Lighthouses

For years, my dad assembled an elaborate holiday train village for Christmas. It's one of my favorite memories of the season but sadly, a tradition that I let slip after a few years when the torch was passed.

Now that he's gone, it's become important to me to finally make the time to bring back ...moresomething he loved so much so that my kids can experience just a bit of what he brought to my life when I was their age.

To that end, I've spent the past few years picking up village decor when I travel. My dad always personalized his masterpiece by painting beautiful images of the places we had visited to serve as backdrops for the train's journey. Well I can't paint. But I can shop!

Next week, I'm taking the kids to Las Vegas. For the first time ever, we'll be having a non-traditional Thanksgiving dinner. I'm bypassing the glory of being elbow deep into the rear-end of a turkey for dinner reservations at Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville.

An odd choice, it may seem, unless you know the background. My eldest daughter, Delaney, was named to honor my Irish roots and my ex-husband's love (read: obsession) of all things Parrothead. Buffett has a beautiful song sung from a father to a daughter called "Delaney Talks to Statues" so I thought it would be fitting to work their dad somehow into their first post-divorce Thanksgiving. This is my typically odd way of doing it, lol. Vegas and Margaritaville.

So that's a very long way of explaining why I was SO excited to find this Holiday Lighthouse from the Vegas Martaritaville Restaurant available online. I'm ordering it ahead of time simply to avoid schlepping more than three kids back to the Midwest after our adventures are over. If you happen to know a Parrothead, perhaps they would like it too.....