Thanksgiving Weekend

Thanksgiving Day Daughter was riding her tricycle around Grandpa and Grandma H's cul-de-sac and we were all breaking a sweat. I should have dressed her in short sleeves, but who'd have thought that it would have been over 70 degrees on Thanksgiving?

Friday we did our annual traditional trip to the local Ace Hardware to pick our tree out of the parking lot. Yes, I still think this is a terrible way to pick out a Christmas tree, and it really loses something in the translation of having a live tree. But life here just isn't the way it was in the Pacific Northwest...in a whole lotta ways! It was nice to have Husband home on Friday after Thanksgiving...something that hasn't happened in several years and one of the drawbacks of working in a network of banks and banking services on the busiest shopping day of the year.

We revved up the ol' '67 Chevy beast....there was some smoke and a burning smell. Husband assured it me it was just a wire that caught fire. I hoped it wasn't a wire we needed to get from point A to point B. A little more monkeying under the hood and about four attempts to jump start the old tank, and we were on our way. I love that truck. Most of you know the story and history of the truck, but some of my newer readers may not. That pickup was the one I used to ride in next to my Grandpa H on the farm in Iowa as long ago as I can remember. He bought it brand new, and I probably rode in it with him from the time I was three years old. It's made a couple trips across country to Oregon and back again. It's in it original condition...well, except for nearly 30 years of use and wear. But like everything my Grandfather owned, it was very well cared for, and it has great sentimental value for me. One day I hoped to restore it. And maybe we still will. It's not a big priority right now as it will be many years before we can drive our kids around in it, and it is definitely not an everyday run-around-town sort of vehicle.

For now we hope to just keep it running in its current condition. Husband assures me that it only needs a new battery (and I'm guessing it now needs a new wire to replace the one that went up in smoke), but since we only get it out a few times each year, he wasn't sure a new battery was worth the purchase as he figured without more use it would still require a jump to start those few times per year. And that is why it sills lives in our garage and gets to come on our annual trip to get our Christmas tree from the Ace Hardware store.

I packed the kids up in the Accord and Husband followed us to Ace so we could all pick out a tree together. It was still hot outside, so I opened the sunroof and thought about how un-festive it felt not only to go pick out a Christmas tree from the Ace Hardware parking lot but to also do so in our short sleeve shirts wiping sweat from our brows.

But despite it all...doesn't Daughter just looked pleased as punch? She reminds me so much of Little Cindy Lou Who from the Grinch that Stole Christmas.