Sheppy was hanging out with the Christmas teddy bear, and this cute new Christmas pillow from my sweet MIL. Emmie was just as excited as always to find him before school! And she was especially excited to start the Advent calendar today too. We hung it up on Saturday when we did the tree, and she’d been dying to do it for the last few days.
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Last night before bed, the boys hid Sheppy in the Christmas tree, and Emmie was very excited to find him this morning before school.
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You guys, Emerson slept until 7:05am this morning! It was incredible! After Jeff and Emmie got dressed, they ran to get donuts while the boys and I stayed home to get dressed. We all ate a donut for breakfast, grabbed our masks, and then headed out to church together.
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Long Naps and Raindrops Read More »
We had an early morning grocery pick at Walmart today, so instead of cooking at home, we got some biscuits from McDonald’s. Emerson clearly dressed herself today, complete with rain boots and rain jacket, once we realized it was raining outside.
Emerson has loved saying the prayer for us at meal times lately, and has gotten pretty good at it. It used to be just “thank you Jesus for our food and our family.” But now, she’s started naming off all the family members she can think of, sometimes even naming people twice, and today, she added in Ms. Q! Girlfriend ate half of her McGriddle for breakfast, and then finished off the second half for her lunch.
After a rocky grocery pick-up situation, we finally made it back home, got the stuff put away (realized we were missing two things, about $10 worth, so I’ll be trying to get that resolved somehow), lazed around for an hour or so, and then did a bunch more random chores around the house (of which I took no photos). Jeff and the boys ran out for some more errands (back to Best Buy, because they didn’t actually go in yesterday because of a long line), and I got Emmie down for her nap.
Emmie slept for about an hour and half, and then Jeff and the boys got home, and Nana came over. And then we got busy on Christmas decorations! We got all the bins and tubs and boxes down from the closet, and got busy working on the tree. The boys put it together, Nana and I added a short strand of lights where some of them blew last year, then we added on the super thick yarn like last year. Then all of us just went to town adding on the ornaments, and Jeff added the star, and we got the whole thing done really quickly! It may be a little heavy on the ornaments down low (per the tiny toddler) and in some random places (per some slightly decorating-challenged teen boys), but it looks pretty good!
Look at this little sweet heart up on her tippy toes to help decorate the tree. Sooo precious.
Jeff was also very proud of himself, for getting the first present “wrapped” and under the tree, for ME! At first, he put it in this horribly ugly yellow & purple gift bag he found in my stash, and I had to tell him, “Although I am very touched at the thought and the gesture, aesthetically, I can not put that bag under my tree!” So Nana helped him find a cute white and gold box instead, which looks much nicer 😉
Emmie opted to take an early bath tonight, in order to put on some clean, cozy, Christmas jammies. These are some hand-me-downs, which she loved of course, because of the unicorns!
She had some cheese noodles for dinner, and Jeff made me a grilled cheese, and the boys both warmed up their own chicken & rice leftovers from Nana’s last night. (I was wayyy too tired and blah to handle dinner for everyone.) And since she ate a good dinner, she also got to have some “chocolate coffee” (which is what she calls hot chocolate), while we read Christmas books by the Christmas tree!
I love this sweet, excited smile…
And I love this goofy little face too!
She was a bit difficult to get down for bed tonight, and it took both Jeff and I taking turns rocking and coaxing and singing and extra hugs, before she was finally ready to give in and just lay down to sleep.
I may or may not have tried to rearrange a few of the ornaments in order to even them out a bit, and it may still need a bit more, but for now, she’s looking pretty!
Now I think we need to queue up a Christmas movie, to keep up the holiday spirit!
I treated the family to French toast and oven-baked bacon this morning for breakfast, which was delicious. (Even if the teenage boys were grumpy about being made to wake up “early” at 8:30am, although of course Emmie had gotten us up at 6am…)
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Chores & Chocolate Chips Read More »
Emerson “slept in” until 6:30 today (she’s usually up at like 5:50 or 6am), so we cuddle and watched “Zootopia” for a bit. Then once I felt like I could function a little bit, I made scrambled egg sammiches for Emmie, Jeff and myself (as the boys were not yet awake, and it wasn’t worth waking them up yet for that), which were so good.
