Jeff and Emmie got up early and let me sleep in again today, all the way until 8am! So once I was awake and moving, I made the three of us some egg sandwiches for breakfast, with a little help from my tiniest assistant. (We didn’t bother waking the boys, because they’re too grumpy to be woken up just for breakfast, plus they didn’t want to go to Walmart with us anyways.)
We were excited for the slightly warmer weather today, to wear a dress and sandals, after so many days of pants & socks & closed-toe shoes!
And then after breakfast, we went on a trip to Walmart. We had a grocery order to pickup, and we braved it and actually went inside to look through the Christmas clearance stuff. Over the last few weeks, all of the lights on our pre-lit tree have been slowly blowing out. Sooo, only about 60% of the lights currently work. Jeff looked into it, and it wasn’t gonna really be possible to fix them, or worth it really, so the main reason we wanted to go in the store today was to see if we would luck out and find a new one.
All of the Christmas stuff was 75% off, so we got this tree that was originally labeled at $159, for only $39! Spectacular deal, right!? We also got Emmie (& the triplets) some new Christmas books, some Christmas wrapping paper & tissue paper, a candle, and three new ornaments. Plus some candy canes. Oh, and I got a cute Christmas wall sign. So, we got all of that for $80, which is still just half the original price of the tree!
So we got all our indoor Christmas stuff, then hopped back in the car to go pickup our grocery order as well. Emmie loves to get up on the counter to help me put all the stuff up in the cabinet. And honestly, it is actually really helpful.
We then played and hung out and read our new Paw Patrol Christmas book. I made sandwiches for everyone for lunch, and then got Emmie down for her nap, after reading a few more Christmas books.
We got each of these books (plus the Paw Patrol one), for $2 each. Score! Every year I pack away the Christmas books with the Christmas decor, and pull them out when we decorate. So we’ll pack everything up tomorrow, along with these new books, but they’ll be practically brand new when we pull them out again next year!
While Emmie napped, we watched a little bit of the new Wonder Woman movie, and then worked some more on the 3D Hogwarts puzzle.
After Emmie woke up from her nap, she took a nice long bath, playing with her new bathtub paint that Grammy & Papa got her as a Christmas present. She loved it so much, and stayed in there for at least 20-30 minutes.
After getting her dressed, we all spent some time cleaning up the living room, kitchen and dining room, and putting away some of our Christmas presents that were still strewn about. (Notice – the top portion of the tree is dark, and there’s actually a section in the middle we had strung our own lights the day we put the tree up, after that portion blew out last year.) Then we kinda all just did our own thing for a bit. Jeff and Gabe worked on the puzzle, Ryan played on his phone, Nana came over & played with Emmie, and I worked on the kitchen some more, and then Ryan came to help me in the kitchen too.
We had chicken alfredo, caesar salad and garlic bread, and every single scrap of food was gone by the time these teenage boys finally got full! (Well, that’s not quite true, there was some sauce left…) But it was delicious!
After dinner and some minor clean-up, Jeff moved Emmie’s car seat to PopPop’s truck, and we all loaded up to drive to see the Allison Christmas Spectacular! (PopPop stayed home to watch the West Virginia football game, since we don’t have a way t watch that here, and that’s his team.) We drove through the lights two full times, and Emmie squealed with excitement through most of it. She even sang along to the Pentatonix song, because we’ve listened to it in the car so much this past month!
We headed on home after seeing the lights, and put the finishing touches on the Hogwarts castle. I also hung our two new ornaments, which were both Harry Potter related. We’ve had Harry & Ron for a few years, but today we found Hermione & the Hogwarts express on super sale at Walmart, and it’s such a cute little collection!
Oh, and Emmie had a little snack of more noodles (left from last week), with that last bit of tonight’s alfredo sauce. That girl was hungry tonight!
The box for this puzzle said it would take four hours, but we have no idea who could possibly finish it in that time. It took us a total of roughly six hours over three days, with all four of us working on it together. But it’s honestly so cool! We have no idea what we’re gonna do with it or where we’re gonna put it, but we don’t wanna take it apart! (Obviously Emmie didn’t actually help with it, but she had to be a part of the photo.)
It’s hard to tell from the photo, but this thing is intricate you guys. It’s all made of foam covered in paper, and it has all these little folds and notches in it, so it kind of fits together. And you follow the instructions in a little catalogue, kind of like the large Lego projects. It was honestly really fun to work on together, and we were all kind of obsessed with it.
Nana helped Emerson change her baby doll into her matching nightgown and then she put hers on, and they were so adorable together.
We read our other two new Christmas books at bedtime tonight, and this one about the Christmas story was not only very Biblically accurate, but I also really liked the colors and the illustrations.
She was a little scared of all the fireworks already going off (it was only 8:30, but there are some super loud ones around us), so I turned up her sound machine even louder than usual, and told her there was nothing to be afraid of and that she was very safe in our house. She called me back one more time into her room for another big hug and kiss, and then she’s been fine since then.
I don’t know how much time we have left in Wonder Woman, but I’m pretty sure we’ll be able to finish it tonight, before I fall asleep, because y’all know I’m not making it all the way to midnight to ring in the new year! I’m sure I’ll be sound asleep long before 2020 comes to a close.
So to the weirdest year of our lives, to 2020 I say – adios, sayonara, hasta la vista, aloha, so long, farewell, au revoir, adieu… GOODBYE.
And in case you’re interested & missed it, I wrote posts for both my reading recap, and a huge year in review post, so check those out, because they’re some of my favorites to write.