Christmastime

I think we have reached the end of our Christmas decorations. There was talk of snowflakes and a few other things, but I’m pretty sure we have exhausted our creative spark with construction paper this year. Our first tree did not last long and was pretty weird, but kinda great. Started our decorations off with some class to be sure.

Since then we have put our hands to work on still more string lights in what has become a traditionally haphazard way. The encircle our apartment and even double back at certain points as if we just couldn’t figure out what to do with them. Add to this the strange mix of white and colored lights without any discernible pattern and you have a measure of our style. And then there is our tree. Somehow, even though we had complete control over how it would look, this tree leans more than any I have ever had. It is not at all straight and tilts to the right pretty hard, but we love it anyway.

So there you have it. Maybe someday we will use materials that aren’t scotch tape and construction paper. Even a glue stick would be a huge boost. But this is the theme for our first apartment and it suits us well.

Hope everyone is feeling the season!

Maybe in some small way this helps. At the very least it must help your self-esteem whenever you look at your decorations. They must have had more planning than these.

Merry Christmastime

McBeth Family Thanksgiving

Hello again. Finals have come and gone (lucky me as all of my professors were of the mind to put finals the last week of class rather than during finals week) and I am back to writing. First up on the list is our trip out east, well, I guess everything is out east from here, but I’ll use East to mean ole PA.

This was our first shared major holiday. We’ve done New Years and Arbor Day, but never one of the big ones that have so many traditions attached. So Thanksgiving. Started off with a rather dismal red eye flight that will probably not be repeated. We left the apartment at 8pm and arrived at the McBeths around 3pm. Lovely. With the changeover in Houston around 4am and the millions of screaming babies, this was not one of my favorites. But we made it. Woo! Cheers abound!

Maybe its because of this flight and lack of sleep, but everything hereafter gets a little bit jumbled, so I’ll forgo a day-by-day.

Most importantly for Thanksgiving, the food. Turkey was had, but after that the field was wide open with new options. There were candied yams that involved a lot of marshmallow, baked corn, green beans with bacon, potatoes, stuffing, cranberry tube, and probably a few things I’m forgetting at the moment. There was also both pie and cake. How great is that? Also important to note is that all of these things were great as leftovers. Very crucial.

We also went out to the ever-favored german restaurant in Hagerstown for Sean’s bday, which was as fantastic as ever. True, it is my only experience with German food, but I am positive I would be let down if I tried something similar at a different place. They do food right.

We also spent a day out and about at a pretty sweet model train setup at the Hagerstown Train Room and Museum, which was pretty sweet. Their Christmas set up is pretty intricate and it took a while tracking down all of the moving pieces, finding King Kong on one of the buildings. After that we headed over to see Harry Potter.

The other big event was Thanksgivingston, which was the Saturday following at the Wilkenings’ house and is a bit of a tradition amongst Sean and his friends. More great food, some ridiculously good pies and a pumpkin cheesecake that was by far my favorite.

All in all these were very good things, fun new traditions that will take some getting used to, but are also pretty exciting.

Great times and thanks to everybody out East!

Turkey Team

Welcome Thanksgiving! We have turkey town in effect and our apartment is gearing up for the holiday. We left up the orange lights on account of them being the best and there may be a few more turkeys before November is over. We apparently love to do crafts, again on account of them being the best, but probably also because we are adults.

First up is Tam’s turkey. He is a rather large, but an elegant friend with tiny feet. He has a sweet pilgrim hat. After him comes my Captain Gorton inspired turkey. He knows all about the rainy season and he is ready. Oh, also don’t be alarmed. His butt is not on fire. Those are some sweet tail feathers. Not flames.

Finally, we have our next attempt at cupcakes. These may not have turned out as well, but that is mostly because I was involved. Our decorating hit a bit of a wall when we ran out of Thanksgiving themed ideas. This happened after the third cupcake. I have no idea what is relevant to this holiday. We have autumn leaves, a native american, pilgrim hat, turkeys both standing and cooked, and then we ran into some problems. You may also find the number 8, pac man, a gravy boat, a gourd, and the x-men logo. Hooray for Thanksgiving!

So we are living up November, happy autumns!