Our 4-H club made holiday cards for a local nursing home again this year. We just had to make them at home instead of as a group—the cards pictured above are ours and the ones dropped off by other members. I’m glad we could still spread some holiday cheer, but it sure felt different. Here’s hoping we’re back in person for card-crafting next year.
Today was a beautiful December day in Wisconsin. Chase and I spent part of it picking up our book orders from a couple of our favorite local businesses. Today was the last day of our book drive and we were so overwhelmed by people’s generosity that we decided we needed to spread the a little more love to local businesses.
Jump over to the book donation project blog if you want to catch up on what we’ve been doing. Now that the donation window has closed, we’ll be buying more books with the donation money, organizing the donation information, and graphing our results. So much fun left to be had.
Robbe made 25 tri-bead candy cane ornaments today. And one tri-bead heart. That’s some serious crafting. He’s so proud to be handing these out to his classmates. I hope they love them just as much as he does!
This was a cover on a catalogue that showed up in my mailbox. It captured exactly how I’m feeling this year. Let’s home Christmas 2020 comes through for us all.
Chris and I traded our five-year-old iPhone 6s for fancy new iPhone 12 Minis today. We’re, like, really high-tech now. Above is my first photo with my new phone. You can tell the difference, right? ;)
Tonight was our first annual family Holiday Lights Extravaganza. We got takeout, ate in the car, and took in the best holiday lights Eau Claire has to offer. Chris and I saw a lights + music show for the first time-we actually saw two! It took us 35+ years. The boys experienced this type of festive production at 6 and 9. Lucky ducks.
I didn’t take any photos, but here is our holiday lights display. Not bad, right? Chris did a really great job.
Have you been keeping up with the book donation project? Don’t forget there’s a separate blog on the bottom of this page!
Check out this sweet cursive handwriting. Pretty impressive from a third-grader, right? For some reason I really love that they still teach cursive. Chase has even been working on perfecting his cursive signature.
This guy loves Christmas. Like really loves it. He fits right in here.
Our sweet neighbor has been supplying the boys with an endless assortment of Christmas activities and Robbe, especially, is living his best life. So many Christmas crafts, so little time.
When we moved to Eau Claire, we prioritized living downtown because we wanted to be close to restaurants, bars, local activity, the post office, etc. Now I’d like to add reliable auto body to the list of must-haves in a walkable city environment. When you wake up to a flat tire, you don’t have many options but to walk over to your neighborhood auto body with a wagon and ask to borrow their air pump.
I added air to the tire, drove the car (and the pump) back to Rick’s and then walked home while I waited to hear about the repair. Is it normal to get excited about this kind of stuff? Very adult, right?
Side note: I started a separate blog for the book donation project. The first day was a big success (thanks to all of you!) so I decided that I needed to document our journey. Join us for our daily progress here (scroll all the way to the bottom).
The boys have been working hard getting ready to announce a big community give-back project and we’re excited to share it with you first.
Click on over to the Give a Kid a Book Project page here on my website for all the details (there’s even a homemade video!). We’re hoping to spread the love this holiday season and appreciate any support you can offer.
We took advantage of a beautiful Wisconsin day and hiked up Mt. Simon (again). They’re just my favorite people.
There sure is a lot to be thankful for these days. Let’s try to focus on that. Hope you all had a nice day yesterday—even if it was a very different sort of holiday celebration.
Poking, prying, and chucking newly formed ice is oddly gratifying. I’d highly recommend it.
For the second year in a row, we put up our Christmas tree early (the weekend before Thanksgiving). Last year, we justified it by saying that Thanksgiving was so late that we wanted to have it up for a full month. This year, with Covid sucking the joy out of pretty much everything, we just wanted to extend the holiday spirit a little longer.
And it worked. Christmas tree decorated while watching a Christmas movie and drinking hot cocoa. It doesn’t get much better than that.
Since the beginning of September, this guy and I have had two solo days together every week. Before this, we haven’t had any significant time alone together since he was 22 months old. Who would have thought solo time would come back around for us? Leave it to Covid.
It’s hard to say what the rest of the school year has in store, but for now I’ll try to focus on how lucky I am to have an eight year old who still looks up to me and can laugh at all my crazy.
Chase and I discovered that we can bring our own invisible bench with us anywhere. He thinks it’s hysterical.
Today was my last day of kid-free time…for who knows how long. Chase had his last day of in-person school today. Robbe continues on through Friday and then he’s home with us, too. Right now the school district is saying we’ll be back in-person on December 10, but I think that’s probably optimistic when we consider what’s happening in our community (and state) currently. I’m guessing we’ll be remote through New Year’s. But that’s just a guess.
For today, I ran a crazy amount of errands and checked as many things off my to-do list as possible. I tried to appreciate the silence: one thing that will be in short supply in the upcoming weeks. (Notice the pile of abandoned Pokemon cards in the photo above.)
It’s not going to be easy, but I don’t think it’ll be terrible either. We know how this goes. We’ve done this remote learning thing under much worse circumstances and we had fun along the way. Plus, I’m hoping there will be lots of extra time for festive crafts, Christmas baking, and holiday movies. #brightside
Robbe finished all thirty of these books and was so incredibly proud of himself.
Another Covid first—a virtual piano recital. The boys really challenged themselves with tricky pieces and pretty much nailed it. As sad as it is to not perform in person, it was fun to include some folks who wouldn’t have been able to attend otherwise. It was nice to see the other students play as well and still feel connected to that community. We’re so thankful to have stumbled upon Ms. Abby—she has a gift for teaching, that’s for sure.
These are some photos and videos I took before the actual recital, so everyone can enjoy their pieces. If you can’t see the videos below, click here for Chase’s and click here for Robbe’s performance.
This guy looked so handsome waiting for his reading group to start that I forced him to let me take a screenshot. They say they grow up too fast and you don’t really believe it until you see a photo like this.
small city | BIG DAYS
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