I have to play a little bit of catch-up. Last weekend, Abigail was down for the count with a stomach bug and I was down for the count from taking care of her. We all missed church because Paul and I had been up all night with her, taking care of clean-up and comfort. It lasted probably 24ish hours, but then she had a setback because I let her start back in on dairy a little too soon. She did eventually get over it and we were still able to have friends over for Thanksgiving and were even able to squeeze in some fun trips to various places. Last time I only had one picture to post…I have way more this time around because we did Buc-ee’s, Thanksgiving, Christmas decorating (as is our Black Friday tradition), Bass Pros, and Zoo Lights.
This was my view most of Sunday and part of Monday. Poor kiddo. One of my coworkers has a kid in Abigail’s class and she told me that her kid was sick, too…so it was something that was going around in their class, I guess. Miraculously, nobody else in the family got sick.We managed to squeeze in a Buc-ee’s trip to get Christmas shirts. Here is the required picture with Buc-ee.I usually take a lot of short-cuts for Thanksgiving: Stovetop stuffing, canned yams, bottled gravy, etc. One thing I don’t short-cut is the pecan pie. It’s so worth all the work when I pull a beauty like this out of the oven.The other thing I don’t short-cut is rolls.I always do a little happy dance when they come out of the oven looking like this!She was trying to convince me that we needed to eat the rolls right away…that we didn’t need to wait until dinner. 🙂I splurged and got this fun bag to use during the Christmas season. Look at the little heart and……look at it now! Depending on the angle, it changes the size of the heart.This fun little detail is on the back.Decorating their mini trees.I also love that he still loves to do this.She bought these cat ears with some of her “bank of Mom” money (we keep spreadsheets for each kid, so that we can keep adding allowance and subtracting expenses instead of having a constant flow of cash). Watching her play and listening to the stories she comes up with is kind of one of my favorite things.My happy place.Quite possibly one of the best things we’ve found at Buc-ee’s to date. I did have to break it to Abigail that it was a decoration and not a functioning nutcracker.One of my favorite places to decorate for pretty much anything, but Christmas especially.This is another fun spot.When we went to Bass Pro’s, the kids and I were waiting for Paul to purchase some ammo, so we wandered a bit and found this little secluded corner of the store (it’s upstairs and around a corner…there isn’t any merchandise, so nobody ever goes back here). The kids thought this rug was cool. I joked that they should lay down and pretend to be a rug.Well, it didn’t take more than a second for Thing One to accept my challenge……and Thing Two wasn’t far behind. 🙂The real reason we went to Bass Pro’s. We even decided to jazz it up with our ugly Christmas sweaters (which I think are actually quite cute).As a female elementary school teacher, it’s an unwritten law to have cute themed earrings for every holiday or season. I found these Grinch earrings and ordered them (and a few others so I can have variety). They’re pretty cute!Waiting for the carousel during zoo lights.Waiting for the girls to be done on the carousel.There was a pick-a-present booth (flat fee; pick a box; get what’s inside) and she got this…unicorn pig ice cream cone…thing. That she loves. So much so, that when we went to the carousel right after getting it, she had to find something to ride on that “matched”. I love this kid!In Texas, you can always count on perfect strangers offering to take family/group pictures for you (and you aren’t usually too worried that they’re gonna steal your phone/camera). In our family, you can always count on at least one of us not being ready for the shot, or for one of the kids (usually Thing Two) to decide they don’t feel like smiling. This is the product, ha.Posing by a light-up giraffe.Zoomed in with the flash this time.The entire giraffe.This is what happens when you want a picture with a light-up hippo, but the flash feature on Mom’s phone actually slows down the picture-taking process (like, it lags a bit). She WAS smiling for about half a second…and then I think she blinked.A light-up rhino.And a light-up lion. These animals were all really cool.This is my favorite tree at the zoo. It’s a live oak and it’s HUGE. Its branches go across one of the walkways and I love when it’s all lit up with Christmas lights.One of the perks of coming at night: we get to actually see some of the nocturnal animals, like this hyena.I love clown fish…they remind of grumpy old men, haha.Joseph and I checking out the jelly fish.She loves this boat. She says it makes her feel like Moana.This light-up seahorse was probably one of my favorites. The aquarium had some real ones, but I didn’t get a good picture of them.On the way out, she managed to find the butterfly mural (they had moved it from where it used to be). She was excited to get to still take a picture with it.So many fun memories in one spot. I especially love the ones from when the kids were tiny. I think my two favorites are Abigail snacking under the Christmas tree while wearing her footie pajamas and Joseph making sure his eyes were protected while decorating the tree…but then there’s Abigail peeking out from under the Santa hat…and Joseph surfing a hippo statue…so many great pictures!!
