The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

It's here - the best part of the year, the one that starts on Thanksgiving and ends on Christmas with the time in between filled with trees and parties and lights and shopping and baking and Christmas music overload. In short, the best part of the year. 

Our turkey day on the Outer Banks was the fantastic, relaxing and tasty. Our house was right on the beach with windows on three sides of the dining room, where we sat and watched dolphins and pelicans. The weather was surprisingly mild, enough for walks on the beach and wading in the *refreshing* waves.

We enjoyed a pre-thanksgiving seafood feast of shrimp and crab followed by a roast sticky chicken thanksgiving with all the trimmings including this amazing green bean casserole that D.'s mum, Val introduced me to last year. Homemade cinnamon rolls, pumpkin pie and Dad's clam dip rounded out the cooking. Let's just say my jeans are fitting a little tighter this week.


Now it's time for the full-fledged holiday ramp up, our weekend plans include a Christmas tree, and I'm already blasting Vince Guaraldi on my commute. (can you blast Vince Guaraldi?) Either way, the spirit is here, even if the snow isn't and that's going to take some getting used to.


In addition to the aforementioned Charlie Brown Christmas, my soundtrack shuffled in some Amy Grant tonight and I was reminded of a favorite childhood holiday memory. Putting up the tree and blasting Amy Grant (you can blast Amy Grant), my sister and I would dance - crazy dance, with red metallic pom poms. We would run through the halls, Christmas dancing shaking our pom poms to "Emmanuel" until we were out of breath. I remember that there were lots of leaps involved and jumping and running. What about Amy Grant evoked such Christmas dancing frenzy, I'm not sure, but I totally wish I had my pom poms tonight.