This showed up on my pillow tonight. I’ve only been asking for their lists for a month now…so the chances of her actually getting any of this is pretty low since I’m done shopping and I refuse to pay last-minute prices or go out shopping in throngs of people.
But just look at that list. It starts off all normal and then WHAM! Bunk bed and pool? And her own YouTube channel? And a hamster and kitten? I just can’t even.
A drive-thru animated light show at the local fairgrounds! It’s really a neat experience!
The kids get a Lego advent calendar. We get good chocolate. (And cheese!)
Tom accidentally knocked it off the tree when he was trying to fix something for me so I can’t even be upset!
This just means we have to go back to Mackinac Island. Hopefully this coming summer?!
I love decorating for Christmas but the first year in a new place is always hardest because you don’t already know where everything goes and it takes longer to figure everything out.
Which wall do these kid Christmas paintings go on? Or do they lean on a shelf? Or do we not put them up this year?
What wreath fits on the door? Oh, this hanger won’t work but we can’t find the magnet. And that wreath is too thick for the storm door so where could it go instead?
And oh wait. We don’t really have a mantle like we’ve always had so my favorite mantle clips (that I bought new last year) TOTALLY won’t work.
And we don’t have spindles on our stairwell so no garland like I love. So how and where do we divvy up the four strands? Well we can put these here but we need to add another so now we have one left. If we put it there we need another (which means a trip to Costco and $30). Keep thinking.
And on and on. So after I unpacked some things…I had a glass of wine.
We have plenty of room for TWO trees this year…so you can bet your butt I’m doing it!! A friend knew we didn’t have an artificial tree anymore so found one for me and then I snagged one from Amazon Vine!
I had my doubts but love how this tree turned out! My friend Britt helped me design it using a bunch of random fake berries, branches, pinecones, etc. that I had originally intended for topiary-type decorations—along with a specific selection of color-matching ornaments from our collection.
Buuuuuuut it’s just a bit small for the room (YOU THINK?!) so we are hoping to find at least a 9′ tree, if not maybe a 12′ tree on clearance after Christmas. I finally have the space for a huge tree (my bucket list!) so I’m gonna do it.
Tree number two was planned to be the more kid-friendly tree with all of our fun ornaments and crazy lights. It’s definitely not the best fake tree but once you get it zhuzhed with lights and ornaments it’s fine.
The lights are actually insane LED lights with like 12 colors that chase and flash and race and it can be quite anxiety-inducing. The kids love it (and it is cool) but when I get to pick it’s a calm purple.
Friendship means Thanksgiving dinner plate leftovers delivery at 10:30pm because we had deep dish pizza today. (And we had had a game night with a bunch of us!)
We just finished a 2 1/2 hour Zoomfest with the whole Schwalmlette and Schmittlette family! We visited and played a few trivia games
…and took our family photo.
We were going to have dinner with Anna and David but Covid kinda put a stop to that…and since the kids don’t really like any typical Thanksgiving fare, we opted against all the work and Tom made pizza (and I made mozzarella bread balls)! It was yummy!
Aaaaaand what would Thanksgiving be without…a chocolate martini…?!
When you’re on a cheese party zoom call in the kitchen you have to make do.
Playing some new online collaborative games. Quiplash is my favorite!
We heard the Ring go off and all of us ignored it because we were sure it was absolutely nothing—again—but then Katie said maybe we were booed again (yeah, right, okay) and ran out to check and I’ll be damned. We were Gobbled!
And here’s the stash from all earlier Boos!
An entire bucket full!
All sorted! We’ve learned over the years that you have to sort candy and chocolate because they can’t be stored together long term. And this is obviously too much candy to eat in a short time period.
We weren’t sure what trick or treating was going to look like because we knew a lot of people wouldn’t be participating but we told the kids we’d walk around the neighborhood to check it out.
There were a lot of creative solutions to managing candy delivery. Most were just on tables in some way, but we saw a bunch of chutes, some spread in the grass, and one on a truck bed (below).
I think Halloween may be forever changed
after Covid Style 2020 Halloween. The general consensus among moms I talked to was that we kinda liked it more than usual Halloween! I loved not ringing doorbells or wondering who was/wasn’t participating (the city had delivered red and green signs for people to put up to show if they were participating or not and a lot of people used them so that was nice) but most people were outside watching anyway. There were no huge groups of kids. All kids we saw were being really respectful and gingerly taking a piece of candy or a bag or whatever. And we loved how creative a lot of the houses were!
The weather was also gorgeous! We started with our winter coats but they got unzipped pretty quick.
We were out for about an hour and then as we were almost home we saw some neighbors around a fire pit in their driveway so we headed over to say hi—they are the guys Tom has played poker with but we haven’t really met the wives so we thought it was a good time to hang out. So we had a few drinks and visited while we sent the kids on without us to hit more of the neighborhood. (It’s so wonderful they can be out on their own! They came back and checked in with us a few times but pretty much were on their own for two hours!)