This last week was crazy busy. Work, school, a random day off for the kids (election day: our district decided that it was a safety issue having school when a lot of schools in the district are polling places…it was a teacher work day for me, but luckily Paul knew far enough in advance and was able to get the day off), a quick there-and-back trip to Dallas for Paul, and a birthday party for Abigail to attend (at Peter Piper Pizza…Joseph tagged along since Paul was out of town). Joseph kept an eye on Abigail at the party so I could enjoy some adult interaction and even got Abigail a ton of tickets so that she could get a prize. I’m so grateful for his sweet spirit! I just finished lesson planning and grading a slew of papers and have progress reports practically done (the only thing that will need to change is if anything needs grading between now and when progress reports are due…on Wednesday, I think). Add all this on top of regular around-the-house stuff and, yeah. Let’s just say that I’m looking forward to plowing through this week so that the kids and I can have the entire next week off for Thanksgiving!
This is the only picture I took this week. It was Saturday night, I was exhausted, and I looked over at this sweet boy who had done so much to help me in the last few days (and all the time, really…he is such a great helper) and felt a wave of gratitude wash over me. I’m grateful for Paul, Joseph, and Abigail. I’m grateful for our home. For my job and Paul’s. For my family everywhere. For my friends here and everywhere. Life is blessing, y’all.
This past week was a pretty great week. A cold front moved in just in time for Halloween. My students were a little squirrely on Monday, but then we had a lot of fun things planned on Tuesday. Wednesday-Friday, I feel like they were worn out from Halloween (plus we had our annual fun-run fundraiser AND a glow party for perfect attendance on Thursday and Friday, so there was a lot to wear them out) and they were a lot easier to teach. Paul helped me take down the Halloween decorations (actually, he took them all down while I was at a training yesterday and I simply boxed them up), we left out the fall stuff, and now we’re in Thanksgiving-mode! It’s hard to believe that we’re less than two months out from Christmas! This year has just flown.
The trick-or-treating crew. Paul took them out while I stayed back to hand out candy. You can see my set-up in the corner with a table and a chair. Kids out here won’t come to the door at all. They only go to houses where someone is sitting outside. I guess that’s one way of not accidentally trick-or-treating to houses that are either not home or don’t celebrate.I’m glad they found “the house”. Every year, the owners of this house put out these Peanuts cut-outs and the kids both love it. I think I have a picture from almost every year that we’ve been in Texas.Check out my cute shirt for the fun run (it was Dia de Los Muertos-themed) that’s got a SPELLING ERROR. I still can’t believe I didn’t catch it until today when I was looking through pictures that I was going to upload to my blog. Do you see the mistake? Since I bought it on Amazon, I was able to do a returnless refund where they just give me a gift card towards my next purchase. I guess they don’t want the shirt back either, haha.I forgot to switch from AC back to heat the day before the fun-run and came into a classroom that was 54 degrees. Good thing I had my warm coat and a good heater that heated things up before the kiddos got into our room!This is my awesome coworker that showed me the cute shirt. Neither of us caught the mistake and nobody who saw us said anything, either. I wonder, since we’re all teachers, if we all read it and just mentally corrected the word (it says fellin’ instead of feelin’). I told her about it and she was able to get a refund, too. I bought a different one for next year that doesn’t have any spelling mistakes (I triple-checked, haha).This is George. He started out as a Halloween decoration, but my students love him, so now he’s our mascot. Having said that, George needs to keep with the times. I decided the best way to do that is to decorate him for all of the major holidays. This begins with a cheap foam hat I found at Hobby Lobby (I think it’s supposed to be a snowman hat, since they already had all their Christmas stuff out) for like, $2 and then I added a band and buckle that I made out of construction paper. Voila! Now he’s a pilgrim!
Abigail and her Gruffalo. She had to disguise a turkey so that it wouldn’t become Thanksgiving dinner and she came up with the idea of making it the Gruffalo.
