Anna and I were awake. The boys were not!
The boys are out.
Category Archives: Friends
Anna and I each needed one thing at Aldi.
HAHAHAHAHA. We’ve learned our lesson over the months—always ALWAYS get a cart.
It’s crazy to shop with two enablers.
- Want a Sangria? Yes, how about a white, too? Yes.
- Bellini? Yes, of course. Six? Yes.
- How many cheese bread? 10? Sure!
- Peanut butter cups? Duh.
- The boys want a Summer Shandy. Okay I’ll get two.
We just ended up splitting the bill since we are still eating together 5-6 nights a week. We’ve both discovered that we love crowdsourcing meals!!
I’m finally cooking scallops!
I love scallops but am always nervous about cooking them. But since they were defrosted from our freezer issue…they had to be cooked!
They needed a bit more sear (I took them off too soon) but they were yummy!
Mother’s helper practice
Kim and I took Katie on our walk today and gave her some practice being a mother’s helper.
Waiting for election results!
Anna and Brianna are running for school board and tonight we get the results! I might have brought over all the frozen pizzas from our freezer than had thawed…
Then the boys and kids went home and we moved inside. Honey thinks she’s a lap dog.
Walking to a fire!
When your neighbor friends are having a small bonfire and joke that you should come over? Off we go, drinks in hand, to walk five houses away!
Getting to use my new tumbler!
Our group is having our first bonfire in forever—so my new glass has to come out!
(Most of us remembered them!! But we didn’t take a photo!)
KITTENS!!!
I took the kids to visit Brianna’s kittens as they’ve never seen kittens (I know, right?! But ours were already cats when the kids were born!) and oh man did they love it! Laughs and giggles and soooo much happiness. It was wonderful after the recent loss of Charlie.
We hired out Maggie’s nail trim.
Anna said David was the cat whisperer when it comes to nails so he offered to try Maggie’s since they were long overdue. She didn’t mind it nearly as much as when Tom and I try to do it. He’s hired.
Brunch is served!
We’ve started doing Sunday brunch with Anna and David. Sometimes we order out, sometimes we go out, and sometimes we cook. Today we cooked.
- 2 kinds of bacon (sweet and hot and Kirkland regular)
- 3 kinds of sweet rolls (cinnamon, apple cinnamon, and caramel)
- 2 kinds of scrambled eggs (plain and cheesy)
- 2 kinds of drinks (fuzzy navel Bellinis and Bloody Marys)
- 5 kinds of fruit (not pictured—apples, oranges, cantaloupe, strawberries, and pears)
- and friends and parents!
It’s time to smoke the briskets!
Anna had three briskets in her freezer and we’re both on Project Freezer Cleanout…
I love it when you find THE perfect gift!!
My mom friends have been doing ninja porch drop offs with random gifts every so often (it’s hilarious what some will do to try and avoid the Ring)!! And I’ve been wanting to return the favors but just couldn’t come up with the right thing. Then I hit on these tumblers. It took awhile to decide on the perfect saying but once I found this one I knew that was it! (Piper Lou has great stuff and great deals, BTW.)
Needless to say we’re all looking forward to using them together again this summer!
Legwork for Anna!
Anna is running for school board so asked for help passing out fliers. Angela and I did a few neighborhoods today—she drove and I delivered! I was surprised how tired I got!
This was our proof to her that we were actually doing it!
A Jackbox burn!
These were two awesome answers. Can you guess which won the majority vote?
Zoom!
A margarita spiced with ginger, cinnamon, and chili pepper?
It’s definitely not a favorite but it’s interesting.
Charlie hiding from Honey
We had brunch with Anna and David today and they brought their dog, Honey. She’s a great dog and we love her but she wants to play with Maggie and the cats and they want NO part of it. Charlie actually lasted fairly long in her bed but eventually she snuck up the stairs and just sat there. She RARELY goes upstairs so you know she wasn’t herself.
The cherry vodka matrix!
After the boys did their Matrix we wanted to try one, too. The only thing we found that we really all agree on was Cherry vodka and pop. So you can see our 7×4 matrix below. Probably half of them were beyond awful so we had just the tiniest sip and dumped them. One vodka was definitely the best (Oma’s) and one was the worst (Effen).
Bubble dinner and a movie night!
The Manhattan Matrix
One of the YouTube channels Tom watches is called How to Drink with a non-professional home bartender that likes to “make drinks and drink them!” He’s funny and we enjoy listening to his reviews.
One recent episode was called This episode tried to kill me where he did a Manhattan Matrix…with like 42 different versions to try (6 vermouths by 7 Bourbons)! The boys decided to try it with 3 vermouths and 3 Bourbons…
Both looking up the recipe that was used because neither could remember and they wanted to do it exactly right.
Don’t worry—they did not drink all of all the trials. It was mostly small sips of each one. They also rated them all 1-9.
