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Highlight of the Week
Well, fall officially came to a very abrupt end this week (you know, like when you’re riding a roller coaster & there are signs at the end that say “Brace for sudden stop” – that kind of abrupt halt). It was beautiful & sunny & warm(ish) on Monday, and then we woke up on Tuesday to snow on the ground. Apparently, this weather pattern really stumped the forecasters, because all the weathermen said that it was going to snow (a dusting to 1″, maybe 2″) and be all done & cleared up by noon. Well, noon came & went & it was still snowing.
Braelynn went absolutely insane. She woke up at 5:30am, bouncing off the walls that there was snow outside (at this point, we barely had enough to cover the grass – but in her eyes, we had at least a foot!) It took everything in her to wait until the sun came up & we had breakfast before she absolutely burst with excitement over going outside. When Leander went down for his morning nap, I dressed her all up in her new winter gear & out we went. By this point, we had maybe 1″ of snow. It was hardly anything. But she was in heaven. She played outside for a while & then came in to warm up. We anxiously (and happily) watched as the snow continued to fall. She would give me updates about the state of our yard every 30 minutes or so: “Mom! It’s snowing again! It’s covering the grass again!” “Mom! It’s snowing so hard! It’s covering the sidwalk!” “Mom! We have to go back outside right now – look how hard it’s snowing!!” After lunch, she went out again – this time to a solid 2-3″ of snow. She was elated & had so much fun.
Unfortunately, all of our lovely snow has now melted & left a yard full of mud behind. The snow really put us in the Christmas mood though! Braelynn was convinced that Christmas was just days away after our snowstorm (I mean, that’s how it works, right?) I have all sorts of fun things for us to do this year for Advent & counting down the days until Christmas, but on Tuesday we started a new countdown: a countdown to Thanksgiving. Got to have Thanksgiving before we can start counting down to Christmas!!
Yes, This Happened
- (Speaking of Christmas) Our Christmas tree is up! It has lights on it! (I put on the lights on the tree – after testing them to make sure they worked first of course & when I plugged it in, the middle strand wasn’t working. BOO.) No ornaments yet though. I want to wait & see how Leander does with the tree first before tempting him even further by hanging items from it’s branches. Maybe we won’t put any ornaments up at all – there are no “rules”, right? We’ll see.
- It’s been a crazy week. Running errands (you know, those long strings of silly little things that take up a whole afternoon – little stops here & there to do 5-10 minute tasks?) seem to take SO much longer with two kids. I mean, it doesn’t just “seem” to take longer, it’s a fact that it takes longer! It takes (seemingly) forever to unbuckle two kids, go into the post office, buckle two kids back up, drive a mile up the road to the bank, unbuckle two kids, in again, out again, buckle two kids up again, drive 2 miles to the Dollar Store, unbuckle two kids, in & out, buckle two kids up again, half a mile away is Aldi, unbuckle two kids – you get the idea. It’s exhausting & it seemed like every single day this week, I had a whole list of errands to run. HOW?
- My favorite day of the month was this week! Our Tuesday’s Together meeting was this past Tuesday & thanks to our absolutely insane weather, only about half of our group came out. We had a great time though – as always!
- On Wednesday, my Mom & sister & the kids & I took our annual trip to go Christmas shopping on the other side of Pittsburgh. Our favorite stores are all in a 1-mile radius of each other (it’s probably a really good thing that they are an hour away!) – Ikea, Home Goods, Kirklands, and of course: Hobby Lobby. I think this is the 3rd year that we’ve gone before Christmas & it’s a ton of fun! We get lunch at Ikea & try to get a jump on Christmas shopping – it’s so good.
- Last weekend, I photographed an engagement session & a family session! It was cold both days, but I’m SO glad we got those sessions in before “winter” arrived!!
Feeling Blessed
Remember last week, how I couldn’t stop talking about the new carpet on the 3rd floor? Well, I’m back at it. (This week’s photo is the kids & Abby up on the new carpet on the 3rd floor!) I’m just so obsessed with how it turned out! Derrick is too – but there was just a small problem. See, our 3rd floor is technically “captive”, meaning, you have to go thru Leander’s bedroom to get up there. We didn’t think it would be an issue, but with the carpet up there, we found ourselves wanting to be up there – but not wanting to walk thru Leander’s bedroom while he was sleeping to get there (plus, being nervous that he would hear us moving stuff around up there – his sleeping has been a little rocky the last few days, so we really didn’t want to wake him up over something silly!) After a few days of this realization setting in, we started to worry about our plans for the 3rd floor: Derrick needs the space for his studio. He works on his music & videos mostly after the kids go to bed, so this was presenting a problem.
All that to say, Derrick came home Wednesday night & made a proposition: what if we switched bedrooms? Move Leander into our bedroom & move our bedroom into Leander’s. Then, the 3rd floor would simply become an “extension” of our bedroom & we’d have easy access whenever we wanted to go up there. It took all of about 2 minutes for us to agree that this was the best solution. It’s a bit of a tricky solution because our bedroom is the largest in our house & Leander’s bedroom is the smallest, but we measured it out & our bed would fit in his room (our bed, and that’s about it).
On Thursday night, we made the swap. We joked that the “king” now has his own “kingdom” – our old bedroom is so huge! It’s working out really well though & seems to just make sense, plus having access to the 3rd floor now all the time (not just whenever Leander is awake) is SO nice!
Braelynn also got a mini-update to her bedroom. All this moving furniture & rooms and she wanted to be included – so we rearranged her bedroom too.
And it turns out: we made the swap not a moment too soon! We have guests coming to stay with us this weekend!
