Gorgeous Sunday

What a glorious day today was....... bright and warm, sunny and clear.... so pretty that we went to the Kemah waterfront and had lunch at The Crab House, watching the boats sailing on by. We got there just before noon-time, and by the time we left at 2:30, there wasn't a parking spot left. Cars were just circling around the lots, waiting for people to pull out and leave an empty spot. Seems like just yesterday that the Kemah area was a tiny little sleepy town that was a nice little secret.... now it's a tourist destination for half of Texas, for goodness sake. I liked it better when just the locals knew about it.

We spent most of the morning talking about last night's Halloween party....... it truly was so much fun, there was so much energy last night it just felt "electric" in our house. My husband said the same thing I did last night... he predicts that next year, more of our friends will be showing up in costume.

One of our friends and neighbors has already asked us to "save the date" for her Christmas party. The date she picked would've been the same Saturday night for our Christmas Open House, so if we do that again, we'll have to pick either the Saturday before or the one after. We've been talking about doing a smaller Christmas party this year, rather than the big Open House thing that we've been doing these past five or seven years.

That big party, with more than 60 people here, gets just very overwhelming. We usually hire music, and I have a girl (a local waitress) who comes in to help me with the serving and clean-up......... but still, it takes so much planning and preparation-- and usually, by the time Halloween gets here, I've got those invitations all written out and ready to go, and I've got most of the Christmas favors all wrapped up. Not so for this year..... we've just had a busier-than-usual summer, so my Christmas plans are still up in the air.

One holiday at a time, says my husband. So at lunch today, we talked about Thanksgiving. When we got home from the restaurant (after driving from Kemah all the way to Friendswood for gelato), we called up young C's mom and asked her if she had thought of Thanksgiving yet. She's still working on Halloween, she said.... but she told me they'd all be happy to join us for turkey-day. So that makes five of us, and my husband and I will talk this week and decide if we want to invite anyone else, or just keep it small. (Or, as young C says--- just us family.) We also talked about having Thanksgiving up at the cottage, but we thought it would just be easier to have it here, rather than having to bring all that food up to Mayberry, or having to drive up there and buy all those groceries at the last minute up at the lake stores. I think here is just the easiest way to go........ and we can always go to the lake afterwards and bring the left-overs.

So at least that's set...... Thanksgiving here, with C and her parents, and we'll see who else we'll add to the mix.

I spent part of this afternoon taking down some of the Halloween party decorations...... just the large crape-paper pumpkins that hang down from the ceiling in the living room, dining room, kitchen and breakfast room. They'd been up since the beginning of October and when I took them down today, the rooms just looked so much bigger and brighter. I left the outside decorations up, since the kids will be coming by for Trick-or-Treating on Tuesday evening. The day after Halloween, everything pumpkin-y will come down and go back into the cabinets in the laundry room..... and up will go the small Christmas trees.

Even though we have Thanksgiving here, I usually start in with the Christmas decorations right after Halloween. Just the dining room gets decorated for Thanksgiving, with the rest of the house by-passing turkey-day altogether and being decked out with table-top Christmas trees and Santas.

Once Halloween is over, Christmas is here and gone in a heartbeat. Which reminds me.... my husband and I also have to talk about New Year's Eve. Last year, we had a gourmet pot-luck dinner here, with four other couples....... that was a great night, but should we do something different this year?

Whose idea was it to put all these holidays so close together?