8 Things I Learned in November

We're celebrating Christmas today with my husband's brothers and their families. It just so happens we're all together and already in the Christmas spirit. Yeah, so what it's still the last day of November. Everybody is excited and we're going to have a good time. But before I fully dive into Christmas, let's reflect on November. In no particular order, here are eight things I learned this month:

1. I have a personal goal to see how long in life I can go without ever cooking a turkey for Thanksgiving. Through the years, my grandma, my mom, Greg's mom, and Greg's grandma have done this well. And this year we're on a family trip in Branson, where we had Thanksgiving dinner at Dixie Stampede. Hello, whole chicken and an entire meal without silverware.

2. Christmas shopping online and early is the way to go. I didn't learn this, really. But I continued to practice this and have about two gifts left to buy. I'll buy them as soon as I'm inspired!

3. Traditions can be broken. I started to listening to Christmas music in mid-November. I was just ready for the message and goodness. So I threw my wait-until-after-Thanksgiving tradition out and turned up Needtobreathe's "Go Tell It on the Mountain," Bebo Norman's "Joy to the World" and all of Third Day's Christmas album. And then we put up our Christmas tree the Sunday before Thanksgiving mostly for a purely logistical reason of Thanksgiving being so late and that day working the best for us to be able to enjoy the tree.

4. I really could tell adoption stories for days. I wrote 11 posts on adoption this month and shared four others from other friends/bloggers. And, really, I could have written more. If you missed them, you can see the posts here.

5. You could come to Branson many times and do totally different things. We've been in Branson since Wednesday for what's our fourth time here. {We came in September 2008, October 2010 and Thanksgiving 2011. Our planned trip to Branson right after Christmas last year got snowed out, believe it or not!} We've found favorite restaurants and activities, but we've also happened upon new things each time.

6. I should amend my personal "I never drink hot drinks!" claim to "I only drink real hot chocolate. And I only drink it when I'm cold." It happened twice in two consecutive days this month, thanks to my mother-in-law. No worries, I still don't drink coffee or hot tea.

7. Amazon Prime really does rock. I'd had several free months years ago, but I'd never paid for a subscription once it expired. And then I did this month. Y'all. It's the best, especially when you live in a small town and try to avoid Walmart. I ordered a pack of 48 AA batteries this month. And nothing else. Well, nothing else in that order. There was another order of Christmas gifts a couple days later.

8. China doesn't need to wait for a special occasion. Or perhaps gathering around the table with dear friends who are like family is indeed a special occasion. Yep, for the first time in the 11 years and 3 months we've had china, I finally used it.

What did you learn this month?
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I'm linking up with Emily at Chatting at the Sky and others documenting their month's. Here are my past installments: June. July. August. September. October.

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