By 8am, we were done with breakfast, and we settled back down on the couch together, and I proceeded to fall back asleep and took about a 45-minute nap, while Emmie played in her food truck and a movie was on the tv. Jeff eventually took Emmie to our room to watch tv in bed, and left me sleeping on the couch for some rest, which I very much appreciated. After I woke up, I got busy making a double batch of “stick of butter rice,” to take to my parents for our slightly pot-luck Thanksgiving lunch.
Our family got there at the same time as Meg and her family, and we immediately took the baby girls back to see the new horsey, Sawdust. And obviously they liked it!
There were 15 of us (including the 4 babies) at my parents house for lunch today, so that meant plenty of food was involved, obviously. Like, two whole turkeys, one roasted and one fried, so we had two people carving turkeys. And then four women all working together to finish everything up.
In addition to the stick of butter rice, I also chose to make browned butter carrots. And wow, yummy. Megan made bacon-wrapped green bean bundles & squash casserole, Mom made the dressing (both “regular” and gluten-free for Meg) & cranberry sauce, Aunt Q made the sweet potato casserole, and Grandmommie made ambrosia salad and angel biscuits. Such goooood food!!
Kensley was folding her hand so sweetly when we said the blessing for lunch.
I tried to get small portions of everything, but even still, I couldn’t even half of this before I got too full!
We didn’t want to run off right after lunch, so we forced Emmie to take a nap, but she would only do that if I laid down with her. Of course, I had no objections to that (to take my second nap of the day), and we both slept for a short 30 minutes. The second she popped her eyes open, she was like, “I did it, can I play now?”
We did stay and play for a little longer, and then we headed on home for a quick stop & to pick up Pretzel. Our drive down Meridian Road under the canopy was beautiful, and I loved it as always.
Next up, was play time and dinner at Nana & PopPop’s house! While I helped Nana finish up dinner stuff, Jeff, Emmie & the boys played on the swing in the backyard.
We had some slight variations from lunch to dinner, but everything was just as yummy for our second Thanksgiving meal! (The funny thing is, the bread wasn’t ready at time of photos for either lunch or dinner, but both were delicious!)
Aaaannddd once again, another plate of food I couldn’t finish but wished I could have, because it was so good!
We went for a short little walk after dinner, and it had actually cooled down a little bit, and felt really nice. Emmie couldn’t quite make it the whole way, so Ryan had to carry her back about halfway back to the house.
Nana might have gotten a little carried away with the amount of pies she made. Just maybe… Pumpkin, pecan, chocolate mousse, and “banberry,” which is banana & strawberry. I had half a piece of the chocolate, and 1 bite of the other three, just so I could ensure all were yummy. 😉
I think you can probably tell, but Emmie really liked the chocolate pie.
We almost always forget to take a family picture with the Pullen’s, but we were proud of ourselves for remembering tonight, and I was proud of me for getting the self-timer on and the phone set up in the kitchen cabinet 🙂
Emerson chose the book for bedtime, and she picked Ryan to be the one to read it to her. It was really sweet. She tried to say she wasn’t tired and didn’t want to go to sleep, but that’s no surprise. And after only a teeny-tiny nap, of course she was tired. And she fell asleep almost instantly!
Jeff was exhausted and went to bed early tonight, and I’ve been watching Netflix while I blog on the computer in the front room. I’ll probably finish this episode and then head off to bed too, although I’m sure the boys will stay up until closer to midnight.
Thankful for many things today and every day, like both of our great families, stable jobs, a cozy house, friends, our church, a new baby on the way, and more… Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
Megan and Bo and the triplets got to school at the same time as Emmie and I did today, which was so fun! When Bo got Kensley out of the car, she just marched herself across the little breezeway area, and right over to hug Emerson. So precious!
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My baby girl was so cute and this hand me down Minnie mouse dress today, and she loved it and was so excited to wear it!
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Another Monday morning, but at least it’s a short week, and this girl looked super cute in a new shirt from Grammy!
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We went back to a mostly-regular service at church today for the first time in eight months (although we are of course still wearing masks and social distancing), and it was great to be back! I didn’t even take any photos until after church when Emerson requested to eat nuggets in the car.
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Refrigerator Pickles Read More »