Blogging has had to take a very definitive back seat since we got home from Mexico! I guess ’tis the season that there are a lot of competing priorities.
I spent this past weekend in sort of a pre-holiday CRAZE. I suddenly felt this huge pull to just get our whole house “Christmas ready”. Even though we won’t even be HOME for Christmas this year… I still really wanted to do our usual decorating because it gives me so much joy.
Clarification- having the decorations up gives me a lot of joy. I actually do not particularly enjoy the “putting up” part.
On Saturday I started the day with an early cardio workout, then drove Asher to swim at 8:30, spent a couple hours puttering on my laptop and blogging, then picked him up at 10:30.
After that, I shifted into work mode. I focused on the outside decor, while simultaneously doing my bi-annual hot tub drain and clean (which is always quite a production and involves dragging hoses around the yard and then climbing in the empty hot tub to scrub it clean, etc). I have a ridiculous number of Christmas decoration totes up in storage in the garage, so we had to climb on ladders to get all those down. Then I had to sift through boxes to find lights and inventory them to see which no longer work…
Ivan and Asher did a ton of yard work as well, cleaning up (more) leaves, cutting back plants, putting away potted plants, etc. Having a landscaped yard is so much work!!
We also all went to Chipotle for lunch in the middle of it all and made a Target run for some more Christmas lights and a couple new extension cords.
I finished up all the outdoor lights right about when it was getting dark and Ivan was finishing the yard work. We collapsed in front of the fire and binge watched several episodes of a new series called Boots on Netflix with Asher.
On Sunday I decided to go to church at 8:00, and then most of the rest of the day was spent in decorating mode! Ivan and Ethan (this time) did MORE yard work.
I put the Christmas tree up (though we haven’t decorated it yet) and put all of our indoor decor up. I worked straight from about 12 noon (after dropping Asher at work) through about 5:30 pm!! It was so much. And a million trips up and down the basement steps. BUT, I’m so happy it’s done. Everything is so cozy now.
I dragged myself to the gym after all of that for a 6 pm strength workout, and then ended the night with a big fridge clean out and grocery list making… never had time to get to the store for Thanksgiving food (ended up going at 7 am on Monday morning before work!). Phew. What a weekend!
BUT, now I feel like I can just ENJOY it all for the next ~6 weeks or so! So I’m actually very happy. And I had a weird amount of energy and felt peppy doing all of this, mostly, so I guess it was good timing.
Having this all done means I don’t have to worry about decorating over Thanksgiving weekend. Which is good, because I really need to get started on shopping at some point!! And/or hopefully just relaxing a bit with family and enjoying said decorations. 🙂
I am working both Wednesday and Friday but so many people are out that I have zero meetings scheduled. Yesssss. I am looking forward to a couple of chill WFH days where I can just get some actual stuff done (without interruptions!) and also embrace a more casual, flexible vibe for a couple days.
My parents will arrive tomorrow for Thanksgiving and I’m feeling in a good, festive mood right now! Excited to kick off the long weekend (sort of) now that the boys are done with school for the week. Also looking forward to yummy food!!
Shopping?
On a side note, I feel like I have been seeing fuzzy fleeces everywhere this year. And I kind of want one! (I keep seeing Sarah J’s tan one and wishing I had a little jacket that color because I love it!) Even though I realized I technically already have a fuzzy fleece….?!
But the interwebs must have a direct line to my brain because I keep getting ADS for them. 😅
These are a few that keep “circling” past my eyeballs on my phone…
Hmm. I can’t decide if I want to really bump this up my Christmas list or not! Problem is, I kind of have a lot of things I am “wanting” right now…. 😬😬 And I DO technically have a fleece already (okay, several fleeces and a million hoodies, BUT I kind of could live in stuff from REI and the like… totally my style…and some of my things are getting old/ could use replacing/updating….).
Decisions, decisions. What do you think, do I need a fleece?? 😅
Something I DID buy already are these new Christmas PJs from Old Navy:
My volleyball team and I were all having drinks in the bar after the game last week, and our captain/ ringleader Kate had left already. We were discussing our upcoming cookie exchange party (on Friday Dec 12th), and somehow someone decided we should all get matching PJs and wear them to the party. Except we aren’t going to tell Kate. We’re going to all just start showing up in PJs so she’ll show up dressed in regular clothes and then be like, what the heck is going on?!
We all ordered the same PJs (plus a pair for her to change into ;)).
I am not sure if this is one of those things that seemed funny after we all had a couple drinks, or if it is actually funny 🤣 but either way, it will be fun! Haha.
Maybe I’ll be back tomorrow with a final Mexico recap! We shall see. 🙃
Happy Thanksgiving prep… (to those celebrating, of course!).
Daily Gratitude:
I am grateful for Christmas music and Christmas lights.
GRATEFUL KAE 
I like the surprise pj party! She will get a kick out of it – and enjoy having an excuse to change into cozy pjs!
Your house looks so nice! It is so much work to decorate but worth it in the end. We kept our decorations up quite late last year because I just loved the glow of the tree. We will probably leave our outdoor lights on through mid-December.
We haven’t bought many gifts yet either. Just the one bigger gift for the boys when it was on sale at target. I have 2 things for Will’s bday which seems kind of light but it’s hard to want to buy more knowing he will get lots of presents from family and grandparents. I have held off on buying anything else because we need to give ideas for the cousin gift exchange. We don’t have to buy many gifts so I don’t feel like I need to start super early. I did get something for mine and Phil’s stockings – a charger for our iPhones that you can just set your phone on. It also charges AirPods and an Apple Watch. So it will be useful for me. Phil only has an iPhone but I think he’ll like having an easy way to charge his phone. I’m also going to get him a new computer mouse because the one he has is in terrible shape but he feels like it works well enough. The roller ball thing on top no longer works so it is annoying to use it to scroll something. That is the extent of our gifts for each other though since we don’t exchange gifts!!
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Hooray for Christmas decorations!!! Yes, it is a LOT of work to get them up (we’ll do the indoor this weekend… outdoor, um, soon?) But it’s so nice when it’s done! So you won’t be there for Christmas but you’ll be there for all this time leading up to Christmas, and it’s SO festive and cheerful to have decorations and lights.
I actually LOVE the Christmas pj surprise idea. i would love to be there to watch the first few people getting there, “Omg we have the exact same pajamas, what are the odds???” and then “wait- WHAT is going on.” I think it’s hilarious.
You can really never have too many fleeces : )
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