Hello End of November

Hello End of November November 28, 2018

Filed under: Simply Me — Amy Scott @ 11:11 am

Okay, life has a way of turning out different than expected. Duh. Usually in our house that means that I have “plans” and then one or some or all of us get sick and the plans change. The second half of our month has been fairly normal with some illness that of course fell over Thanksgiving weekend. Owen came down with a low grade fever and turned to a bump on a log the day before Thanksgiving. He woke up Thanksgiving morning and threw up and then was fine. Although he was a bit low energy the rest of the weekend. Jeremy and Graham went to the Scott family brunch on Thanksgiving morning while Owen and I stayed home. The plan was for Graham to switch parents mid-day and come up to my grandma’s house with me for the afternoon. Once Owen and Graham were reunited at switch time, they decided they couldn’t be separated, so I went up to my grandma’s house with my parents but without any members of my immediate family. It was so odd. No kids to make plates for, no one to supervise and make sure they were keeping out of trouble. It was also a bit sad because Jeremy and I were ships passing. The only upside is we knew Owen wasn’t going to make it to any celebrations so Jeremy went to Safeway on Wednesday afternoon and had all the fixings ready for his own meal at home. On Friday, Jeremy developed a migraine and that laid him out. Saturday was our cookie decorating gathering for MOPS & MOMSnext at our house. No one had a fever for over 24 hours. I deep cleaned the house and our low-energy family pulled it together to have a couple friends over. Then it was back to be being slow pokes for the rest of the weekend.

We did do a small amount of Christmas shopping on Saturday evening. It was a super quick run to Walmart to see if we could get some gifts and finish our holiday decorating. Thanks to online shopping as well, I have most of the Christmas shopping done now. I’m waiting for my packages to arrive and then I can move on to the wrapping phase. Each year I get a set of wrapping paper from Costco. I love how it all matches, but each year I have paper left over. I now have quite a large stash of mismatched wrapping paper, so despite the clashing, I plan on working through my paper stash this year. This might seem like a no brainer to some, but to me this is a big move. Can you tell I take Christmas wrapping seriously?

The house is now fully decorated for Christmas. The original plan was to decorate the Friday after Thanksgiving, but we knew we needed to evaluate our decorations after not seeing some of them for two years. On the 16th, we took everything out and assessed what we had, what we liked, what no longer fit and then made a list of things to get when we went shopping the next day. We were down in Portland/Vancouver for a family birthday party, so it was the perfect time to hit all the “Pre-Black Friday” sales that were everywhere. It was felt strange because once we pulled everything out on the 16th, we didn’t want to put them away just to pull them out a week later, so for a short while we lived in a half decorated house.

November was a quieter month for us. Busy, yes, but mostly business as usual. We’re gearing up for December. This weekend is the Christmas musical and my boys will get to sing a few songs with their classes before the musical begins. I’m that mom who bought them matching red plaid shirts to wear on stage. Mostly because Graham only has pastel shirts because Owen was wearing 3T at 2.5 years old (Easter time) and Graham is wearing them a few month later than Owen’s timeline.

The beginning of December is full for Jeremy with the musical and then the following weekend is the lighted tractor parade where our church kiddos sing on a lighted float. We have all kinds of Christmas parties for our church classes and I have two different Christmas parties for our MOPS & MOMSnext group. And then we head into vacation time! The best time of the year! The church office closes for a week at the holidays and then Jeremy takes an additional week off. We have some festive plans in the works. We’ll see how the pan out. Obviously at this point in my life, I have learned to hold everything as tentative until it’s actually happening. But I am hopeful and excited. It’s going to be a great holiday season no matter what we do. Just being our new house for the first time at Christmas is reason enough to be happy, content and grateful. It’s warm, it’s festive, full of my loved ones. I am blessed! However, for the sake of writing material, I hope December is a bit more exciting than our November.