It has been a strange holiday season at the J&J household this year. James has finally started to peek out from his 12-ton mound of work only to find me in hyper holiday elf mode. At which point he generally retreats back to his work cave.

But we have a tree (as has been documented here) and decorations and cookies. Most of the presents are bought; all of the cards have been mailed out. Even the save-the-dates made it in. This is our last week of work (yay for no paper the last week of the year) and everyone is hopped up on sugar and generally jolly.

James’s sister arrives Thursday evening and brings with her the start of Christmas. At least in my mind. Once you have family in town, Christmas begins.

This is the first year that we’ve given joint gifts. In some ways, it makes things a lot easier. In others, it’s harder, as I can’t just call up Mom for James’s grandmother’s address. But I’m having fun adding all these new family members to the list.

Working is getting weird again, gotta go. More holiday fun later.

It was a long time coming, but we finally got our tree up.

Getting the tree was not a problem. We went to the FFA sale at our local high school. A very cute and very earnest freshman helped tie the tree to the roof of the car. It didn’t slide off during the short drive home, but it was close.

Getting the tree in water was not a problem, either. And James didn’t even have a hard time convincing me to wait a day to decorate (the branches were a little smooshed still, so it made sense).

The problem came when it was time to put on the lights.

For my first on-my-own-I’m-an-adult tree, I bought three strands of red and white lights. I love these lights. I’ve never seen trees with red and white lights, other than my own, of course. When I decided I ought to buy a few more strands, just in case, I found they were not plentiful. As far as I can tell, only Target sells them. Last year I bought two or three strands to stock up.

When I decorated the outside bushes this year, I used the “new” strands. One, of course, died on me, so the bushes are very lopsided, with two strands on one side and one strand on the other. But I wanted to save my “good” lights for the tree.

I plugged in the “good” strands to test them and only half of each would light up. I got a pair of pliers and started trying new bulbs, hoping to fix them.

Three broken bulbs later, James and I are fighting. I’ve got tiny shards of glass all over the living room and am no closer to working lights. We finally decide to run out to CVS and just have boring multicolor lights. I’m quite upset, but figure any lights are better than no lights.

But Sunday was, of course, the ice storm. The car was completely coated in ice.

Resigned, I decided the decorating would have to wait.

But it’s lovely, now. And for more holiday spirit, here’s the revamped mantel decoration:

And to top it off, reason #56 why I love James:

Isn’t he cute?

We have been flat out all of November and December isn’t looking much better.  James has been ridiculously bogged down at work and was handed a side project he couldn’t say no to ($500 right before the holidays?  who can pass that up?).

So while he worked all weekend, I cleaned all weekend.  With the craziness of NaNoWriMo behind me, I went a little nuts, doing all the things that have been on my nerves since Nov. 1.

I put away all the detrius of our Thanksgiving travel then cleaned just about the whole house.  Then I got out the Christmas decorations and had fun with that. I’ll have to take another pic of the mantel.

I also made ginger snaps for James, since he was working so hard.  And cute candy train ornaments with the youth group (I broke mine, and then our pastor broke it again, so I don’t have one to show off; they’re supposed to go to the people at the nursing homes we carol at, anyway). It was not a very relaxing weekend, but I was happy to get as much done as I did.

This week I look forward to writing more on this novel and figuring out the ending.  James is still sloshing his way through his projects.

Shaffin at the Wake Robin wants to sit down and discuss stuff  over drinks.  I’m thinking we might be able to do that next week; sounds like fun.  We owe another big payment before the end of the month.  It’s sitting in our money market account, but I’m loathe to part with it.  I love watching it earn interest.  We’ll be below the minimum balance for good interest once we make the payment.

No news on the car yet, though I did talk to the adjustor this morning.  He was supposed to make it out to Sharon Auto Body today to check it out.  Hope it’s fixable.  I can’t imagine having to get a new car now.  It would not be pretty.