Traditions adjusted

Thanksgiving weekend was wonderful. We had two dinners; one with Papa, Boo, and Pilot, and one with Lovely. Duplicated right down to the sparkling punch, appetizers, and the table setting. It's important to us that she knows she is missed when she isn't here. It's also important to us that she never feel guilty for having a good time spending holidays with her mother's family too. Having a replay of Thanksgiving day is just a small way of letting her know.

One reason I love Thanksgiving so much is because after Thanksgiving, I can officially start celebrating Christmas. We decorated our trees today. One in the living room and one in the dining room. The living room one is the silver and blue tree. The tree I get anal about and move around decorations to be just right. The tree where even the presents have to match.

The dining room tree has multi-colored lights and all of the random ornaments. There are ornaments from my childhood, and ones from Guy's childhood. Some of his mother's ornaments are tucked safely in a Victoria's Secret box, which he and I both get a good laugh about. Our pasts, brought together on one tree.

He said his mother would have loved that tree. I'm so glad.

My grandmother would also love that tree. It has just the right amount of holes and missing branches to be a tree that needed to be loved. And it has her old tree topper, proudly crowning the tip top of the tree.

Guy teases me about my love of tradition during the holidays, but today he confessed that he loves it. He said it reminded him of his mother, and that he was glad Little Bird would have a mom who was a little nutty for the holidays. I'm pretty sure he was being sweet.

Juggling Christmas Day traditions will be a challenge when Little Bird is old enough to start understanding what is happening. Every other year, Lovely will be with us on Christmas morning, and every other year, not until Christmas evening. We will have to have two traditions. You can't replay Christmas like you can Thanksgiving, so we will just have to have two traditions.

But it's like she and I decided on Friday this year while celebrating Thursday's holiday. It's just a date on the calendar. The holiday is the time whenever you celebrate it. She is a smart one, that kiddo.

So I'm learning to be flexible in my expectations. This year, we didn't actually get the trees until Saturday morning because Guy needed to lay tile in the foyer on Friday. We didn't actually switch out the everyday dishes with the holiday dishes until Saturday because technically, it was still Thanksgiving at our house.

And that's okay. Shoot. Thanksgiving being my favorite day of the year, I guess you could say that I'm pretty lucky to have it last twice as long. And I'm definitely lucky to have this wonderful family to share my holidays with.