Besties then and now!
I was going through some old photos on my phone and when I saw the 2019 photo I had to do a Before and After.
I mean we look great in both—duh!—but we just look… BETTER now. Right?
Birthday cupcakes and brownies!
Celebrating with our bubble!
Owen gets a new bed!
Long story short, a neighbor friend and I decided to switch beds. She had a Queen that due to previous circumstances had been cut into but was still good (but you couldn’t really sell it) and we had been talking about getting Owen a new bed…so we agreed to trade and she took his bed and headboard for her youngest!
We borrowed another neighbor’s truck and moved everything Clampett-style around the corner (they’re on a different street but only like 12 houses away).
I missed the pic of taking Owen’s old twin bed to their house but it was similarly precarious.
Owen had to help a little.
And both kids enjoying hanging out on it that night.
This is what needing absolutely nothing looks like at Sam’s Club.
Anna and I stopped by Sam’s today—I wanted to see if they still had clearance Christmas candy and she needed chicken stock. We decided one cart would obviously be enough.
Haha.
Hahahahahaa.
I taught Anna that the reason you go down every aisle is to look for clearance stuff! Today was Tootsie Rolls ($3.47!), Laser tag guns ($14), holiday jar sets ($5), satin pillowcases ($6 for two), and a styling doll head for Katie’s birthday (didn’t want to pay $49 at Christmas but I’ll pay $14.81 now!).
There was another layer, too. Both husbands love Snowdrift Vanilla Porter so we stocked up.
Please tell me we are not alone. Everyone else does this, too, right?
Challenge accepted!
So this morning a friend was having fun with the SeneLook app and I joked not to tempt me because I could do that look. So then another friend challenged me to make it a totally wearable daily look.
So here’s the look!
It isn’t perfect by any stretch—I need more blending, I need a liner and probably fake lashes, and the lips are too gold (I think I need to do an ombre)…but overall it’s not bad at all! 😂
Regardless, it was fun and really didn’t take that long!
Reach out to your friends.
People. Reach out to your friends. You might just have a great time!
I just had the best video call with a college roommate who I literally haven’t heard her voice in 20 or so years. We see each other on Facebook but that’s it.
So tonight we were chatting on messenger and she was like hey we should video chat why have we never done that?! Due to the time difference (she’s in New Zealand) our schedules don’t always mesh, but tonight it worked. So we chatted FOR AN HOUR and it was soooooo great. And we’re going to do it again soon—probably with margaritas if we’re being honest.
So just some advice to reach out to those old friends. You might just have a great time. And we all need more of that these days.
Let the festivities begin.
5:25pm — Anna and David and the kids came over. Anna and I needed to do our makeup so we had a shot and then…
6:13pm — Next-level New Year’s Eve makeup!
7:10pm — Then we cooked and ate a delicious Hello Fresh dinner.
10:39 — Rum punch down!
10:55pm — Look at this cute little family, LOL.
11pm (Midnight EST) — Small fireworks! We did it for the kids but they didn’t even care.
11:04pm — Adult champagne celebration.
Did someone say more rum punch?
We went over to Anna and David’s for Christmas Day dinner. And another batch of Dave’s amazing Trinidadian rum punch.
Daaaaamn. I guess I do like rum. Merry Christmas!
Christmas Eve with our bubble!
If I haven’t mentioned it, we have created a bubble with our good friends Anna and David. Each family quarantined for two weeks and we always wear masks when we are with anyone outside our bubble—and even try to avoid prolonged visits with anyone outside the bubble. So we do hang out with each other a lot.
We usually share Hello Fresh dinners but decided to splurge tonight on not one, not two, but three orders of our favorite octopus appetizer from our favorite restaurant (Primo) and a homemade charcuterie board. That was seriously all Tom, Anna, David, and I wanted. Easy peasy.
We didn’t take one single picture of our amazing dinner, but it was delicious. We might also have drank an entire batch of Dave’s amazing rum punch and watched Christmas Chronicles with the kids. I’m not naming names but someone fell asleep.
Then we got ready for Santa!
We left out Girl Scout cookies because Katie texted Santa and asked if he liked them and gave him a choice and he picked the chocolate and peanut butter ones. The candy cane is for the reindeer.
I absolutely love the letters both kids left for Santa. Owen thanked him for being awesome (and gave him a spot for a Robux code) and Katie wanted Santa to write his name.
And this was where Maggie was. Maybe sneakily waiting for Santa, too?
My Christmas Eve look(s)!
I started with Pink Champagne lips and it looked okay…but that color is really just too light for me.
So since I am trying to redo ALLLL my color collage photos, I tried two other colors. My favorite is the Sheer Berry.
But check this out. I had Anna try the same Pink Champagne color and look at how different it looks! That’s simply due to the different color of our lips—hers are much more pigmented then mine!
Me and my bestie.
