Paris? No Thanks

We've been doing really well lately.  Hubby's home, which is always a bonus, though he has a heinous trip coming up after Thanksgiving.  He leaves the 28th for Iceland for a couple of days, followed by a couple days in London, followed by a couple days in Paris.  He returns the 12th of December or so, which happens to be my birthday.  He tried to talk me into meeting him in Paris - who wouldn't want to be flown to Paris for their birthday?
Me, for one.
He has a long standing history of trying to do wonderful over-the-top celebrations for my birthday, which usually involve a night or two at a wonderful hotel or something.  This was fine and dandy until we had kids.  As the kids got older it has become a real juggling act of the holiday season, that not only do I have to get everything ready for Christmas, I lose a couple of days in which to do it, and I have to arrange for someone to watch the girls - my folks for the most part.  There were a couple times when trying to juggle his schedule and the girls' schedules and my folks' schedule, and getting everyone where they should be at the right time kind of sucked all the fun out of it for me.  It started to become more of a hassle and less of a delight.
So I turned down the Paris trip.   He'd be teaching a class most of the day, I'd be bopping around Paris on my own except for meeting him for dinner...  Don't get me wrong, I love Paris, I sort of speak French, and it would be fun, but having fun shouldn't be that much work.

And this year I would have the added problem of the dog, which would not go over well with my folks.   We would probably end up putting him in a kennel.  Which would not go over well with the dog.
So I'm staying home to keep the home fires burning.

I took the dog to a do-it-yourself dog wash place last week.  He HATED it but boy howdy did he ever come out fluffy and cute.  He smells less doggy, and his fur has that fluffy, bouncy Breck-Girl shine.  It might be hard to tell from a picture, but believe me, he is much softer and fluffier than before.  He better get used to this bath idea, as I see many such baths in his future.

 

We'll be doing Thanksgiving at my sister's house this year.  My parent's house is sort of under construction (see earlier blog). The kicker is my dad's idea of having the floors put in while they were on vacation in order to avoid living in construction for a week completely backfired and now they're living in a construction zone for over a month through the holidays.  I'm so proud of my mom who claims she hasn't once said "I told you so!"

With my family Thanksgiving is a two or three day affair.  Bigger than Christmas in some ways.  I'm looking forward to it.

The change of location helps us in one way as it makes it easier to figure out what to do with the dog, since my sister has dogs, we're hoping they all get along well enough.  Had we had it at my folks', the dog would have been in his kennel the entire time, or locked in my sister's back yard or something.

Time to start figuring out my grocery list as the festivities begin tomorrow, and with my mom's kitchen all torn up, I'm helping out more than I usually do.