Happy Thanksgiving! I hope everyone out there is thoroughly enjoying their turkeys, mashes potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pies. My Thanksgiving feast scheduled for 6:30 tonight? Macaroni and cheese with hot dogs. A classic and favorite. No worries, the real deal will go down on Saturday night. Matthew is already away at work and Emily and I are sitting around twiddling our thumbs. Well, Emily isn't so much... she has no thumbs.

My little nativity scene from Israel is the finishing touch for our Christmas decorating. I plan on getting some sort of wreath for the front door and of course, presents under the tree will be the finishing finishing touch, but for now, the house is looking mighty festive. I have sugar cookies, gingerbread cookies, and reindeer cookies all just waiting to be made for the holiday season. Delicious. Our tree always makes me smile, so beautiful and classic. I'm not sure where we're going to hang our stocking yet. My cousin got us these adorable stocking hangers last Christmas. I'm thinking our new book case will be a good place to stick them... once it's built. For now it sits conveniently next to the small shelf that occupies it's space. We're so lazy sometimes. It will be nice once everything is put out and away. With company coming for Christmas, I want everything looking it's very best. There's not much hope for our second room though. Oh well, it won't be a second bedroom after all, it will only and always ever be a storage room. We're going to get some curtains to partition off the ugly stacked boxes though.

Everyone keeps asking me what I want for Christmas. It's so hard sometimes. I don't know of anything I truly need or want right now. We're getting a new flatscreen TV and both of our families are pitching in towards that. I already got my new winter coat so I can use it during December. I asked for some lens keepers for my camera lenses but that adds up to less than 10$ total. I honestly don't know. I think my mom is resorting to the classic fall back, gift cards. She feels bad though because she wants me to have something to open up on Christmas. I know Matt will get me some nice presents though so she doesn't have to worry about our Christmas being completely present-less. He was looking for a tennis bracelet for me, but most of the bracelets we looked at were far too big. My wrists are extremely small which makes buying jewelry a bit of a chore. Most watches don't even fit my wrist. Quite annoying. So what do I want for Christmas? New clothes? New shoes? A black coach purse? Everything sounds so superficial... which of course, it is. I don't know. How about this, if you see something you think I'd like then go ahead and pick it up. I'll be grateful for anything. It's about the giving not about the receiving anyways. And truly, it's all about Jesus anyways.

I am going to bust out the dish sets the Wolfes got me for a shower present last year. Amazing. They got me two sets (service for 8) of winter dishes with snowmen on them. Complete with mugs, dinner plates, salad plates, and bowls. They are square just like my normal dishes. So adorable and so thoughtful. When Kristin's mom sent them she said, "We just saw them and knew they were something you'd never buy yourself." It's so true. I love holiday dishes but wouldn't ever buy them for myself since we don't have extra money for extra dishes only to be used during the winter. But I am so thankful we have them. It will make the holidays so much jollier. So tonight I am going to unwrap them, wash them, and make room for them in our cupboards.

I am in the process of simplifying my life. I have given about five large trashbags of junk and clothes to goodwil since moving down here. I should have given it away back home, but of course, back then I thought it was all stuff I needed. The process continues as I find more and more stuff I don't want or need any longer. Memories are wonderful things but I have 21 years worth of memories. It's time to pick and choose what to keep and what to toss. I have tried simplifying my wardobe and have done fairly well. I still take up 3/4 of our main closet (that take up a whole wall), my own entire dresser, and the whole downstairs closet (that takes up an entire wall and is full of hangers that hold six tops each). It just seems a shame to get rid of some of these clothes when I still like them and still wear them. But I hate having so much. It seems so wasteful. Soon I'm going through our storage boxes to get rid of more junk and hopefully limit the number of boxes we need. Part of me thinks that if it's in storage now, then I should just chuck it because it won't be coming out anytime soon. Most of my childhood memorabilia is still in my parents basement boxed up. The stuff I brought with me for storage is all things I thought I would use here... obviously, I was wrong. I'll probably end up giving away most of it and lightening our load. I kind of want to get rid of my stereo too, but I keep thinking that someday we might still want it. I don't relaly need my CDs either, but I want to keep a hard copy of my music in case something happens to itunes and all my music disappears someday. Maybe I'll buy one of those albums that will holds all my CDs and I can just dump the plastic cases that take up so much space. I just hate having useless clutter. Matt has his little corner with all his videogames and computer sutff and guitar stuff. It drives me crazy how it's all disorganized and thrown around, but he likes it that way. I suppose he can have his own little corner since the rest of the house is my domain.

Alright, time to go do something productive. I could start organizing our storage area now. I probably should. I have the time.

Happy Thanksgiving. I am thankful for my Jesus, my husband, my home, my kitty, my job, and my family. To be extremely brief. But those are the most important things right now as they keep me alive.

Love,

Rebecca Iveson