Abby’s Saturday // One Hundred Seventy-Eight

Highlight of the Week

Last night, we went to a Casting Crowns & For King and Country Christmas concert at the PPG Arena in Pittsburgh! It was AMAZING. I’ve loved Casting Crowns since I was a teenager (the Christmas before we got married, I bought Derrick Casting Crowns concert tickets & we went just a few weeks before our wedding). For King and Country is a newer band, so obviously they’re a newer obsession, but they’ve quickly found “favorite” status in my music collection. The concert was SO good. Both groups did a mix of Christmas music, as well as some of their biggest hits. And to top it all off (to Derrick’s utter little-girl-ish delight) Rebecca St. James came out & sang a few songs. For King and Country are her little brothers, and even though she’s stopped recording and touring, she has tagged along for this Christmas tour. Derrick was a giant Rebecca St. James fan as a teenager, so he was pretty pumped when she came out! It was a wonderful, magical, uplifting evening heading into these last few days before Christmas.

Yes, This Happened

• As I was sitting down to write this, I was thinking, “Wow, this week really flew by, I don’t even feel like we did all that much.” Until I started compiling a list of things that happened this week, and I realized why I felt like it went so fast: a lot happened. And it was all very good.
• Yesterday was a big day: not only did we go to the concert, but Derrick had taken the day off so we could get up early and go to see the new Star Wars in IMAX. It was quite the movie. I feel like I’m still digesting it. I won’t give away any spoilers, but it was good – like really good. I really enjoyed it (and to be honest: think I’ll enjoy it more when I can watch it at home, the IMAX screen is cool, but just so big!)
• Apparently, Abby has a thing for our Frozen figures. Last week, she chewed up Elsa. This week, she chewed up Hans. Whyyyy?!
• We had our first snow of the year this week!! We got a couple of inches and it’s been so much fun! Braelynn is obsessed. I took her over to my Mom’s on Thursday to play with Ruby in the snow & they were outside for hours. We basically had to beg them to come in for lunch and then they were right back outside again. Braelynn’s favorite activity is making snow angels – it was quite hilarious because she’d lay down and make one, immediately jump up, and flop right back down almost on top of the one she’d just made, to make another. Unfortunately, it wasn’t snowman snow, so we tried, but had no success with building a snowman.
• Two nights this week, we’ve put Braelynn to bed in her bed (as usual), then came downstairs. Then, a few hours later when we’ve gone up to bed, found Braelynn’s room empty and a little stowaway tucked into the middle of our bed. She’s such a stinker.
• Tuesday was my favorite day of the month: Tuesday’s Together day! And this meeting was our Christmas party! We invited everyone to bring their spouse/significant-other, so Tiffany’s studio space was packed. People overflowed everywhere – from her office, to her meeting space, even out into the hallway. It was amazing. We had so much fun! A lot of people wore their ugly Christmas sweaters, we had a white elephant gift exchange, and ate so much good food! It was an epic party.

Feeling Blessed

The week kicked off with Derrick’s parents coming down for a quick visit! They came in on Sunday evening & were here until Tuesday morning. Derrick & his Dad reconfigured his TV/entertainment system set up (once-upon-a-time, Derrick had built our entertainment center). Our TV is now mounted on the wall & it’s wonderful. I love it being up and out of Braelynn’s reach! Derrick’s Dad also finished trimming out all of our windows & hung our curtains back up! You have no idea what a massive difference it makes in our bedrooms to have curtains again! They’ve been down since last November (yep, over a year) since our new windows went in, but he wasn’t able to finish trimming them out. Braelynn has had the comforter from our guest room hanging in her window all that time – so whenever we had guests, we always had to play the “game” of figuring out where to steal blankets from to make things work. Thankfully, everything is now all put back together & it’s fabulous. We are so thankful for Derrick’s parents coming down and doing a bunch of little projects for us (literally, they did a bunch of little things while they were here)! We are so so thankful!