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.
Thanksgiving Zoom!
Category Archives: Photos
Nothing says Thanksgiving like deep dish pizza!
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…?!
Pre-Thanksgiving Zoom with friends
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!
I thought these would be cool. I was wrong.
This seems like it would be super cool, right? Your face on a mask? I mean, look at how awesome the sample looks?!
And then look at what we got—still good right?
AND THEN THERE’S WHAT THEY ACTUALLY LOOK LIKE WHEN YOU PUT THEM ON AND THEY GET STRETCHED OUT!!!
Totally ridiculous funhouse mirror faces. I mean seriously? Tom and I could barely stop laughing long enough to take the photo.
We showed Katie and she even laughed like WHAT THE HELL?!
Needless to say I contacted them and complained and they said sorry, the prints are fine. So I’m done shopping with that company.
The deck is fixed!
Tom worked on it a bunch of hours yesterday and put the finishing touches on this morning. It’s not perfect but it’s way more then I expected!
Well this is new.
I’ve been working from bed this morning and I have company.
Favorite lipcolor day!
Lunchtime dog walker
Katie has started taking Maggie out for quick walks during her lunchtime. She even has to pick up poop!
Military families and Thanksgiving
#theglowupchallenge
I knew my Monday was going too well.
A friend repotted some aloe babies for me. I totally spaced on the drive home and forgot I set it on the center console. I didn’t stop fast, but it was obviously unstable. My poor recently detailed car…
It took about 20 minutes to clean the car and then I did repot it and it’s doing fine.
Sigh. Babysitting remote learning.
Yep, I have to work at the table and babysit this kiddo since she’s not been in class as much as she should be. It’s a good thing I can pretty much work from anywhere.
It’s a wee bit windy today.
So this just happened. The chair was already tipped over in preparation for an expected storm last week and we just hadn’t put it back yet (so that was good) but we certainly didn’t expect this.
We know we need to replace the deck eventually but it’s not in the budget right now…so it will be a quick janky fix to last through the winter.
A fix for acorn squash!
I’m not a huge acorn squash fan so I figure butter, brown sugar, maple syrup, and walnuts oughta fix it.
Today is not that day.
Do you know how some days masks don’t really bother you that much at all while you’re shopping? Today is not that day. I feel suffocated. But I still wear it.
It’s a holiday miracle!
Just kidding—but to be able to park in the garage by the time it starts snowing was one of my few requests when we bought this house. And Tom came through today.
Over the last 20 years the only times my car (either car, frankly) was garaged was when a hurricane was coming through and we moved enough crap to get one car protected…or for a 2-minute photo opportunity when the garage was briefly empty.
I wish I would have been recording the kids when they saw it because it was hilarious—both of their eyes got really wide in disbelief. Because they’ve literally never experienced it.
This completely sums up how my cats feel about each other.
We updated the half bath!
So we did a few minor updates to the half bath—mostly courtesy of Amazon Vine—new mirror, lights, and shelves plus we bought a toilet paper holder and towel rack (pipes to match the shelves). I absolutely love it.
It’s slowly coming together.
Everything is still a work in progress and it’s generally a cluttered mess but once in awhile were pick everything up. Today was that day.
This is just a temporary kitchen table until we move things around (or find the perfect table for the space). We did try an Ikea table and chairs but didn’t like it so returned it. That table that Tom built fits perfectly there but we also kind of wanted to use it in the office…but the office isn’t anywhere near being finished so for now the table stays.
This area is also temporary because we really want the secretary to go here…after we get it redone (I want to paint it). But I’m also thinking of a really neat birch bench I’ve seen that Tom can duplicate. But for the time being, we’ve repurposed random stuff.
This will be our H wall but for now… it’s an H buffet.
We reconfigured the couch back to its normal position (2×2 instead of 1×3) to test it out and make room for the Christmas tree which is going to go in that far corner. And we got that rug awhile back to warm up the space a bit.
Some artwork and stuff is going up on the walls (and you can see my lighted birch tree!). We also have some big ideas…I can’t wait to do it and show you! My friend and neighbor has a great eye for design and is planning on helping me pull the house together.
But we needed a shelf to put some stuff on because we really don’t have that much usable wall space. I found this at HomeGoods and it was perfect. I’m not sure where it will go when the tree is there but…we’ll figure it out.
Park chat
This little stuff will drive me mad.
Anyone want to guess how long this crap was on the stairs? Even after we told Katie to take care of it. DAYS. It’s exhausting to try and deal with this crap every. single. day. Over and over.
We were Gobbled!
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!
Maggie and her girl.
Time to sort the candy haul.
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.
Trick or treating Covid-style!
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.
We haven’t all dressed for game day in awhile!
I haven’t done game day makeup before.
I thought about surprising Tom with an actual half and half green and white face but opted for a more subtle green look with a color I haven’t tried before—Mystic Moss. I think it came out pretty good!
Halloween parade Covid-style
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!!
Surprise! Another Boo!
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!