Can't believe November is nearly over!

I can't believe it's the end of November. How insane. This year has really flown by. Well, with the time of year I have all the usual stuff going on: Thanksgiving, family time, Christmas shopping. 

Thanksgiving was pretty good. A little different since one of my siblings has more or less disbanded from the family and that includes his spouse and my two nieces :(

Long story (very long) short (very short): My brother had an affair that resulted in a child, though the mother of this child has reached out to our family my brother wanted all of us to not have anything to do with the new baby. It all became rather ridiculous and mostly we decided it was stupid that we had to keep apologizing for wanting to meet/know the new baby. And so, by making the decision it resulted in a series of events that ended with him disowning us and not even allowing us to see the two girls he has with his wife. Very sad. Very stressful. And very stupid. He's finally made a big enough mistake that he can't cover up. And if I for whatever reason am misinformed on any part of this, it's because he has chose to not accept or make contact with me. But, I'm not playing any game, I'm not apologizing for his mistake anymore, and I'm not going to not know one of my nieces because of it. 

So, yeah. Fun times. No, I'm going to vent on that some more! It all makes me so mad I could just scream! We've stood by him through all of this. All of it. And even more so for his wife, we sided with her offering her any support or help she would need even if she decided to leave! How could she do this to us?! My family has been nothing but good to her. My father's behaviors have been questionable on a few circumstance, but me, my mother, and my sister haven't done anything wrong! 

Okay, I think I'm done with that. 

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I have over half of my Christmas shopping done! I'm excited about it. I have the tree put up and love the new color scheme we went with! Also, the hubs dropped an ornament and I told we couldn't clean it up until I took a picture. He thought I was crazy. It is such a cool picture though! The prettiest mess we ever did make ;)