Odds and Ends

Trying to catch up with December happenings...

-Our Elf, Simon, returned after Thanksgiving and he has been upping his game. Generally he just moves from hiding spot to hiding spot, but for some reason this year he's getting a bit more engaging. My personal favorite was when he saw the girls' bathroom looking like this, and decided to say something about it. It worked like a charm! The bathroom is now spotless.

The girls sat with me for over an hour and helped with Christmas cards! Jillian was my stamper, and Adrienne put on the address labels.

The girls are doing better with eating bits of vegetables. They do best with baby spinach leaves or spring greens on their plate. At least I thought they did. Adrienne has been pulling this little trick that I don't discover until I'm cleaning up AFTER the meal. She is sneaky!!

Cold weather and snow means that my mudroom looks like this every.single.day at 4 p.m. It is generally the moment I look at the clock and wish it was 5. The wine desire grows strong!

Jillian rediscovered her fashion plates after about 2 years of keeping them in the closet. Now she is obsessed with them and even made a little book she titled "Book of Awesome Fashions: Volume 1". Apparently we will have more volumes someday. They even got Matt in on the fashion plate action one evening.

Matt and I got invited to go to the Minnesota Wild game last weekend with our friends Felix and Charie Diehn. We'd never been to an NHL game before, and I have to say that it was loads of fun. Matt immediately bought a new stocking hat. You can see him here watching warm ups...

Thumbs up for a Wild win!

A fun night with good friends. We were reminiscing that the Diehns were our first Rochester friends. Felix was 2 years ahead of Matt in residency, and Charie was my Mayo Fellows sponsor who reached out when we moved here over 10 years ago. We were just young childless couples then.  They had us over for dinner and we remained friends. Jillian and Malea are 3 weeks apart, and Adrienne and Emmy are 3 months apart (they also had a little boy 2 years ago, but we decided to let them go on that 3 children adventure alone--ha!).

This week was Spirit Week at school, coupled with the food drive. The deal is that you can participate in dress up days if you bring food to donate. My favorite day was "Dress Like Your Teacher". The girls had very specific ideas of what they could wear and they looked adorable.

Simon got captured by the Disney Villains! Looks like Ursula got caught holding the tape...

Wednesday was Career Day. Jillian dressed as an author (no pics), and Adrienne's desire was a bit tricky. She is still insistent that she will create Cereal World (like Disney World...sort of) someday. So, after much discussion, we decided that an engineer would be the person who could design this masterpiece. Then she remembered that Uncle John is an engineer, and so she wanted to dress how he would dress for work. So we did our best with what we had, and then she also insisted on her props of bowl and spoon.

After a dramatic finale, where my washer got "stuck" running and wouldn't stop--smelling hot like it was going to catch fire (and poorly timed at 11 pm when Matt was out of town)--I bought a new washer/dryer on Tuesday and it was delivered on Wednesday! Hallelujah for limited laundry interruption! I can't unsee this scene I found under the machines when they pulled them out....

After some major shop-vac use and floor mopping, things are looking much better now!

After waiting for 3 long weeks, Jillian's glasses finally arrived. She was SO excited to hear the news of their arrival, and we rushed to Huber right after school.

I had Sabrina tell her how to take care of the glasses, since I knew it would go over better coming from her. She was listening intently

My adorable big girl. Love her in these glasses!!

O Christmas Tree

So we got a real tree this year. And it's a big one. After trashing our old artificial tree last year, I had a hard time biting the bullet to buy the grand artificial tree I've been dreaming of for our high ceilings. I figured this would be the perfect year to introduce the girls to the fine art of cutting down a real tree. They were SO excited to set out on this little adventure.

After examining nearly every largish tree, we finally settled on ours. There she be.

Obligatory pose next to Dad who is somewhere under there with the saw.

We let each girl have her hand at a few cuts, since we are super responsible and handed our crazy ladies a sharp tool.

I wish I had recorded the "Timber!" moment. The joy the girls exuded was palpable.

We had our work cut out for us as we tried to drag it back to the barn. We of course chose the tree that was the farthest away from the building. I eventually had to go find reinforcements.

Super excited to get our tree wrapped up and home.

They had to hoist it up on a pulley since it was too big to put in the shaker.

Thank goodness we brought a trailer! And relax, the kids rode in the car.

The magic ended once we got it home. I suddenly remembered just what an epic mess a real tree makes of your living room. And, Matt ended up making 4 trips back and forth to town trying to find a stand that worked for this monstrosity. And then we finally got the stand, but he broke his hacksaw trying to even the base and had to go back for a saw! He was in a rather fine mood....not.

