It was a blast. We ate a ton. The dressing was great (it is called “dressing” if it is not stuffed inside the bird, and “stuffing” if it is actually inside the turkey, according to my MIL). The decorations were beautiful. And the Tarheels lost terribly against NC State in Football.

Amelias Birthday was just a few days before thanksgiving (on Tuesday this year), and though we didn’t get any pictures, I wanted to acknowledge how special of a kid she is, and how proud of an uncle I am.

We hosted my side of the family, and there are several weeks worth of postings of things to say, but I will leave it as: we made it through the meal together.

Thanksgiving at the Registers house was great. This year was just entirely different than years past because Mercy was able to entertain herself for a bit. For the past 5+ years, she was trying to kill herself by jumping down stairs, finding sharp objects, finding poisonous objects, throwing shoes, and every other thing you can imagine.

This year, she didn’t. What did I do with this new sense of freedom? I avoided all pictures as you can see, but after that was accomplished, I fell asleep on the couch for a few minutes after the meal. It was delightful.

Rosie and I have a long history of picking trees out together. And if you look in the bottom-left picture above, one of her favorite traditions is topping the tree each year with the star that goes on top. Year after year I would lift her up, sometimes it was stressful and she didn’t quite understand or even want to cooperate. This year, she started talking about it hours in advance- she was so excited for the important duty of putting the star on top.

Mercy spent time focusing on three branches on the bottom, ensuring they had 6 ornaments a piece. It looks ridiculous, but we were sure to leave those ornaments just as they were placed.

I like to think our ornaments and decorations are not a shrine to the North Pole, but lean 70% towards the birth of Jesus, and 30% towards kids crafts, Santa, etc.