Waffle Master

So last night, we ended up playing Monopoly until almost midnight. It was so fun! Ryan swept us all away though. You can see below where four of my eight properties were mortgaged, and I still had less than $50 total. And it got even worse after this, when Ryan put hideouts (=hotels) on three of his properties, I landed on the most expensive one, and owed him $1,000! It was at that point, we decided to call it quits.

And of course since I stayed up too late last night, Emerson woke up even a little bit earlier this morning, around 6:30am. So that was rough. We lasted for a couple of hours together, snuggling and watching videos on the couch. Eventually, she wanted some of her M&M’s, so she had a few of those, and then we went to wake up Jeff.

And I got to use one of my new Christmas gifts to make brunch today! My parents got me this fancy rotating waffle maker, and I felt so professional, or like I was staying at a Holiday Inn with the waffle maker as part of the continental breakfast 😉 I plan on becoming a waffle master now. Obviously.

I was still trying to get a feel for how high to set the temperature, but they were really tasty! Next time though, I will set it at a higher temp, because Jeff and I both like ours a little more golden and a little more crispy.

This Tater Tot loved the waffles!

Since Emerson woke up so early, and we had a big brunch around 9:45am, we all played together for a little while. Emerson was jumping and playing around on my bed, and she started to get down to go look for a paci, and she slipped and fell and bumped her head on my nightstand. She immediately started screaming, so Jeff got her paci, and I calmed her down. I laid her in the bed and asked if she wanted to take an early nap. She said no of course, but in just a few minutes, she had fallen asleep all on her own, without any of her usual night-night routine. So her and I took a nap in our bed together, and it was the sweetest. Actually, all five of us ended up napping from about 11am-noon.

After nap time, we did some more playing (still in pj’s, might I add), in her current favorite play spot, in front of the Christmas tree. I wonder if she’ll still want to play on the dining room rug, once the tree comes down…?

We tried to do the Chewie tater head, but it was actually pretty tricky, and we had to enlist bubba’s help on it. And he could barely figure out how to get the belt back on! We had to find a photo of it, to figure out what it was supposed to look like. But we did eventually get it!

We spent some time going through all of our bags of Christmas gifts, and sorting them out. The boys decided which ones they wanted to keep here, and which ones they wanted to take back with them, and we tried to find places for all of our new stuff. (Since I haven’t mentioned it lately, in case anyone doesn’t know, Ryan & Gabe are my twin, 13-year-old stepsons, from Jeff’s first marriage. They live most of the year with their mom in South Carolina, and are with us for about eight or nine weeks of the year.)

The rest of the afternoon was just kind of a mix of cleaning, laundry, packing (the boys leave tomorrow) lazing about, and eating snacks. I put Emerson down around 3:15 for a late afternoon nap, because I knew one hour in the morning would NOT be enough to last her until bedtime. I promised if she took a nap, we’d take her back to the playground again, and I think that little incentive was enough to convince her to go to sleep for a while.

And so once she woke up, we went back to the playground again today!

There were seven or eight turtles there in the water today, and she was so excited about them! She stood there watching for almost 10 minutes, just completely engrossed watching them swim!

Emmie “helped” the boys bring the cans down from the road when we got home from the park, and then fed Pretzel once we went inside.

After a while on the playground, and a quick walk down the boardwalk, we headed back home to get started on dinner. I put a few frozen chicken breasts in the Instant Pot (with chicken broth & seasonings, using instructions from this blog), and set them to pressure cook for 10 minutes. I boiled some water & made some pasta noodles, baked some frozen garlic bread, and heated up a jar of alfredo sauce. Easy peasy crowd-pleaser! Honestly, some of the best & easiest pulled chicken I’ve ever made!

Gabe tried on my blue-light filter glasses, and of course Emerson had to try them on too.

She put up a pretty good fight at bedtime, but after laying her down once and then going back in again for one more lullaby and one more back scratch & “Jesus Loves Me,” she was finally ready to go to sleep.

Oh, and this was her booping my nose, while she booped her own nose.

We’re going to play another game of Monopoly tonight, but hopefully Ryan doesn’t beat us all so bad again! And hopefully we won’t stay up till midnight again.