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- So, if today’s Abby’s Saturday photo looks familiar, it should! I have taken a “Silhouette” photo at the Christmas tree (almost) every year now & of course, this year is no exception! In fact, I think this particular photo is my most consistent photo – meaning, I have taken a version of this photo more times than any other photo (and I re-create my favorite photos all the time).
If you’d like a stroll down memory lane, here are the other Abby silhouette photos in front of the Christmas tree that I’ve taken – starting in 2013: #16, #74, #124, #177, #230, #278, #330 & #382
(2014 is the only year I did not take an Abby silhouette photo & that’s because we were moving across the state at the time & living with my parents!)
I love that each year is slightly different – it’s fascinating to me that I can take the exact same photo every single year and yet it’s still DIFFERENT every year! - I wrote our annual Christmas letter this week – did you see it? I honestly think Christmas cards and especially Christmas letters are beginning to fall by the wayside and disappear from our culture as a “Christmas tradition”, but I still love doing it! I feel like every year I send our more and more cards, while receiving fewer and fewer back – it’s weird. I haven’t given it up yet though! And I write our Christmas letter digitally (that way I can ramble on forever without having to worry about the cost of paper and extra postage.)
- Our house is coming right along!! Watching it transform every day this week has simply been incredible! Our constructions guys finished up our roof, all the soffit and fascia this week (gutters will be installed on Monday) and they started the process of siding our house! Our house is basically a giant square – so, they’ve completed the siding on both of the sides of our house and the second floor in the front of the house. All that’s left is the first floor on the front of the house (it sticks out a bit) and the back. We made a last minute addition to the construction process this week and decided to have them go ahead and put a metal roof over our back porch. We originally weren’t going to have them do it because “eventually” we will be tearing that back porch down. But, the more we talked about it, the more we realized that that probably won’t be happening for a while, so we might as well just roof it and make it look nice and complete while we’re at it.
The house would have been a little bit further along, but our work-week got cut short thanks to some heavy rain on Thursday and Friday. Thankfully, the forecast for next week looks good – so hopefully everything will be finished up by Christmas!
On the docket for next week is finishing the metal roof over our back porch, siding the back of the house, siding the remainder of the front of the house, gutters being installed, and then they’re putting a new roof on our garage (so it’s finally useable) as well!!
Our house already looks completely new and transformed – I cannot wait until it’s finished!! - I took Braelynn Christmas shopping for her friends this week. We always go to Five Below and she gets to pick out little gifts for her best friends – we’ve done this every year and it’s so much fun! I love to see her walk up and down the aisles, think about each of her friends, and pick thoughtful gifts out for each of them!
- Tuesday evening was our Rising Tide Society Christmas Party! It’s always our biggest event of the year and we have a BLAST. In case you aren’t familiar, I co-lead the Greensburg, PA chapter of the Rising Tide Society – a worldwide group of small businesses and entrepreneurs who believe in “community over competition”. We meet once a month to network and talk business stuff and hang out. It’s always a great time!
So anyways, for Christmas we always do a big potluck event – I made deviled eggs and Hawaiian sliders this year. I brought a few deviled eggs home and Braelynn was so excited to be able to eat them for lunch the next day. At one point, she was talking to me and she referred to them as “the devils eggs” and I laughed so hard. - We are finally done Christmas shopping! I’ve actually been done for about a week, but we needed a few last gift cards to officially tie things off and Derrick went to grab those this morning.
So, now comes the fun part: I have to wrap everything. Ugh. Wrapping isn’t my favorite activity, especially when I have a literal mountain of gifts to wrap. Thankfully, I have an entire week to get it done! - Last weekend, I basically took the entire day on Saturday and locked myself in my office to finally finish Derrick’s website! It’s been this massive task that’s been sitting on my to-do list for months and I finally did it! I absolutely love it and am so proud of how it turned out! You can go check it out here: www.xscreamthrills.com
- One day this week, while we were reading our Christmas books before bed (I wrap up 25 Christmas books and the kids unwrap one per night leading up to Christmas) – in one of the books, the little boy goes to the store to buy gifts for his siblings and it says that he hopes he has enough money left over to “buy himself a CD”. Braelynn stopped me right there: “Mom – what’s a CD?”
- We officially are on Christmas break from school! Braelynn has been working super hard, but we both need a break. Don’t get me wrong – I truly love homeschooling and teaching the kids, but other than a few days off at Thanksgiving, we truly haven’t had a break since the start of the school year! So, we’re taking the next 2 weeks off. I’m REALLY happy with where we are in the school year (we’re over half-way complete!) so it is going to be simply marvelous to take some time off. We’ll be spending time next week baking and doing a few fun Christmas activities I have for the kids – I am so looking forward to it!
- Derrick and I watched “Spirited” (on Apple TV) last night! It was NOT what we were expecting at all, but we loved it! Super cute and funny and a great story – highly recommend!
- I can’t believe Christmas is next week!
