couple of performances coming up, and then we had Thanksgiving, of course. We went up to Matt's parent's house in Garland & stayed overnight Wednesday, then Thursday night we spent with my cousin Tracy.

Tracy & I have a Thanksgiving tradition where we do the Black Friday (that's what it's called right?) shopping - we wake up at a ridiculous time & make the rounds to the sales. Every year they're starting earlier & earlier - this year we had to wake up at 3:30 am to make it to Kohls by 4am. Anyway, on Friday us women (my 2 aunts, 2 cousins & I) started our own tradition - we went camping overnight in a cabin without kids. We had a great time! We did stay in a cabin w/heat, fridge, bathroom, etc. which was a good thing since we got sleet & snow flurries that night.

We had a pretty good weekend, but it wasn't the same without Matt. It still doesn't feel like the holidays to me at all. It hit him pretty hard - Thanksgiving day he wasn't able to call which made it even harder for him. He woke up hours early to stand in line for a phone but didn't make it to one before he had to go to work. Christmas is going to be really rough on him.

I am really trying to get a little of the Christmas spirit but so far to no avail. We put up our Christmas tree the other day, and I've been playing Christmas music constantly but it's not working. Matt helped put things into perspective for me, though - I was thinking about just going camping or something for Christmas instead of having a "real" Christmas, but Matt told me that I still needed to make it special for the kids. I had to think about that for a while and I realized I was being a little selfish thinking that since it won't be the same without him I didn't want to do the same things we normally do. I realized that especially now things need to stay as 'normal' as possible for the kids. Boy this is tough!