February

We went to a little retro arcade restaurant downtown with the neighbors. It was pretty fun and delicious. Would recommend.

My folks came to visit. We played croquet and Hannah and Mary came over. Nox had a playdate with Nova. We went to see Julianna too with a quick stop in Greenville.

There are some monkey bars randomly in the woods that are part of our neighborhood park. They are now a hot spot on our walks.

Rory's class has been studying westward expansion and his teacher turned all their table groups into covered wagons. Heart eyes! Speaking of Heart Eyes, that movie trailer kept popping up on YouTube and terrifying both my children.

We had Rory's class buddy and his family over one night. I was a bit nervous, but I think it went pretty well. They like Nate Bargatze and watch Severance, so they must be cool.

We went to the USC Engineering Open House again, which was still cool, but no Oblek to run across. We did get to do the fancy flight simulator this time. We invited the Brouceks who missed a soccer game to come so we were hoping it lived up. It kinda didn't, but that is okay. Silas had a field trip to Discovery Place, the worst museum in the world. It did live up to that reputation.

 

 

January

It hasn't been the most thrilling month, but pretty cozy. We had a little snow...and also days we could justify shorts.

The cousins spent the weekend. We filmed our own Taskmaster episode. Here is the into video. Don't watch it if you will be attending our premiere in March.

December

We had a festive month...

• Attending Silas's winter concert. We are very impressed with the orchestra program. The neighbors tagged along as a fan club. There was a part in the concert all the 6th graders got to pick someone from the audience to teach to play a few plucks. He brought me, and was a good teacher, but said I played too fast. :)
• The girls and I saved Christmas by finding Santa's missing lists in an escape room. You're welcome.
• We went to the live nativity again. Still adorable.
• Did all the Christmas prep...tree, cookies, advent calendar.
• We saw Sonic 3 in honor of Lucas with the Olivers.
• Went to the lights at the Firefly's stadium with Elizabeth and her mom.
• My program had a family gingerbread battle while Daron was in Canada, so the boys got to spend several hours under the eye of Dwayne Johnson (right?!?!) in a gymnasium for that.
• Both Nox and the hammies celebrated their first birthdays.
• Bonus picture of Rory debuting his Prince of Persia outfit that he and Silas put together.
• We did a balloon burst activity countdown until the New Year. It is possible that the children (and Daron) will retain only negative memories from this event because I am not made for late nights and ended the evening fairly grumpy. We made it though!
• I saw something that was listing things to celebrate from the year. It said, "We made it home every time we left the house." Amen!

 

 

 

Christmas

Daron and I had our first classic parent Christmas Eve, up until the wee hours putting together desks, a punching bag, and hanging wall art.

We did the usual and went to Meemaw and Gramp's in the evening. It was a good day!

 

 

November

We are still in work-in-progress mode, but are starting to get more settled in our house. Some fun things we did this month...

We did an escape room at the Towne Theater after watching Something's Aftoot. It was fun having the staff in character and being on the set. At the end there was a knock on the set door and an envelope was left revealing a picture of the culprit blackmailer. We felt dumb, but escaped with about 20 clues.

Saw my friend Jamie who I hadn't seen for 8 years.

Went to Silas's school's Madrigal Dinner. (Think Medieval Times as presented by middle schoolers.)

 

Stayed in cabins at Table Rock State Park with church buddies.

 

Visited Starr for Thanksgiving.