Today's the Big Day!!!

Today is the day we've been waiting for! My brother and his wife flew in this morning from California, and my parents are driving here from Ohio! We are all so excited! We've been in a cleaning and cooking frenzy. It's a good thing we have guests fairly regularily--it forces us to do deeper cleaning and get to the little things on our to-do lists. Every time company comes, we hang up a few more pictures, empty out one or two more boxes, and organize just a little bit more! For this special family Christmas, we really went all out. We got "The Dish" satellite programming for our TV. As a rule, we don't pay for TV--"why pay for trash that we don't want anyone to watch?" is our philosophy. But here in VA, we are sort of in a little valley, and our TV is in our basement, so we get absolutely no reception. The only other time this bothered me was during the Summer Olympics, because I am an absolute Olympics fanatic, and I guess I'm raising the boys to be as well, since I think they were about the only people in America thrilled to be able to watch all the swimming prelims and other trials. For that, we brought our TV up into our family room and got an electric antenna from WalMart, and after much careful adjusting, you could see that there were in fact people engaged in various sporting events on the screen, even if you couldn't tell what country they were from and it looked like it was a little snowy over there in Greece. But we wanted to be good hosts for the family Christmas, and most of the football is not on regular channels anyways, so we decided to splurge and get the Dish. It's still a novelty to go down and turn on the TV and see a picture right away! We've been so busy though, that I haven't even gone down once just to watch. I think I will enjoy the Home and Gardening Channel, but I haven't indulged yet. Having the TV down in the basement really works for people who are trying to cut down on their watching. I never even think about it down there, and it's never worth going all the way down there just to see if something interesting might be on. The boys don't even know that there are cartoons on there, and I'm not going to let them watch any. A video every now and then is fine, but I don't want them to get in the habit of watching TV cartoons. Besides, most of the ones that are on now are just dumb. In 5 years, no one will remember them. What a waste. I don't know how long we'll keep it. We'll see how it works.