Day 2045 | A Family Christmas

It’s been a tradition the last few years to open gifts as our four-person family outside of a larger gathering. As much as I love the hustle and bustle of big family Christmases, I really enjoy the low-key time with just our little family to exchange gifts and do our own thing.

Tonight the boys picked our dinner (mini pizzas). We watched a Christmas food network challenge, sang some Christmas songs with piano accompaniment, talked about the importance of giving back and which organizations we’d be donating to this year. And then…the present opening! The boys were patient and attentive and, most of all, appreciative. We all got too many gifts but this year I’m not even feeling that guilty about it. I guess that’s one perk of Covid. Ha!

Day 2044 | Letter to Santa

I thought that since we weren’t going to see Santa in person this year that it wasn’t necessary to draft a letter stating our requests. Robbe had another opinion on the matter when he panicked about not having written one yet.

Don’t worry, it got dropped off in a special delivery box earlier today. We’ll all sleep a bit better tonight.

Day 2043 | Winter Walk

The colder it gets in Wisconsin, the harder it is to motivate yourself to get outside (especially without snow). However, we went for a walk and ended up discovering these sweet rocks. That’s almost as good as sledding and snowman-building, I guess.

Day 2042 | Waiting

Is there anything harder than waiting for Christmas to arrive? I can’t be the only one who thinks this year has been unbelievably long and incredibly short at the same time. I mean, how is it Christmas already?!?

Day 2041 | More Graphing

We continue to work through some fun graphs after our book donation project. Today’s goal? See how many inches our books measured and then compare that number to our family members’ heights. Spoiler: the boys + me = not as tall as the books. The boys + Chris = just a bit taller. They win!

Day 2040 | Built-Ins

Look how adult we are! We have built-in bookshelves and cabinets! We’ve been deliberating this project for some time and it’s finally a reality. We couldn’t be happier with the final product (below is the before, above is the after). We actually have a space for our [one million] board games. And the tv is mounted (thanks, Chris). Things are getting pretty crazy over here.

Day 2039 | Goodbye, Blossom

We said a sad farewell to Blossom today. You remember Blossom, right? He was a good little friend and we’ll miss him.

Day 2038 | Holiday Cards

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.

Day 2037 | Shop Small

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.

Day 2036 | Tri-Bead Crafting

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!

Day 2035 | This Christmas

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.

Day 2034 | A New Phone

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? ;)

Day 2033 | Holiday Lights

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!

Day 2032 | Cursive

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.

Day 2031 | Christmas Bug

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.

Day 2030 | Walkable City

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).

Day 2029 | Give a Kid a Book Project

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.

Day 2028 | Mt. Simon

We took advantage of a beautiful Wisconsin day and hiked up Mt. Simon (again). They’re just my favorite people.

Day 2027 | Happy Thanksgiving

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.

Day 2026 | Breaking Ice

Poking, prying, and chucking newly formed ice is oddly gratifying. I’d highly recommend it.