Hold me back.

Christmas is just around the corner so today I'm decorating!!! Nothing can stop me now! Except for a little three-year-old's birthday party this afternoon.

I took a few pictures Thanksgiving Day, but I'll have to include them in my next post. We arrived at Rick and Karen's around 12:30pm...and no one else was there. People trickled in over the next hour and half, so we ate around 2 or 2:30pm. It was nice to sit and visit with Nate's side of the family, most of whom I haven't seen since before Nathaniel's funeral.

At 5pm we managed to get in the car and drive down the hill to Mom and Dad's where we spent time with them and Grandma and Grandpa Mac. Mom and I split the cooking for that meal, which was fun! Her half turkey took a lot longer to cook than she was expecting, though, which was perfect for Nate and I. We were still getting over our late lunch, so the idea of sitting down to a second full dinner was a bit intimidating. As the turkey kept on cooking, we relaxed and flipped through the plethora of ads in The Oregonian. Finally we ate and it was fabulous! We ended the evening with Halo. Perfect.

Yesterday Nate went back to work, as did I. I left the house around 2:30pm to run to the store and my car completely shut down on the way. If you're familiar with our area, I was leaving my house, heading toward Mom and Dad's. I had just turned onto 172nd from Armstrong Circle when my Christmas music turned off and all my panel lights flickered on. The car died and I was stuck in the middle of the road. I thought about steering off the road, but the drop from the pavement to the field was about six inches and I knew that would mean trouble later. I flipped the hazard lights on and jumped out of the car. I stood in the field and began worrying about rush hour traffic and how angry Portlanders can become if their way is impeded. I sprinted up the drive-way of a house nearby and borrowed a phone book from them. The mom who lived there and her daughters were piecing together furniture...I can only assume that they actually made it to the Black Friday sales.

Don from Integrity Towing (wonderful man!) showed up 30 minutes later and towed me and my poor car to Vol-tech off of Portland Avenue, just down the block from Rae Ann's house. But we realized we couldn't leave it there. I had locked the keys in the car with the hazard lights running, so it was a clear sign to unscrupulous folks that the car was a sitting duck.

We decided to drive the car to Rae Ann and Tom's, put cloth and tape over the blinking lights, and leave it there until Monday. Yuck.

SO! On Monday Nate gets to take me back to Rae Ann's house and meet up with Don to take it back to Vol-tech to be fixed. I know, I know. It was unbelievably stupid of me to lock our ONE Volvo key in the car (we are buying like 8 more keys as soon as possible). But what's done is done. So now we wait for Monday!

That is pretty much the excitement in our life right now. I'll tell you, though, that I'm feeling a thousand times better than I have over the last eight weeks. Things are looking up!