Pancakes!!.....Oh, and Christmas lights, too...

The night before last, The Kids had spent the night at their Nani's house, since Nani didn't have to work yesterday. It was nice for Ched and I to wake up on our own, without two human alarm clocks going off to remind us that it was 7:00 AND WHY ARE WE STILL LOLLING AROUND IN BED?!? ARE WE CRAZY?!? THERE ARE THINGS TO BE DONE, BREAKFAST TO BE HAD, SHOWS TO WATCH, ARGUMENTS TO START AND WE'RE ALREADY BEHIND SCHEDULE!!! But, the only problem was that it broke our Thanksgiving tradition of having acorn-shaped pancakes for breakfast, something that we've done for two years, which is, as you know, a third of Bear's life. In school, she was dictating Thanksgiving memories to me, and having pancakes was one of the things that she had me write down. Also, I'm a tradition girl, and I LOVE having things that we do, year after year, and I feel a little sad when things change. So it bothered me a little bit that we didn't get to do that yesterday.
This morning, The Kids came into my bedroom, as they do every morning, and one of the first things that Bear said was, "Mom, can we have pancakes for breakfast, since we didn't ge to do that yesterday?" That's my Tradition Girl!

On another note, I decided that today would be the perfect day to put up our outside lights, since it's supposed to be 73 degrees and bee-yoo-ti-ful. So I haul out the box of lights and proceed to plug them in, one by one, to make sure that they all work. Out of 8 strands of lights, ALL of which worked last year because I had them on the front of the house, how many do you think worked? Go on, guess...I'll wait. Did you guess? Well, if you guessed THREE, you were right! THREE STINKIN' STRANDS of lights!! How is it that I can take them down, all of them in working order and twinkling merrily, lovingly coil them up, gently place them in a box, and oh-so-carefully carry them out to The Barn, and when I get them out a year later, I have 5 strands that only half light up? I don't get it. Are there Light Gnomes that get into The Barn and work some gnomley black magic on them? Is there some sort of Gnome Poison I can put out there to prevent this from happening in the future? It's maddening.
So, sometime, when it's not Black Friday, I'll go and invest in MORE lights so that I can put them up on my house and enjoy them this Christmas Season, and make sure they don't work next year. *sigh*