Hometown, OR is getting holiday'd!

Thanks to Middle Sister, I get to see the Three Wise Men Stooges doing their act of assembling the muy tall tree. Vaulted ceilings in my parents' home means one big ass tree. Each year, there's an unwritten competition to try and guess how many spiders will navigate from the tree to the ceiling. Each year, it's usually 3-9 spiders that take up rent in the corners of the rooms. Because when you get your tree from the local U-Cut (the same one we've frequented for many years), it's bound to come with local flavor.


We've yet to work out a Skyping appointment for the big day, to make sure we each have respective time for morning gluttony of monkey bread and a healthy serving of mimosas. But we'll be reaching out again to remove the 900 miles that separate our Christmas holiday with my family.


I never really expected to be the child who didn't make it home for the holidays. I always thought I'd be able to do that, since I'd be dating/attached to a boy from the Northern Oregon area. Well...at least, that was my plan. Find a boy from Portland or so, so I could remain an Oregonian but get out of my hometown.


Wrong.


Instead, a boy from Louisiana found me. He had been single barely a month. I had just been broken up with via text message. Text...yes. But they say when you're not looking...things happen.


If it weren't for my (so far awesome) new job, we could take his leave period and venture for another Christmas season. Buuuuut, I'm the new employee on the block. And vacation time just isn't in the cards yet. I literally only get the day after Christmas off; that's it. And New Years to be technical. And no, I'm not complaining. I'm in fact very thankful for the new job. It's great. I'm happy. And I'm fulfilled. So the fact we're staying here this year isn't an issue.


This week will really be a morphing into the holiday spirit though. Mr. Wookie's leave block begins and this weekend will be a baking fest. I can't let our great neighbors be forgotten! In fact, we had a delivery of tamales tonight from our next door neighbor, Rufus (the first neighbors to welcome us in). I love the holiday season!