Ah, success. Finally. 5 hours after we brought this baby home. Whew.

We woke Sunday morning to our first real snowfall, and it was magical to decorate this beast. All was forgiven in the land of tree stands and broken saws.

500 lights, and I still don't think it looks like enough! 13 feet of Christmas beauty.

November in Pictures

A quick rundown of the last few weeks around here........

Jillian is doing a 6 week Saturday basketball clinic. She is learning so much, and I think we will really see the benefits of this when she begins her Champion Basketball season next month. This clinic is taught by local high school coaches and players, and watching it brings back lots of memories for me. Here she is listening intently to instructions next to her friend, Kaia.

The girls and I voted before school. And then we had to have donuts.

Had to laugh at the PB the next day...funny nod to The Apprentice. Really, America? Wow. This concludes my political commentary.

Adrienne was student of the week. She was proud to display her poster of favorites in the classroom for a week.

Sports Day at school. The girls decided they would like to have MN sports gear, so we needed to make a shopping trip.

We participated in Operation Christmas Child at church, and the girls and I made a trip to Target to select items for the boxes. I gave them each a budget for their box and let them go to town. I got such a kick out of the phonetically spelled note that Adrienne put in her box (translation: "Hello my name is Adrienne. You are going to like whatever I get"). It's possible I snuck that bossy little note out before we dropped the boxes off.

Adrienne patiently waiting at basketball clinic. She is always so good to just sit and chill. She decided to bust out a few pushups with Brita and Lars. Love the ability to create self-entertainment!

1st and 2nd grade girls. J is in the back row, between the two coaches.

I made 100ish (110 to be exact) cookies as requested for a Bible study retreat. 3 kinds. Whew.

Jillian had her first field trip of the year, so I went along. We went to Quarry Hill for some science classes and experiments on soil.

We signed up for a 1 mile family fun run--The Nightcrawler. It was a trail run at Essex Park requiring head lamps and promising s'mores afterwards. The weather was so pleasant all Fall, and then it got really cold and windy on this day. Needless to say it was a cold jog even in snow pants, but a very fun experience for the girls.

J was my running partner, and Matt stayed with A. We ran a very dramatic mile. I didn't really let her stop because I knew she could finish, but if you heard her you would have thought someone was torturing her. Her mood changed dramatically when we crossed the finish line and she realized we had won the race. Matt and A came in about a minute behind us. Medals for all the kids!

Beer from Grand Rounds for Mommy. Two thumbs up.

S'mores post race.

Thanksgiving week brought several gems from school. First, Jillian's list of favorite things. No one in her family made the list, but her BFF Noah managed to sneak in after objects, activities, and a TV show.

Adrienne and more precious phonetic spelling.

Jillian was complaining about some blurry vision, so I took her in for an eye exam. Sure enough, it is time for her first pair of glasses. She picked out some darling frames and is anxiously awaiting the arrival of the finished product.

Matt worked a lot Thanksgiving week (including the holiday and the weekend), so the girls helped me with Thanksgiving prep. They made chocolate chip pies, which were a childhood favorite of mine. I forgot how good this pie is!!

I surprised them with a fun turkey day lunch.

We set the tables early in the day, and waited for Matt to get home, and the Tauntons to arrive.

Jack enjoying Thanksgiving dinner at the grown up table

The "big kids" table.

Our elf, Simon, returned for the holiday season. The first morning, the girls found him hanging out in the fridge wrapped in a blanket.

For some reason, the girls really want to have sleepovers a lot. I'd say they've slept in A's bed together 20 out of the last 30 days. We let them as long as they go to sleep on school nights when they are supposed to. Love to see them snuggled up together.

I decided to make an Advent wreath this year and start the tradition of lighting the candles together.

Adrienne has such cute kindergarten buddies. Four of them sandwiched in for a big hug after school last week. Charlie, Haedyn, Saleigha, and Adrienne.

Charlie's parents were out of town for a week, so I took him home from school each day. This meant that he got to go along to swimming lessons at the RAC on Monday. He and Adrienne played their hearts out when Jillian was in her lesson. Love their sweet friendship!

Matt was in Chicago at RSNA all week, so the girls and I had lots of "girl time". I surprised them with homemade hot chocolate after school one day.

I spent an afternoon wrapping 24 of our Christmas books for the girls' (and mine) favorite Christmas tradition. They love taking turns unwrapping books they haven't seen in a year. And I love how easy this activity is to keep up (once the books are wrapped of course). I add a few books each year (and remove ones that are too young for them), so it's become a very sweet tradition. You can see in the below pic that Simon was found reading a book one morning.