Magoomba #24

While many of these items really deserve a blog post of their own, throwing them in with the magoomba is about the only way I am ever going to catch up so to heck with it. Try and stay with me.

- Last Monday the weather was beautiful. With school out on Thanksgiving break we decided to head to the Big Morongo Canyon Preserve to check out the fall foliage. For an interesting comparison, check out the visit we made in the spring. It was absolutely gorgeous and exactly what I needed, since we don't have many trees out here in the desert. It just exuded the essence of fall and is one of my favorite trails.

- Since we were already out and about, we decided to get some holiday shopping accomplished and I ended up with my dream camera as an early Christmas present - a Canon EOS D-SLR Rebel XS. But don't expect a sudden dramatic improvement in my photography skills - I don't need that pressure. The camera I have been using is a Canon S5 bridge camera, which is a very good camera. It's going to take me awhile to adjust to the whole SLR thing. Having said that however, the rest of the afternoon, all I kept thinking was how I wished I would have had the Rebel for our trip to the preserve!

- Early Tuesday morning (think 3 am) Jake woke up complaining that he felt yucky and before we knew it, we were dealing with a full blown case of the stomach flu. I felt horrible that he was so sick right after having surgery but he insisted it didn't hurt him and the surgery center assured us that as long as we kept him hydrated, he would be fine. The rest of the week, we basically waited to see if the rest of us got sick, wondering what it would do to our Thanksgiving plans but Thursday morning we were all feeling good and headed to Joe's parents for the holiday.

Here are the kids with their cousins - Aidan and Lilly:

So how do I look in that last picture? Because you may not be able to tell, but I was about 2 hours away from the beginning of my own bout with the stomach flu, stuck upstairs praying to the porcolein god while everyone was downstairs enjoying Thanksgiving dinner. Needless to say, that 2 hour car ride home was NOT FUN!

Good thing I don't do Black Friday because I wouldn't have been able to go anyway. Once I started to feel better, we spent the majority of the remaining 3 day weekend with projects around the house and getting the Christmas tree and decor up. I am super excited about the mantle this year - last holiday season I finally found the style of personalized stockings I wanted and then to bring out the apple green hue in the argyle, I purchased some new candles.

I was really concerned about how Jazz would do around the tree. While initially curious, she has refrained from actually knocking down any of the ornaments.

Thinking about it......

Making an attempt:

The long weekend was also a good chance to spend quality family time together in a low key setting, including lots of snuggling and movie watching, not to mention yummy leftovers! And despite my inability to enjoy Thanksgiving dinner, I still find myself with plenty to be thankful for this Thanksgiving holiday, which makes it a success in my book.