I ended up buying a small ham and turkey in case we chose to eat in, so cooked the ham on the Monday after Thanksgiving when Dave was off with the trimmings and the girls ate up the ham. They really love ham. So that worked out good. I still have the small turkey breast so we'll see if we eat it on Christmas or New Years. It's frozen so just have to defrost it. The girls insisted I also get another ham and even Dave who is not a ham fan liked it. I think I might get two and put one in a soup. Found a nice ham soup recipe. Soups are on our menus this fall.
Now on to the "holiday" season. There are a few things going on this year. First, the girls did not want to put up the large 7ft or taller full tree. I was surprised by that because they have bugged me since we got it two years to put it up. We put the smaller 4ft tree that sits on a table, up instead. Both girls have purple small trees that go on their dressers. Each girl has their own ornaments given to them, handmade, etc. This year the lights they used in the past 2 yrs burnt out so I went through some tubs of ornaments my mom had. There were strings of lights in them, so LGA got blue, which she likes because she has a lighted ladybug light that projects stars on her ceiling and she always picks the blue setting (out of red, green, blue) so the lights are comforting to her. BGA got multi which she liked, but unlike last year, she did not want them to blink at all. SO while LGA was putting up her small tree, BGA snuck in and helped me decorate the other one. I really liked that she wanted to do it with me as she's a teen now, and wanting some independence. But she really enjoyed it. I would have waited for LGA too, but the girls are doing a lot of arguing over who does what, fighting, etc. these days and it was kind of fun for BGA to do something with me. She has a daddy daughter date coming up with Dave soon. She made it quite known she wants to spend more time with him so he's trying to figure that out. Funny to see her asserting some independence. I wonder who she will become? I am enjoying some more grown up movies, conversations, etc. with her (although she said if we had a mom/daughter day she did NOT want to go shopping, LOL.).
I got some of the ornaments from my mom's collection, that I brought home with me two years ago after she passed away and I was cleaning out her home to get it ready to sell. There was this little gem, the angel we put on our tree every year. Kinda fun to put up some ornaments from my mom. I found some other stuff for the girls to put on their trees and in their rooms and I think they really liked that they came from my mom. I put up some of the things I remember from growing up. A lot of stuff got lost, given away, etc, but I found a few things I had forgotten she had. It's making this holiday season a bit more special for me, and 2 yrs later I was ready to dig into the boxes and bring out things I remembered. The angel must be at least 50 yrs old. The ornament was probably made in the early 70's. I have a whole box of handmade ornaments and we did not put all of them on the tree but it was fun to get these out.
Here's hoping you and your family are enjoying a wonderful holiday season and new year.
