It's Autumn Time

And that means Thanksgiving is upon us.  I love Thanksgiving.  I don't necessarily love Thanksgiving dinner though.  I don't necessarily love football watching, cleaning up an obscenely messy kitchen, or all the busyness in the grocery store.  What I do love, however, is the crispness in the air, the gorgeous colorful leaves, the devotion to gratitude... even if for just one day for some folks, and that I get the day off of work to spend time with people I love.  My love for those things certainly outweighs my unlove for the other aspects of the Thanksgiving tradition.

Kevin (Beloved's youngest son) will be coming home from Central Michigan University for Thanksgiving.  He'll be home late tomorrow afternoon!  I'm excited to see how he's changed in just a few short months since he left for school.  Will he have gotten the freshman (though he's really a junior) fifteen?  Slimmed out a bit?  Gosh I hope he hasn't taken on the attitude that he now knows EVERYTHING and is so much more worldly, open minded, and enlightened than me or Dan.  I'm not in the mood to enlighten anyone right now. ;)  But we've certainly missed him.  I know Kramer has missed him plenty too. 

My mom & step-dad will be here tomorrow evening as well.  They will be staying until either Saturday or Sunday.  I love that my mom is coming.  I've never had the opportunity to have her come to my home for a holiday.  Even though I'm not thrilled with roasted turkey, I am thrilled that she's bringing a ham and that I'll be making all sorts of delicious potato items as well as delicious desserts.  I like and love my mom.  She makes me laugh.  She's also AWESOME at doing dishes.  Heheh.

While getting the house ready for guests to descend, which includes Eric (Beloved's oldest son), and Angie (cute young married girl from church w/two babies & a husband who'll be working all day Thursday), we're finding that life would be so much better if I didn't go to work at a real job everyday.  I AM SO BEHIND ON HOUSEHOLD CHORES!!!  As it turns out, I'm a bad housewife.  I do not know how women who work outside the home pull it off.  I just don't.  Who has the time or energy to clean everything after a long workday, and church meetings, visiting teaching, and presidency meetings, and the other stuff in life?  Seriously.  And I don't even have kids!  Crazy.  Just crazy. 

Anyway, we've prepared Kevin's room for him (moved him to a smaller room) and prepared the official guest room for my folks.  Our home has cream colored carpet in the main living areas.  Hopelessly lame.  We have a dog named Kramer.  Kramer and cream colored carpet do not mix well.  Candace and cream colored carpet don't mix well either, but at least I have a fighting chance with it.  Anyway, with guests coming, it was only right to have the carpets cleaned.  Well, even though I've known this for quite some time, I waited until six days before Thanksgiving to attempt scheduling someone to come clean the carpet.  Mistake.  Oh well.  Live & learn.  So our friends Andrew & Melanie loaned their Bissell to us.  WONDERFUL!  That thing really works well... especially with Beloved at the helm.  And just when Dan finished about 1,000 square feet of carpet cleaning, guess what happened.  Kramer came bounding through the back door after having trapsed through lots of dirt and mud.  It looked like something out of a Loony Toons cartoon.  Perfect black paw prints all over the clean creamy carpet.  Poor Dan.  I laughed.  He was not amused whatsoever.  (I wonder if it's funny to him yet?)  Poor Kramer.  He had no idea.  He's just a dog.  I should've been more proactive, or something.  Again, live & learn.

Poor, hideous carpet.

 And since it's just a couple days before Thanksgiving, I figured it's a good time to finish my autumn wreath.  Maybe I won't be putting the Christmas tree up in three days after all.  The wreath is cute.  It doesn't photograph well, but it's darn cute in real life.  I was able to finish it at work, since it's a slow work day.  I do think maybe I was punished for crafting at work instead of being more appropriately productive though.  I have never burned myself with a glue gun like I did today.  It hurts to type.  Yowza.  Anyway, cute wreath, no?

Like my screen saver?  Is it obvious that I'm in Primary?

So, I'm excited for these next few days.  I love my family.  I love my life.  I love my dog, even if he sheds forty-thousand hairs a week.  LIFE IS GOOD!