New Peace Lily

We had one more box of Trader Joe’s chocolate croissants in the freezer, so I proofed them over night, and baked them this morning. I also made a pot of Lucky Goat coffee I bought from a coworker for her kids’ school fundraiser. We decided to save it for the weekends and make it our “Saturday coffee,” to really make the most out of it.

The girls entertained me for a while after breakfast, dancing and playing and giggling, while I got sit and drink some more coffee.

One last pic of our Christmas NYC puzzle, before we took it apart and packed it away. We actually took it over to my mom’s house, to let them borrow it.

We went over to my parents house to visit with Grammy and have some family time. Some of us went swimming, but I stayed inside to chat with Grammy and spend some time with her, and kept Addie in with me. And it was nice to just sit in the floor playing with Addie and talking with my Mama & Grandmommie. (And Jeff did a good job taking all the pool photos while he swam.)

We had a simple hot dog lunch while we were all still together, with chips and cheese and apple sauce pouches. And between the five little girls, they ate about 10 hot dogs!

Tattoo from the fruit roll up car snack…

We went home after lunch for nap time for the girls, and Jeff took a nap too. And since I was the only one awake, I turned on my audio book on my phone, lit a candle, made an iced coffee, and got started on a new puzzle I borrowed from my parents! Emerson had told me she wanted to do the butterflies & flowers first, which I thought was a good idea, since it was only 500 pieces and the others are 1,000 pieces, and I’ve never done one that big!

It literally took me an entire hour just to flip over all the pieces, find all the edges, and put together the border. At this point, I was actually still missing one edge piece, but I ended up finding it tonight right after dinner – it had fallen on the floor!

Once both girls woke up from their naps, we had just a little bit of playtime together, and then we went out to run a few errands to Walmart, Home Depot & the gas station (where we paid an arm and a leg to fill up my small 14-gallon tank).

After my Granddaddy died back in 2016, a beautiful peace lily was given to me from his funeral, and I loved it. I wasn’t very good with house plants back then, but I worked hard to take care of it, and kept it alive and thriving for over five and a half years. (You can see the last time it bloomed in this post here.) Then for some reason, a couple months ago, it started looking rough, and even after I tried to give it new life by transplanting to a bigger pot, it still never came back to life, so to speak. So I finally had to admit it just wasn’t doing well anymore. But today, I bought myself a new peace lily in my Granddaddy’s honor, and this one will always remind me of him as well.

After running errands, we came home in time for me to get dinner thrown together and into the oven. While it was baking, I went to sit in the cozy chair in the front room, and this fancy tea waitress brought me a cup of tea with sugar and a book to read as well.

Somehow, a couple of weeks ago, we were randomly talking about tuna noodle casserole from back in the day. Jeff’s mom used to make it all the time and he remembered loving it. But I don’t remember my mom ever making it (which seems weird, because it seems like the kind of thing she would have made and that Meg & I would have liked, so maybe my memory is just bad?), but I don’t remember even having it before. Decided I wanted to try it and make it for myself, so I found an easy recipe and tried it out tonight, and it actually turned out really good!

 

I accidentally used too much noodles in comparison with the sauce/mixture, so it was slightly dry, but it was still tasty, so the slightly dry issue wasn’t really an issue at all. Addie cleaned her plate as usual, I kinda talked Emmie into eating it (she’s just so weird about eating sometimes, even if she likes something, she just dilly-dally’s around and just needs lots of encouragement), but Jeff had three helpings! I would definitely make this again, with just a few little adjustments.

After dinner, Jeff started washing up some of the mountain of dishes in the sink, and I played with the girls in Addie’s room. We went through all of the VBS songs with Emmie doing all the moves and motions and singing along so sweetly.

We had to spend just a few minutes looking at our puzzle, but really it was just looking at it, because although I did find that last edge piece, and Emerson did actually find one piece to place right along the top edge, that’s all we added. So we just started on the bedtime routine instead.

 

Emmie’s bed is actually an extendable IKEA bed, and we’ve had it on the smallest size since we got it for her almost two years ago. But this afternoon, she helped Daddy extend it a little bit (it’s still shorter than a twin-size), and she was very excited about it.

Addie Pie was easy to get to sleep tonight, because girlfriend played hard all day and didn’t sleep too much, so she was more than ready for her bedtime milk and sleep.

I started another new season of Survivor tonight while writing this blog, so once I finish this episode, I’m going to go wash as many dishes as I can, using a 20-minute timer, because I’m ready to just sit down and chill.