Thanksgiving Happenings on Black Friday

I hope you all had an absolutely fantastic Thanksgiving however you spent it. We had our traditional untraditional Thanksgiving day.

We actually kicked off our festivities by going to the Festival of Trees on Wednesday night.

For the record, I was all about decorating for Christmas early and no one in my family would let me because we "had to do Thanksgiving first." Nevermind the Festival of Trees is all Christmas and starts a week before Thanksgiving. Apparently other people and places can start Christmas stuff early, just not us.

Anyway, the kids were super excited for the fesitval and it was good. I am going to be honest and say that I am glad we had free tickets. We spent about an hour wandering and exploring the decorations and art. We didn't buy anything. But we had a nice time as a family and sometimes that's what counts.

They were a tad short to be gingerbread people but that's okay. They had fun anyway. 

Yesterday we started our day with our traditional parade in pajamas while eating monkey bread. The best kind of Thanksgiving morning in my mind. 

In the afternoon we went to see Frozen II. I absolutely loved it. From start to finish. Maybe even more than Frozen? 

We all really enjoyed it. M wore her Frozen II shirt and we took her picture by the big sign. And we came home for our awesome Thanksgiving dinner. 

We had ribs, mashed potatoes, veggies, a cornbreadacopia, "pumpkin pie," and "turkey drummies."

We made the cornucopia Wednesday night and then filled it with the cornbread muffins. Both the pie and turkey are Rice Krispie treats. (The drumsticks are white chocolate covered pretzels.) 

I rather enjoyed our festivities. Today we are staying in. (I hit Target last night for the one item we needed for the holiday.) Tonight the tree goes up! I can't wait!! 

I hope you all have a very good weekend!

Weekend Recap!

We had an extremely productive weekend. Friday night we had a Frozen Family Movie Night to gear up for seeing Frozen II this week! (Yes, M watched it for the second time in a week, she didn't mind at all!) It was the perfect cozy night in.

Saturday we got our week's shopping done. Well, everything but the biscuits. Two different grocery stores were out so that's my task for today to track some down. We can't have our traditional Thanksgiving parade monkey bread without biscuit dough! Yes, I am aware we could make our own dough but good gravy let's hope we can avoid that.

Our major goal for Saturday was getting our Christmas card picture taken. Our kids are currently in a stage where for whatever reason they cannot both look at the camera and smile without being incredibly awkward. After much cajoling and bribing, we did manage to get one semi-okay one. We got our Christmas cards ordered and so that task is underway.

Then yesterday it was pretty nice out, near 50 and sunny so we did more yard clean up. I think the bulk of the clean up is now done. Which is a big relief on my part. With so many leaves and two snowfalls to contend with it's been a messy and wet season for yard waste.

And with that, here is an unrelated picture of M's art from school Mass. Well, it's Elsa so I guess it relates after all! Happy Monday of a short week! I love short weeks!

It's Almost Time for Frozen 2!

I had the 3 Musketeers on Tuesday and we spent the day getting excited for Frozen 2! While we aren't going to see the movie until next week we are pumped and wanted to share the joy with our friends.

Among coloring in Frozen 2 coloring books, I got from the dollar store, playing and eating lunch we had a snowball fight!

Seriously, if you're looking for some cheap family fun, buy a few bags of cotton balls and have an indoor snowball fight. We had 200 cotton balls for the 4 of us and it was perfect. There is some clean up involved, little cotton bits in hair and carpet but vacuuming isn't the worst chore in my opinion. 

But the kids were entertained for almost 40 minutes, moving their bodies, teaming up to come up with a plan to get me. Cotton balls do not hurt if they are thrown at you so attacks are perfectly legit. We listened to a Frozen playlist during the snowball fight, a mix of both movies. We're already obsessed with "Into the Unknown."

We played pin the nose on Olaf. That is a 50 cent piece of tagboard. Ignore my lack of artistry. The kids didn't mind one bit. I don't really know why this game is so fun for kids, but they all love it. 

