Let us pause...

...to commemorate two momentous happenings.

1) It's Thanksgiving weekend, and I did not had a single bite of turkey for the first time ever in my whole entire life. We had a sumptuous garlic encrusted pork loin at my FIL's on the actual Turkey day. We actually bought a turkey to make today, but got lazy and stuck it back in the freezer last night (it wasn't at all thawed anyway) and heated up a ham instead. At the last minute, though, I started acting like a mom whose son was home from college for his first Thanksgiving, and we pulled out the ingredients we thought we might stash away for a traditional turkey dinner at Christmas. We made green bean casserole (Todd's dad's favorite. Or not.), creamed corn, smashed potatoes, fruit salad, rolls, and last, but certainly not least, Todd's creation--pumpkin cheesecake. My mom commented that it tasted just like Cheesecake Factory's, and Todd and I exclaimed, a little sarcastically, "How crazy!" It was, in fact, their recipe.

2) We have a Christmas tree up and decorated the Saturday following Thansgiving for the first time in about six or seven years. It's not the "real" tree--the one with crazy colored lights and ornaments handmade since age two by everyone in the household--that one will follow in a couple of weeks so it's not too dry by the 25th. No, this is the fancy schmancy one that gets to shine in the front window with white twinkly lights for passersby to admire and say "ooh! aah!" as they wistfully stare and wish they had theirs up already. Okay, so we finally finished at 12:30 a.m., but it is done. (And besides, when did we ever do anything early in the day?) I told Todd that this is what happens when I'm not stressed out and I'm doing the work I love. :-)

Ha. You thought I was going to say, ""Let us pause to give thanks," or something cheezy like that, huh?

(But yeah, let us. We have a lot to be thankful for.)