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- Happy Thanksgiving weekend!
Hope that you’ve been able to relax, spend time with family, count your blessings, do some Christmas shopping, and enjoy the fact that it’s now officially the holiday season! - In other news: how about this photo?!
Same wall, same banner, same doggie, same kiddos – new year.
Take a stroll down memory lane & see the other Abby’s Saturdays I’ve taken with this banner: #379, #327, #275, #227, #123 (grab your tissues first though – how are these kids SO BIG and so cute?!) - See that blue wall my children are sitting against? That’s our living room wall and (I’ll let you in on a secret) every year I have to Photoshop more and more “dings” off of the wall after I take this photo. This year was particularly bad – one of the things I had hanging on the wall had scraped against it really bad and left some really bad lines – it was just a mess. So yesterday, I bit the bullet and re-painted it! It truly wasn’t all that bad – the painting is the easy part, it’s all the prep that’s a pain in the butt. But it’s done and now it honestly looks just like this photo!
- Since it’s been Thanksgiving week – we took a break from our “normal” school stuff and simply did a bunch of Thanksgiving related things! We read a ton of books about the Pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving, colored a lot of pictures, did some crafts, even watched a short movie about Thanksgiving – it’s been a wonderful, fun, relaxed week in the Abbey house!
- We had dentist appointments on Tuesday – Braelynn was absolutely bursting to go! She LOVES going to the dentist – mostly because we have the most amazing dentist who makes everything so much fun!! I got my teeth cleaned down the hall at the same time as Braelynn was getting her teeth cleaned, and the entire time all I could hear was Braelynn and her dentist talking and laughing and (what sounded like) having a party!
We brought Leander along so he could observe – he’s due to start going to the dentist to get his teeth cleaned (actually a bit over-due), so they suggested we bring him along to one of our cleanings so he could simply watch the process and become more comfortable with the idea. He was very shy – but he did slightly start to warm up by the end of our appointment. We’ll keep talking about it and encouraging him, and fingers crossed when he goes in for his own cleaning in January, he’s a confident little pro! - After the dentist, we went Christmas shopping with my Mom: we went to Hobby Lobby, Ollie’s, and Gabes – we found a few good gifts, but mostly my children just found about a thousand items to add to their own Christmas lists!!
They were both SUPER good though – we had a long talk Tuesday morning, before we went, about how we were shopping for GIFTS and not ourselves. And while we could add things to our Christmas lists, we wouldn’t be buying a bunch of things for ourselves. For the most part – it went really well! - Of course, the major highlight of the week is that on Wednesday night, Nana (Derrick’s Mom) came to our house to spend Thanksgiving and the extended weekend with us! Derrick’s Dad is headed to Africa (he’s been going there for almost 10 years) to work directly with a Pastor and church there, and he’ll be gone for about 3 weeks. So, we were excited to have Nana come visit and stay with us! Braelynn and Leander have been crazy excited to have her here and have been clamoring for her attention non-stop.
- We had Thanksgiving dinner over at my parent’s house – and even though we were a smaller crowd than usual (3 of my siblings and their spouses/significant others/children were missing), I was so thankful to go. I had forgotten, but we haven’t been to a Thanksgiving at my parent’s house since 2018!! In 2019, we were with the Abbeys, in 2020, we were sick and had to stay home, in 2021, we were with the Abbeys, and so that brings us to 2022 and finally having Thanksgiving with my family again. We usually swap the holidays back and forth, but being sick in 2020 really tossed a wrench into our pattern. Needless to say, I am SO THANKFUL that we are (mostly) healthy this year!! (The kids still have a little bit of lingering cold symptoms, but overall they’ve recovered from their colds last week.)
- We took Nana to Kennywood’s Holiday Lights last night! We went last weekend, for their opening weekend and had a blast (even though it was absolutely frigid out!) and so we went again last night. Nana has never been to Kennywood, so it was a fun “mini” introduction for her. My Mom and Dad came along too and we had a blast eating, riding a few rides, feeding the animals, looking at all of the beautiful lights, and checking out the train set.
- Today is PARTY PREP day because TOMORROW is Leander’s birthday party!!
[…] a stroll down memory lane & see the other Abby’s Saturdays I’ve taken with this banner: #431, #379, #327, #275, #227, #123 (how are these kids SO BIG and so cute?!)(PS: about this photo […]