We watched popcorn pop. Endlessly entertaining. The anticipation and the joy when it finally starts popping is my favorite!

We watched part of Frozen. I don't usually do screen time with the kids but it was a super gloomy day and it went with the theme. 

They all got a glow stick so they could "Let it Glow" and then they pretended their glow stick was their Elsa powers. It was fantastic. Of course, they started having another snowball fight during the movie. I didn't mind at all. 

It was a fun few hours getting excited about Anna and Elsa and Olaf's big return! Are you going to see the new movie soon?

Soup!

I don't know about you, but all this early gloomy weather is just making me want soup! So yesterday I made a new recipe and it was DELICIOUS! Not only that, but it was so so easy. It tastes like someone spent a great deal of effort on it but it takes almost no effort at all!


You should probably make this soup. Don't be the Soup Nazi. This is absolutely soup for you!

Creamy Italian Soup

Ingredients:

• 1 lb of ground sausage
• 1 box (4 cups) vegetable broth
• 2 cans Italian style diced tomatoes
• 1 block of cream cheese
• 1 small package of spinach
• tortellini 

Directions: 

1. Brown and drain sausage.
2. Put sausage, broth, full contents of cans, cream cheese and spinach in a crockpot. Be sure to break up the cream cheese into pieces. 
3. Turn on low for 4 hours.
4. Stir in Tortellini 30 minutes to an hour before serving. 
5. Enjoy! 

We ate ours with a loaf of Italian bread. It's delicious and filling. I took no pictures but trust me, it's good. A very pretty color!

And an unrelated picture of a giraffe on an Etch A Sketch from car line yesterday. 

It's A Llama Llama Day

It's Friday! I love a good short week!

But the best part of today is that it's November 15. This means the new season of Llama Llama dropped today. We (M and I) watch an episode of Llama Llama nearly every day. It is her favorite. And I honestly don't mind it at all. It's a very sweet kid show, it's funny, doesn't portray parents as dumb and has a delightful theme song.

But for two years we've had 15 episodes only. Let's just say that we know them very intimately.

So with Disney+ dropping on Tuesday and Llama Llama today, family movie nights and screen time are figured out for the foreseeable future.

Have a happy weekend!

The Rest of the Weekend

I mean, there was still more to our 5 day weekend than my Hanson concert. Even though, let's be real that was the highlight.

Thursday night I hosted book club so I spent the day cleaning. Which was good because then we left the house clean when we left. It's always so nice coming home to a clean house.

Friday the kids just hung out with my brothers and parents. And I am sure they had a great time. Which is a total win-win since I was also having a great time.

On Saturday we had a little birthday party for M. My family didn't celebrate with us in October so we had a hot dog lunch and a cake, and she got to open her presents.

C also got an amazing present. For years he has talked about wanting a typewriter so he can be a real author. I don't know why he has it in his head that's true, but he does. Well, my parents found him this really nice manual typewriter and HE LOVES IT.

I mean, it's not screen time and it still will help his typing skills so that's pretty amazing. He's just been typing away and having a ball of a time.

We got home Sunday before the cold front and storm moved through. We had enough time to bag up some leaves. Which was good and let the kids run off some of the "driving all day" energy.

Because to round up our 5 day weekend it of course snowed some more. So we played in the snow and had hot chocolate naturally.

It is November. And we are already on our second snowfall. Plus the cold. I think it's going to be a long winter. But the good news is that it's already Wednesday!

The Best Night Ever

You guys. I can't even handle how exciting my Friday night was. It was just the absolute best night ever. We spent the day driving to my parent's house. And after checking in with them and hanging out for a little bit, we left our children with them and we left. 

We went to the casino where we mini-mooned (spent a few days after our wedding before our big honeymoon to recoup and write thank you notes) to stay the night. We checked in and went to our room and rejoiced and relaxed in the silence and king-sized bed. Oh Lord, I needed some time away and this was the best surprise. 

