I had a photobomber. Now can you see it?
Tom was in the kitchen peeking out while I was outside on the step.
Category Archives: Photos
Playing with presents!
I was trying to be more present so didn’t take many photos during…but this is the kids coloring and drawing in their Christmas presents. Arts and crafts are always good ideas!!
Maggie scritches
LOOK MA! NO HANDS!!
Testing Highway Driving Assist at 80mph. 🙌🏻 This car is filled with magic. 😂
A little light reading for our road trip today.
Yes, I’m a geek…I love reading the owner’s manual.
And an editorial fail.
Happy Holidays from the road!
We’re headed to Michigan in our new car…which is stuffed to the gills!!
Christmas Charlie
Since we aren’t going to be here on Christmas morning and I didn’t want to haul all the presents to Grayling, we had our family Christmas this morning. The kids were absolutely thrilled with their four gifts (something they want, something they need, something to wear, something to read—plus I added a STEM gift)… but the best pictures I got were of Charlie and her new catnip house and in Owen’s game box. 😂
Let’s feed some kids!
Owen’s scout pack was volunteering at Feed My Starving Children so we all went!
Owen on bags and Katie on the weigh station. Four separate scoops of vitamins, veggies, soy (protein), and rice go in the bag, then it’s weighed (it has to be between 380-400 grams), then it’s sealed (my station), and then 36 bags go in a box!
The kids switched to the scoop station!
After, I might have also done some personal and Christmas shopping (each gift provides a various number of meals) plus bought a year’s worth of meals for a child.
We enjoyed it so much we will likely go back with friends to do it again!!
I love this old face.
Now he knows how to make Cornhole boards.
Tom volunteered to make some cornhole boards as recognition awards for work. Needless to say they took much longer than anticipated (I honestly don’t even want to estimate the number of hours), but they turned out amazing. He did all the woodwork at home and the laser etching at work.
Hair washing day!
This morning was hair washing day. If you’re like me, it’s something you plan for. My hair is wavy but I like to wear it straight so I need to take things into consideration like the time it takes to air dry or if I have the energy to use a round brush and a hair dryer for 30 minutes.
Straightening my hair is a long process during which my arms get tired and I sweat (ha, my phone corrected that to swear and that’s sometimes true, too) and even then it’s hard to get the back or the roots straight. I would need a second set of arms plus at least another 15 minutes to really get it right. It’s exhausting.
But this morning? This morning was a delight. Today I tried the Dyson Airwrap and HOLY FORKING SHIRTBALLS it is a life changer!!
I let my hair air-dry for an hour then used the dryer attachment for like two minutes and then the hard brush attachment for less than 15 minutes. Straight hair, straight roots, no sweating, no sore arms. Sigh. 🥰
Tomorrow I throw away all my old styling implements and round brushes. Yippee!! 🙌🏻🙌🏻
P.S. If you Google the Dyson Airwrap, prepare for a minor heart attack. I had a good friend let me use her company discount so I got it a bit cheaper.
P.P.S. I’m in Mojave. Big surprise. 😂
Kids unloading the dishwasher like…
The struggle is real, y’all.
I’m gonna like this thing.
Damn old eyes.
When you need your husband’s readers because your contacts don’t seem to be cutting it any more. 🤓😭
Doctor Who is back in place!
So one thing I didn’t think about when getting a new car…my beloved Doctor Who decals!!
Since we now have a Cricut I thought I’d just make them, right? Well that turned into an hour plus Google project because I couldn’t find the exact graphics—free or paid! So then I decided to just go buy them again…except the online store is long gone. Not on eBay, Etsy, Amazon…or anywhere else either. So back to Cricut it was.
So I present to you the finished project. I actually upgraded my Doctor and Weeping Angel a bit and I like them more. I also had to rethink placement due to the wiper blade.
This will make my car MUCH easier to spot in a parking lot now!!
This is seriously my lazy Sunday face.
👉🏻CCTM
👉🏻brows
👉🏻Juicy Cherry gloss
That’s it, the end. That said, I now feel sooooo naked without the volume intense mascara!! But we only had swim lessons today so I didn’t need my normal face.
Our first charcuterie platter!
I don’t remember what foods I liked or didn’t like as a kid. I wish I did because my kids food (dis)likes right now drive me to the brink of insanity and I want to know if I was as annoying as they are or if they are a special kind of annoying… 😜😂 It’s a crapshoot if Katie will eat anything I ever make (chances are the answer is no unless it’s boxed mac and cheese or plain noodles) but at least Owen eats a lot more variety than he used to.
So tonight we went to Anna and David’s house for dinner and we brought charcuterie. For the adults. Because all four kids wouldn’t touch this. (It didn’t look pretty but I was more about just getting it on the tray vs. presentation. And the tray wasn’t big enough for everything anyway because I don’t do anything half-assed when it comes to food.)
Oh well. It was more for us! And after we were all stuffed…it didn’t even look like we touched it (I missed that pic, though).
