It Takes a Village to assemble my village

We all had a case of boredom last week so the three of us decided to put up the Christmas decorations. I was tired of looking at Harvest stuff anyway and it was just a few days early. Traditionally I put everything up right after Thanksgiving.

Fixing the lighthouse

I sure was glad to have an extra set of hands this year. Usually I end up doing it mostly myself.  Dad helped put up my little village and he was on glue detail. I must have been in a rush last year to put things away as several pieces needed repairs.  It looks much bigger in person than in the picture and takes a while to get everything hooked up and synchronized. 

My favorite pieces are the tugboat and the Time's Square building which only had numbers for the first few years of the 2000 decade. So I have been making some extra pieces for missing numbers. No one has noticed-I think.  

Then we tackled the tree.  Jim assembled it then let me and dad do the fun stuff.  Although apparently I'm not very good at it as nearly every ornament I put up dad moved saying I put it in the wrong spot. Ah, okay.  No wonder the tree looked so different every year I was growing up!

The last thing is always the outside lights.  I don't do ladders so everything is low and I have my star shower going with gingerbread men and other Christmas items. I don't know how the people get these to cover the entire house!  They must have 6 of them!  One just shows on a little section of one of the domes. Hmmm😕 But it still looks okay.  

Also last week was my birthday. I spent one afternoon with my sister Bert and she made us a nice lunch.  And it was nice talking girl stuff instead of hockey football and fishing!😩 Then Jim took me to a French restaurant that was in an old restored church.  I had my favorite-escargot! Yum!🙌 And filet mignon which was awesome. They tried to talk me into Creme Brulee but since I was taking half my dinner home that wasn't possible.  Next time!

At the French restaurant with my fun drink

And of course Thursday was Turkey Day.  I think it's a silly holiday and if we hadn't been invited over to my daughter's we probably wouldn't have done anything. But it was really nice and I'm glad we went.  Kevin had a huge spread OMG, it was like a buffet!  If my Greek mother in law had still been alive she would have told him in Greek he made enough food for 40 sheep herders.  It certainly was!  And everything was delicious.  

After dinner we played a fun card game with Kevin's mom Pat, and then watched Beauty and the Beast from Netflix which I still hadn't seen yet! It was pretty good, odd casting choices for some of the characters but still enjoyable. 

Uhhh, I ate too much Turkey

Yesterday my brother and sister in law took dad for the weekend. They do that frequently to give me and Jim a little break.  Dad said he feels like a child of divorced parents. The other parents taking him for every other weekend!  I added too that by saying when I dropped him off "he remembered his ball and glove so you can play catch with him and you don't have to pay child support this week!"😄