Happy Thanksgiving/Christmas decorating day!

Last night was ISA's annual Thanksgiving/good-bye dinner. It was sad because it was the last time out group will be together, but most of the people who were there I will see again before we all go back to the states. It seems so unreal that we're almost done here! The dinner was nice. ISA provided the turkey, the families brought corn, mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberries, rice, and salads, and the students brought desserts. There was a lot of food!!!


Missing Thanksgiving was weird- I've never not spent Thanksgiving with my family. To be perfectly honest, though, I think I'm more upset about missing today! I loovvveee the Christmas season, but I refuse to listen to Christmas music or anything until the day after Thanksgiving. Its one of the best days of the year! After mom gets home from shopping and we eat lunch (leftovers if we're lucky!), the Christmas CDs go in, and 5 (or 6?) boxes stuffed with Christmas lights and other various decorations come out... and that doesn't even include the boxes of ornaments and the trees!! We then spend the whole afternoon basically taking everything off every shelf we have downstairs and replacing it with Christmas stuff, setting up trees, decorating trees, putting lights outside... I love it!! (last year)
This year its just weird... Halloween and even Thanksgiving didn't seem that out of place for me, but I just can't really make sense of the concept that its Christmas time when its almost 90 degrees outside. Listening to my Amy Grant Christmas music seems wrong- my memories associated with that are more along the lines of riding in the car on a snowy day! Today just seems so out of place... I went into Jumbo and I just wanted to stay there in the middle of the Christmas decorations because that was the only time I felt like it might really actually be the end of November. Plus I always spend the day with my family. I guess maybe I'll have wait until I'm home for the Christmas spirit to really hit... meanwhile I'll just keep trying with my Christmas music and the mini-stocking I bought to have some sort of decoration. lol See? Beach stuff on sale with the Christmas decorations?!?