Who knew that this would be the greatest toy Rutledge has ever played with.  To be honest, I don't think there's anyone in the family who can't waste a good number of minutes with the Playful Penguins.  Hey, it's educational--it's a lesson in infinity.

I done broke one of the cardinal rules of Thanksgiving:  don't start meddling with Christmas until the current holiday is over.  But Thanksgiving was late this year (last year wasn't it on something like the 22nd?), and I had some time on my hands, and sometimes you just need a little Christmas right this very minute.

As of last year, we have not just one, but two trees.  We broke down and bought an artificial tree, though right now I can't, for the life of me, remember why.  Yes, I'm kind of allergic to pines (I think the worst was the Scotch Pine we got one year, though I have plenty of trouble with the Fraser Firs we normally get, too).  And yes, they drop needles everywhere because we do things like set them over heating vents or forget to water them for weeks.  And because we often buy them cut--for financial reasons (we used to routinely spend about $85-95 on a tree when we cut them ourselves, and that was when we lived within an hour of a good tree farm up in Floyd; here our local "cut your own" place that is close has Scotch Pines, but the Fraser Firs are trucked in and set on posts to look like they're really growing)--they often have been away from the soil for a while before we get them.  But since I've been grown, I've always had a real Christmas tree.  Growing up we always had artificial trees, I had never been to a tree farm or even seen one, and I associated Christmas with the smell of plastic and scented candles that had been packed together in boxes in our utility room where the heat broke each of them down into a beloved scent that spoke of our family traditions.  

I also broke down last year and bought one of those big sets of ornaments that are all color-coordinated and will trim a tree to make it look like adults live in your house.  I thought that was fitting for the artificial tree, even though we have so many ornaments from my kids, from my own childhood, and that we've collected over the years that we could easily fill two trees with them.  This year, because of Senor Bilbo, I'm afraid to put anything in our main living area that I would be devastated to find chewed to bits, so I have the fake stuff here.  It's kind of pretty, but it doesn't completely speak Christmas to me.  I'm going to have to tackle putting lights on the real tree so that we can get the good ornaments up tonight.

Our Thanksgiving holiday was really lovely.  Every family has its quirks, and ours is no exception, but though it was over all too quickly (kind of a good thing, in its own way--we're really just needing to plan for one single meal, not a big deal of houseguests or a need for entertainment), everything was nearly perfect.  There was one tense moment with a Christmas tree and a saw with unsharp teeth, but even that was over quickly--and I learned about how to remove tree sap from all over your hands, which was important before I started knitting again! Frances went biking with Tim, the boys played lacrosse with Tim, and I made some really awesome pumpkin fudge, and not the cheating microwave kind, though that tastes good, too.  I couldn't remember what the "soft ball stage" was, so I was afraid that I had let it move on to the dreaded "hard ball stage," but it seems that everything turned out fine.  It's all I can do not to eat a whole panful in 24 hours!

The rest of our time has been spent playing games:  2 grueling and long games of Monopoly, Stratego, chess, and the Wii, which has been moved downstairs.  And I had the misfortune of screwing up the hat I was working on by doing something I'll never do again:  Knitting in the Dark.  I had to unravel 36 rows!  But I'm back on track, and if all goes well, I should finish this piece by the end of today.