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!

 

 

House Pics

Just putting these here to have a record. You'll probably think the after is worse, but trust me, it looks better in the listing photos than is true to life.

Before...

In progress...

 

After...

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.