Salow's Law

Just like Murphy has a law -- "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong," my family has a law -- coined as a rendition of Sutton's Law -- "Go where the money is." (Didn't think that you were going to come to our lil' ole corner of the internets and learn something, now did you...)  Well, Salow's Law is "Go where the holiday is -- and go there singing carols & wearing an ugly Christmas sweater." Salow's Law ruled our household this past weekend.

We have officially entered into full-on holiday mode.  Finn is now lullibyed to sleep with Christmas carols.  I have created a Christmas station onto E's Pandora account (which I'm trying to perfect with the right combination of Vince Guaraldi & Bing Crosby).  And our laundry room is scattered with Christmas bins, just itching to be opened and spread around the house.  Yes, I understand that I'm committing a sin by skipping over Thanksgiving and going directly into preparing for Christmas.  But those people who complain that Thanksgiving gets the shaft need to understand one simple fact about Thanksgiving...  There really isn't any preparation for Thanksgiving other than making the menu and cooking/baking.  Yes, there are decorations (and I do have a scant amount of pumpkins and turkeys around our house).  But Thanksgiving isn't as all-encompassing as Christmas is.  You don't hang Thanksgiving lights.  You don't sing Thanksgiving carols.  You don't send out Thanksgiving cards. Christmas just requires more preparation, end of story.

 

Munk was starved for attention -- but I don't think that he wanted this type of attention.

And we are celebrating Thanksgiving -- we are celebrating her first Thanksgiving BIG this year.  The little lady and I are flying to Iowa for Thanksgiving to spend it with family.  My dad and I are going to the Iowa-Nebraska football game on Black Friday (which isn't as exciting as it could have been because this year, we are a little worse than terrible & I'm starting to dread the idea of not nursing/pumping for over 8 hours).  Of course, I'm preparing for Thanksgiving this year by making lists for travel & shipping diapers ahead.  But that's not really very much fun.  Now that Thanksgiving was spoken about...

 

So let's move onto Christmas.  I made E throw on his ugly Christmas sweater on Sunday.  Not only did I get holiday photos for our Xmas card out of him, but he hung my lights on the roof.  Vote for Husband of the Year right here!  Now there is one thing that you must know -- we live in Cleveland.  Cleveland's Novembers aren't usually 60+ degrees.  So when you get a day that is 60+ in November and it's on a weekend, you MUST take advantage, even if it is almost two weeks before Thanksgiving.  We have been in our house for four Christmases this year.  I put up the lights the first two years (I had made a comment during our courtship about being "the queen of the roof" and E held me to it -- I forgot to mention in my "queen of the roof" comment that I'm the "queen of the ranch roof", not our steeper pitch roof.  I don't do heights very well).  And last year, with the anticipated arrival of our little girl in February, I didn't want to be 9 months pregnant trying to pull down lights off the roof -- so we passed on any Christmas decorations save one tree inside.  So, I'm absolutely ecstatic that I am going to have outdoor lights this year.  I promise that I don't have them plugged in (yet, but probably will by the time you read this).  I had a really hard time shutting them off after dusk on Sunday -- a really, really hard time...

 

With the majority (and the most difficult) of my outside lights up, we also shot our holiday card photo.  I wanted to start editing those photos last night, but found out that my photo-editing program isn't loaded onto my new fandangle computer.  So I must wait until I can get the program loaded -- probably this weekend.  I got A LOT of holiday cheer out of ole E this weekend.  Finn and I also finished up with my 9 foot tree.  I got pissed at the pre-lit-not-lit aspect of it and cut all the lights out and strung new lights on it (no decorations yet).  This weekend is going to be a deck-them-halls weekend as I'll be putting up my 7.5 ft tree as well as my 6 ft tree as well as 36 feet of lit garland (yes, our house does resemble a forest during Xmas) as well as the lit garland outside.

 

Any of you out there have cats and lots of Christmas trees like me (or maybe just one of each)?  Last year, I had two kittens and was very pregnant, so that resulted in little cats nestled in trees (and also an emergency cat-tendectomy by our house sitter for the poor kitten who's leg got stuck in a strand of lights.  Don't ask.)  For them, the higher, the better -- my pregnant behind didn't have the energy to kick them out of the tree every 10 seconds.  So this year, I drug out my 9 footer a week or so ago and instantly, I had BIG cats (Norman has to be part Maine Coon and weighs in at over 15 pounds) climbing in my tree.  I don't think so, Tim Norman (anyone else remember Tool Time?).  I found a solution -- a super easy solution that since I implemented it not a single cat has even attempted to climb my tree.  Wanna know my secret?  This is my secret.  I bought the spruce and the snow-berry holiday scents (cinnamon wasn't available).  They are completely inconspicuous, cheap (bought at Wal-Mart for $6.48/each tube which has six sticks) and the smell doesn't overpower the house.  I hung three of each in the lower tier of my tree.  You can smell them when you are within 3 feet of the tree, which is absolutely perfect.  I will never have a Christmas tree that doesn't have Scenticles in it.

My goal is to have everything up by the end of this weekend (poor E, sitting in our house over Thanksgiving in a house filled with Christmas).  I normally put everything up over Thanksgiving weekend and being that I can't this year, I want to be able to turn the lights on the instant that I get home after Thanksgiving.  So a little earlier this year, we will hopefully be holiday-ready.