Thanksgiving: The holiday, and my trip home, was full of mixed emotions. I spent a ton of time with Jake - he spent the night with me on Thursday and Friday nights, since Katie and Mike were working crazy weekend-after-Thanksgiving hours. About the only bad part of all of that was sleeping with him. What is it about kids that makes them take up way more room than a full-grown adult? And, I finally saw The Polar Express, at Katie and Mike's, since they have the full home theater setup.

It seems like there's a lot of stuff going on in my family lately, a lot of which hit that weekend, hence the whole mixed emotions thing. In a way, I was ready to come home and get back a little to my everyday life.

Christmas: Christmas is seriously my favorite time of the year. I love it - I love the decorating and the entertaining and the gift-giving - the whole thing. I was going to go out to dinner and a parade at the beach with friends, but I was having too much fun decorating a new house for the first time. My tree is up and so full of ornaments, I don't know where I could put more. And I've got a whole list of other stuff to buy, too.

I've been listening to Christmas CDs (I have tons, and buy more each year). My favorite, so far, as weird as it sounds, is a Victoria Secret 2-Cd set I bought last year. Hate the cover, but love the CDs.