I married a smart man. Yeah, I know you know Nathan has a lot of technical knowledge and expertise about a lot of things we all wish we knew, but he's also smart in some practical areas too. Like anticipating that Ellie would have a hard time coming down from a visit to Nonna and PaPa's house for Thanksgiving.
So he had a plan. And so when as we packed our bags and Ellie asked the invariable question, "What's after _________ [in this case, 'we get home']?", he was prepared with an answer that would give our future-oriented daughter something to anticpate with excitement, not just result in an audible groan, whine, and inevitable grumpy mood the remainder of the day, "But I don't want to go home and get ready for school!"
His reply was, "When we get home, we'll decorate our Christmas tree!"
The secondary brilliance of Nathan's plan was that it would force ME to consent to bringing out our Christmas tree from storage and decorate at least some part of our home for the holiday. Lest you think I'm some sort of "scrooge" I want to point out that we do have THREE full-sized (and one mini) Christmas trees out in the center. And given that we only have about three weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas travels, I'm usually too worn out just thinking about putting it all away again to have an ounce of energy to pull out a fourth full tree, our own personal tree, and decorate it in a less visible space.
It turned out to be a wonderful Sunday evening family activity. Thankfully I had the foresight some years ago to purchase plastic -- not glass -- Christmas balls, so they survived several attempts by Reni to crack them together like Emeril cracking two eggs for breakfast. Ellie had fun discovering a few ornaments of her own, including one framed photo of her first Christmas with us in Albania four years ago. Wow -- what a change! The Nativity Set was a huge hit with Reni who looks like he's getting the whole "imaginative play" concept down (check out the video at the end). In the end, it was the perfect way to end Thanksgiving weekend and begin looking forward to Christmas. [scroll down to post below to see Thanksgiving pics -- this is a 'double poster' day]
Shall we say "cheesy smile?"
(Kelly -- per our conversation last night, this is the referenced tree pic taken at ISO 12800, 1/80th, f 2.8, no exposure correction)
2 comments:
These pictures are priceless!!
Love,
Mom
How precious!!! Reni is learning the animal sounds, isn't he?? The trees are pretty. The children are precious and amazing. Thank you, Jesus for loving us so much.
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