Christmas photo dump

Despite the fact that on Monday, we were all saying "It just really doesn't feel like Christmas" it turned out to be an awesome holiday. My brother and his wife came to our house, and the whole thing was delightfully quiet and low key. I was worried that I hadn't added enough magic to the kids' gifts, but all three were THRILLED and, bonus, super grateful and delighted. Averson's favorite gift was a gift card to buy custom Converse, made all the sweeter because they'd been running a tally all morning of the cash gifts to see if they could afford to buy the shoes they've been designing for months. Sydney got the Wrangler purse she's been pining for and also grieving because it sold out fast and obviously her parents weren't on top of it enough to get one. Except her dad did! And Eli loved the fact that I risked life and limb to buy black market shoes and that he got a mini fridge for his room. He and his girlfriend used their Christmas money to buy groceries the next day :) 

My sister-in-law brought Dream Phone and it was a HUGE hit. I loved this game and Mall Madness so much as a kid. At one point this was the height of technology 😝

My sweet ridiculous pets were sweet and ridiculous

I found the PERFECT game for my brother, who has been obsessed with the show Gargoyles since we used to get up early to watch it on Saturday mornings. 

The whole week was full of fun games. C bought the Donner Dinner Party during one of our bookstore stops and it was such a hit, and easy to play. I bought everyone DragonWood after seeing it on an IG post and it was great too. My heart loves a table with people around it playing a board game

I bought C a fly tying kit after hearing his mention that he'd like to get into that. Then my brother gave him all my dad's old (and really high quality) gear. Luckily "spend more time outdoors" is on both of our 2025 vision boards (or would be if C did a vision board)

My brother made the girls and I these awesome lights that project onto the wall. Averson's does the foxes 9 tails, and Syd and I got fairies where the projections are the wings.

THE PURSE!

The shoes. He couldn't believe that I met up with a stranger to buy them and loved the story of my near demise. 

Sydney made us the sweetest art and wrote a letter that went with it that made us both sob

Averson bought Chelsea "the best kazoo we could find" and she was so excited. 

I just really love these people an awful lot. 

 

Merry Christmas to Me!

I'm going to publicly confess that I am AWFUL to try to buy Christmas presents for. Not necessarily because I am obtuse or mysterious, but because, in my journeys to buy everyone else's gifts, I just buy myself what I want. It's terrible and now that I have kids old enough to give me shit for being ridiculous, it's becoming very apparent. So maybe next year I'll do better? But this year, treat yo'self.. Here's a rundown of all of my silly Christmas presents thus far

I love this workout shirt so much. I also bought a Santa themed one, which means now I have to make it to the gym before Christmas so I can wear it unironically

This book crawl was SO FUN, but to get a stamp you had to spend $10. So while I did buy some gifts at each of the stores, I also bought myself A LOT of new books for 2025. But look! I got the pin!

My reusable wrapping bags! This will eventually be a huge cost (and time) saver, but it also required fabric and ribbon, obvs. 

My spontaneous, but substantial, tattoo. Post Thanksgiving so it totally counts towards Christmas shopping.

Am I the only one who does this? What have you bought for yourself this year?

 

A little less hard

 Things are feeling a bit better, or if not better, at least not as dire. In the "wins" column:

I did handstand push ups at the gym! It's one of those things that looks really cool, and I felt sort of confident that I could do them. The problem was that if I was wrong, I'd learn by crashing down on my head. But I tried them last week and I did them! And I've done them twice more in workouts since. 

There are things that I acknowledge that I probably won't ever do, or won't do well, as a middle age, casual CrossFitter. And for the most part I'm okay with that. But there are a few things that feel like I *could* Cross this one off the list :)

C rearranged our bedroom on Thanksgiving while I cooked after I had a mini-meltdown about our room not feeling like I wanted to. I don't know why I don't listen to him more. He asked, "What if we put the bed where it's supposed to go (meaning centered between the windows)?" and it's seriously a game changer. Who knew? Per feng shui it's not right since our feet point out the door, but per my heart, it's a huge improvement. 

I was whining at the gym about Thanksgiving and trying to feed Sydney, when someone commented, "Oh? So she's keto?" SMH. Yep. She's essentially keto with a few more limitations. Realizing this has made figuring out recipes and finding products SO MUCH EASIER. This weekend I bought a cookbook called "Dirty Lazy Keto" and I'm excited to start trying things out. And Thanksgiving was a success! I made grain free stuffing that I preferred to the box (thank you, Simple Mills bread mix!), we had ham and no turkey like a bunch of deviants, and there were just the right amount of leftovers. 

We are so klassy 

The cats aren't dying anymore. Scout is fine, and has to wear the cone of shame for two weeks. She's so pathetic in in and has no clue how to navigate and it's cracking me up. 

I thought I overbought in my dopamine seeking fury, but I organized all the Amazon arrivals and actually I'm right on track! Big kids are awesome, but also kind of harder to impress for Christmas. 

Speaking of Christmas and Big Kids, Sydney made an appointment for Santa Pictures all on her own for noon on Black Friday which I was sure was going to be a shit show. I was pleasantly wrong and when you have Bigs, Santa is a 2 minute MAX situation. I hope I was a picture of hope for all of the moms around us with tiny crying babies and toddlers who were likely to refuse to be anywhere near Santa. 

My tattoo is fucking awesome. It's not at all what I was picturing in my head and it ended up a lot bigger than I was expecting. Full honesty, I almost bailed when she sent the picture. But I didn't and it's perfect and I love it so much. So I guess I'm a two half-sleeves kind of person now? 

Isn't he the cutest?! And she even made his feet dirty