It's official.

The Christmas Season has begun.

Those of you who spent Friday shopping know that this is true. But it's true at 28W729 Richard Drive, because I came home from church tonight to find our Christmas tree up and decorated, with multiple bins and boxes strewn about the living room. All in all, it's a very festive atmosphere at the moment. We are even playing Christmas radio on the internet, and the house has an air of cinnamon and Christmas cookies.

I do enjoy the Christmas season. But I'm afraid that I'm going to be on Christmas decoration overload this year. It seems that everyone has taken it upon themselves to be the Griswolds this year. There is a house on Book Road that looks ridiculous. Although it also looked ridiculous for Halloween, so I don't think it's just this holiday...they're just a little out of control in general. But my biggest pet peeve about Christmas (well, actually most holidays) is inflatable yard ornaments. I'm sure I blogged about this last year too, but in case I haven't made it clear...I hate inflatable yard ornaments. I find them obnoxious and terrible. I will most likely rant about this again at some point before December 25th.

I must say, I think this year we had the most enjoyable family Thanksgiving we've had in years. Everyone was pleasant and agreeable, and we managed to play several games together without getting frustrated. This is unusual for my family. The best part of playing games, though, is that we tend toward playing games of speed, which is difficult for my grandparents. But they try their best. Brent (my cousin) taught us the game of Speed Scrabble, which I highly recommend, as it is much more enjoyable and fast paced than regular Scrabble, but it was exceedingly difficult for Grandma and Grandpa. At least you can always count on not being in last place when they play. And my grandpa thought Leonardo DiCaprio was an Italian director. I love him. (My grandpa, I mean, not Leonardo DiCaprio.)

Here's the grandparents and grandkids...

We're a pretty good-looking bunch.

The weather made for a highly enjoyable weekend. And Lucas got to experience it all with me. I guarantee his blog post about Thanksgiving will reflect different experiences than mine...