Then we left there to go to a nighttime outdoor candy hunt at our friend’s house—which had been planned in case trick or treating was a big fail. We literally just threw candy in the back yard and let them hunt with headlamps and flashlights while we had mulled cider and s’mores and visited around the fire.
The Primary and Elementary schools had a drive by parade today—teachers and staff dressed up and parents could bring their costumed kids through.
Sounds nice and easy right? Whoa. It was a traffic nightmare. The school is less than five minutes away and it took us an hour round trip! I think the turnout was much larger than they expected PLUS they had both schools (across the street from one another) at the same time.
The kids also made me shake my head in frustration. I thought it would be totally cool to let them sit in the back with the gate open so everyone could see their costumes. Nope, neither wanted to do it. Like AT ALL. And once we got there Owen refused to put his mask on because he was afraid people were going to make fun of him. And I told Katie she could hang out of the window to wave and she refused. Ugh. Kids!!
Okay this is getting crazy. But oh my gosh we are having so much fun with this. Now the deliveries are trying to be super sneaky to avoid the cameras (most of us have Ring doorbells). So this time, I didn’t even know I had one—everyone was showing pics of their baskets and I didn’t see one on the porch so I thought okay maybe I missed being in this round (no biggie). And then I went outside and found this in front of the garage door!
But this time we know it was one of our neighborhood mom group… And this isn’t my basket but someone else’s because my kids tore into ours so fast I couldn’t get a picture. At least they handed me the wine.
So one night a few days ago the doorbell rang and we didn’t think much of it since Amazon always rings the bell and we get lots of deliveries. But the kids usually run out to see. Today Katie did and said she saw a kid running away—but he left a bag of Halloween goodies with a note that we had to pass it on! We looked at our camera feed and saw the kid but we have no idea who it is! Well the kids were super excited for TREATS! CANDY! SLIME! and definitely wanted to Boo other people.
Thankfully Tom stepped up and did it with them because while I did want to be a part of the neighborhood, I didn’t really want to do all of it. He took them shopping. He supervised the building of the baskets. My contribution was printing out the instruction. Then Tom took them to the houses where they successfully delivered the baskets without being seen!
How am I 47? Seriously. But I look good so I’m okay with it.
I didn’t do too much today—I was wrapping up my month-long Living Lippy party and I went to Kohl’s and Aldi ( do I know how to live it up or what?) then Anna and David came over for a drink after dinner.
Unfortunately they turned out more Christmas than fall. I love the place I go but I’m never fully happy with anything I try to do from a picture.
Remember we don’t have a tree anymore—last year we got a real tree because we didn’t want to get a new artificial tree until we saw the house where we’d be using it.
My dream would be to have the 14′ tree because our living room can definitely hold it…but $900?! Also, that would limit the tree to that room only. So realistically I’d want the 9′ tree so it could go in either the living room or the front room. Tom doesn’t want either because he wants real trees but those are easily $85-100 a year. So we’ll see.
and I put him to work juicing limes (testing Lindsay’s juicer).
Just a neighborhood friend (and her cousin) over for some slip and slide fun. Plus ice cream.
And then a Bundt cake with our friends later.
Daddy and Owen were painting the garage while Katie was having her waterslide party. Yes, it’s purple. We only use Home Depot or Menards “oops” paint colors ($30 vs $120 for five gallons) for garages so it was bright peach or this. We figured the purple was meant to be.
Also, Tom’s sprayer died about 3/4 of the way through…so we ended up buying a new one. We hated to spend the money but he will definitely use it for future projects.
Once we showed up to check on them, of course Katie wanted to paint, too…so we let Katie do her name.
Complete with birthday shirt, unicorn tail headband, and the shoes (heels!) she thought were appropriate to wear to work at the new house. Also, pose 2 was ALL her.
When you wake up at 5am with an idea to hopefully make Katie’s pool noodle birthday candles a bit better (adding the letters) …and you’re hoping the rain stops so the whole thing doesn’t get ruined (because you were cheap and used the cardboard school folders instead of going to Target or Walmart to find the plastic ones) …but who expected it to storm this week (it’s never rained once on her birthday) …so you were taping candle flames to the sticks in the rain in your PJs (hoping the neighbors weren’t watching because the PJs were too short for public). Oh, and Tom put the letters facing the house instead of facing the street, so that required a last-minute complete rearrangement (because the letters were already pinned on—because we already moved the glue gun/craft bin to the new house). Phew.
But she LOVED it so that’s all that matters, right?
The kids started by catching fireflies. They were actually pretty good at it. Katie set these on the table and they stayed there long enough for me to get a photo—half on and half off!
Soon the fireworks came out. We started small.
The kids were at a respectable distance.
But the second one we did—a Panda—got a little crazy. It started small but then the second phase got insane and sparks were reaching the kids. Needless to say everyone immediately moved back!
Then they did some individual ones—each kid got to hold one and I managed to snap this awesome pic of Owen.
The dads got involved, too.