Owen is famous!
Get this. Tom was watching YouTube videos of the Allure and we saw Owen! And then we saw the rest of our group! The kids were totally freaking out and joking that Owen was famous now!
It starts about 6:12. After that you will see us, too, after they do the quick walk-through of the restaurant. (This is just some random persons vlog. Nothing actual Royal Caribbean sponsored.)
Ultimate Ladies Night
A friend of mine was double booked and couldn’t do a local ladies night out at the Chocolate Sanctuary so I took her place. I didn’t actually sell much but it’s always good for me to get outside my box! And I do love wearing my tiara!!
Reading to Charlie!
Wanna guess where I am?
Nope.
Hyundai’s service department waiting for a loaner because they screwed something up when putting on the locking lugnuts Saturday and after being here 1.5 hours already today they have “narrowed it down” to one of the tires and it might take another 1-2 hours. This is not an auspicious start to our Hyundai relationship.
That said, of course we cannot be 100% sure it was the lugnuts…but all we know is that the drive home was NOT smooth so something definitely happened between the time we test drove it and the time we left with it. The only thing we could think of was the “bonus” they gave us of the locking lugnuts.
Holiday Shop Setup!
So this is what the Holiday Shop at Owen’s school looks like at the very beginning. It’s a LOT of work to get the whole thing set up in three days. I don’t know how they do it every year so I volunteer for about 6-8 hours.
They’re both back at it!
Swim lessons started again today! They’ve both been asking me, and their lesson times finally backed up to one another, so it was time! They both needed a tiny bit of practice since they haven’t had lessons in over two years, but the instructor said they did really well!
This is Katie annoyed with the world because she couldn’t get her hair under her cap by herself but she refused to try and wouldn’t ask for (or let me) help. ARE WE HAVING FUN YET?
Our first real tree…ever.
Our first real tree since we’ve been together…and supporting the scouts! I really wanted a huge tree but we have very limited space for one. Also? There’s no way it was going in my new car—the days of hauling messy crap is over. 😂
We got rid of our fake tree last year because I was just tired of it…so we got a real tree this year! The plan was to get a fake tree in the after-Christmas clearance sales, but we might wait another year or two to see what house we have next. If we happen to get a house that will fit a 12′ tree…well, then I want a 12′ tree. 🙂 So this is the first time we have EVER had a real tree! (Note: the bummer? It doesn’t smell AT ALL.)
I AM MINIVAN FREE!!!
So we did a thing today. Pretty much unplanned, which is how we roll. 😂🤷🏻♀️
Monday I innocently checked our Sienna loan for some reason I can’t remember and saw it was almost paid off. The mistake was telling Tom but I was excited. He knows I don’t want a minivan so he always has some cars he’s thinking of so he/we started watching hours of YouTube reviews…
Then we decided to just check them out since December is the best month to get a great deal. (Well…except for the two we were looking at since they’re both new and well rated and hard to find. 😂) So we test drove the Kia Telluride last night and it was okay, but figured we should at least see what our car was worth so we started the day by just getting a CarMax appraisal…and it was really really good (holy crap Toyotas hold their value!) so then it was off to Hyundai to at least test drive the Palisade to compare…
And the dealer agreed to price match the Carmax appraisal and then had two small incentives, plus we got a lower interest rate (2.9 to 1.9) so we said what the hell. 🤷🏻♀️
Our payment did go up by $25 (we had wanted it to stay exactly the same) but considering everything it wasn’t that bad. Of course I always forget insurance also goes up… 🤦🏻♀️ And I still hated the entire process (“let me go talk to my manager”)…but in the end, I AM MINIVAN FREE!!!!!
These are sad faces because even though I never wanted a minivan we have lots of good memories in this car…plus I’m an emotional sap. It was sad, though, to have to put everything into garbage bags—I wanted to at least go home and empty it out.
HAPPY FACES! This mama is soooo happy to be back in an SUV you don’t even know. And there are so many safety features on the Palisade I can’t even remember them all. Now to register the car in Michigan when we go home for Christmas…
So much for the game of Pictureka we were playing.
Happy Friendsgiving!
Tom did a thing. (A brined, spatchcocked, and smoked turkey.)
A family photo before we left…
Dinner prep was fun. I got to make gravy. 😄 I didn’t take any pics of the rest off the food but it was all yummy.
A real non-selfie family photo since we had someone who could take the photo for us!
Decorating turkey cookie pieces.
Snuggling with Katie and Anna’s brother’s dog, who I nicknamed Peanut because he was all of maybe 2#, tops.
He cuddled in my lap for at least two hours. No, I don’t want a Chihuahua.
Owen’s P/T conference
All great things to say from both of his teachers!
Old useless laptop? Time to explore.
The kids had a half day because of teacher conferences and Tom happened to be home. He was getting ready to toss this when I suggested he let them tear into it. They loved it.
When your dog crawls into bed with you…
…and you don’t realize it and you wake up and see this.