Husband planned the hotel all by himself after checking with my parents. We were always going to visit them though because for my birthday my parents got me tickets to see Hanson.

Yes. Hanson. Like Mmmbop. They've really had a consistent musical career since 1997 and if you only know Middle of Nowhere or This Time Around albums then you need to give them a listen because I love them, they are my absolute favorite band. 

Anyway, the night away with Husband was just a bonus and long overdue. In fact, it was our homework assignment for our marriage group to have "2 meals and an overnight" back in February.  So I was so happy to have the time. 

We went out for dinner and it was lovely. Honestly, I don't even know the last time we went to dinner just the two of us. Lately, our dates have consisted of meetings or our marriage group. After dinner, we went to the concert. We take terrible selfies. But that's okay. Lots more people would join us for the sold-out show. 

The concert was everything. I loved every single second. They sang nearly everything I wanted them to, including Madeline. (SWOON!!) And just skipped over only one song I would have put on the set list. That's pretty darn great for a band I've loved since elementary school. Sam Cole, wherever you are now, I do still like Hanson. (In sixth grade he told me not to buy a book about them at the book fair because I wouldn't like them forever.) 

We had great seats! 6 rows back which was good. Not too close but we still felt right in the action. We sat on the Taylor end of the stage.

Poor Zac was in a motorcycle accident in October and broke quite a few bones, so he didn't play the drums and just focused on singing. Which, stinks because he's a good drummer but I also kind of loved it because he walked around and I got this great picture. Still cute all these years later. Still my favorite. 

Oh, it was so so good. It was so so good. After the concert, we went back to our room for a while to let our ears stop ringing and drink some water. It was hot in there and all the screaming and singing had gotten me all parched.

After we were refreshed we headed back down to cosmic bingo. Back when we were dating and engaged we used to go to cosmic bingo all the time but we hadn't been in a long long time. It's all black lights and loud music and bingo fun.

We didn't win. But it was yet another activity we did together and we had a nice time doing that. If you're keeping track we had dinner, went to a concert and then went to bingo. Any one of those could have been a date on their own but we did ALL three!

After bingo, we got some late-night food and went back to our room to chat for a while. And then we fell asleep and we slept in until 9:00 AM. Because we didn't have any kids to wake us up. It was glorious. And we definitely need a king-sized bed for ourselves. (Our room is too small now but one day!)

We got some coffee before we checked out and had the valet bring us our car. It was the best. We need to do it again VERY soon!

What's Up With Us

Well, our snow melted in time for us to rake a bunch of leaves, and that's good. We have single-handedly prevented the next snowfall from happening since both of our vehicles got new tires this past week. Hopefully, we will return to the previously scheduled fall weather.

There isn't a whole lot going on right now, which is the way I like it. Soccer season is finally over. Thank goodness. Longest process ever.

Yesterday in carline M spotted this chemtrail and said: "There's a cross in the sky." I was delighted. M is our reluctant faith child. She asks every week if we have to go to church. (Because maybe our answer will change even though it never ever has?) She groans when we pray but does participate. So it's always refreshing when she spots the goodness and symbols in the wild. She'll get there I am sure.

She also took my phone and now you can be treated to "Still Life From a Five-Year-Old: A Series."

This week is bringing some fun stuff. Tomorrow is the last day of school for a while because we have school conferences and then Veteran's Day. I love a good 5 day weekend and we have some exciting plans that I can't wait to tell you about.

Have a great Tuesday!

And Just Like That... November

Holy Cow. How is it NOVEMBER?

You guys this year has gone by so fast!

Trick-Or-Treating was very cold and snowy and icy. We had to switch to plan B for costumes but it turned out okay.

Arctic Waldo and Eeyore had a good time anyway. I enjoyed the spiked hot apple cider that one house was giving out. It was really good. 

And now we get ready for a great November. Do you think we will have soccer tomorrow with 4 inches of snow on the ground? I kind of hope not but we will see. Yay Friday!