Do you . . . ?

. . . put up your tree before Thanksgiving?

I guess, from what i'm seeing, it is not all that uncommon.

I'm perusing the blog of someone who does this professionally. You can check it out, if you want. She is at "A Baby Changes Everything." I don't want to get into "tree issues" until after Thanksgiving, but i will say my trees do NOT look like hers; we are much more simple, country, plain. I'm not sure i've ever seen one quite like them.
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Hooray! Patty came to clean today. I so appreciate that Duane lets me have her come for that . I still do a lot while she's here. But after a couple of hours i reached my limit & went to lie down while she finished. And in doing so was where i could hear the phone.

My dear friend J & her husband (also J) will be up here over Thanksgiving & we've going to get to visit with them for a little while on Friday. She'd written me about it a while ago, but i got side tracked & didn't respond. (I seem to be bad at that, sometimes.) So she called today to follow up. I'm so excited to be able to see them. I've known J for many years now. She's written a few books i'll post about sometime.
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I've put up a new album at Picsaweb (the link is under the pic of Duane & me - over to the right hand side). It is a lot of the different pics i've already posted here of fall in BB. Also, my aunt has retired & is now working at being a professional photographer. She has a Picsaweb album of fall in the Smoky Mountains. (Autumn 2009) This album is public & she said that i can pass on the link. She has several other albums there as well, the photos of which are breathtaking. As a child, my family lived in Knoxville which is not far from the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. Many of her pics remind me of the last fall that we lived there.
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I need to buy more suet for the birds. There is a flicker out on my deck wondering where his food is at. I also need to go grocery shopping this afternoon. Every day closer to Thanksgiving the store will be more crowded.
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It has been almost two years since i first found Sugarbear. We had been living in a tiny rented house on a busy street since Feb (of 2007). I had been watching the MLS sites & houses for quite some time, but was rather discouraged because there just wasn't a lot in our price range that we would want. But then i found Sugarbear. This is what it looked like two years ago (the pic is dated 17 November):

Sugarbear today

Panoramas of the livingroom. The first Duane took 2 years ago, the second i took this AM. (It looks much more crowded now!) I had trouble getting the second one to load.

Getting this house was a pain. It was a repo & the bank was doing an online auction. We bid several times, but, ah well, it is a long story. Just before Christmas we were told someone outbid us & we were very disappointed. But then a few days after Christmas we were told the other person backed out & it was ours if we wanted it! The timing worked out perfectly as we closed 2 weeks before our lease was up in mid-February so we used those 2 weeks to move.

:)

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