Christmas Decorations

We made our annual pilgrimage to Ace Hardware on the day after Thanksgiving to pick out a a tree.

I think this is as good as we're going to get photo-wise.

 

 

Here's Sam loading it all up to drive very slowly home:

James refused to wear a coat (I think this was why he wasn't in the other photos - he'd already retreated to the warmth of the van & taken off his mask), though he did go in the store at the beginning & get a gumball. It was cold!

Leah looks very guilty about playing with the tree! This didn't last long, as her new favorite activity is rearranging the ornaments.  We also got a wreath, but they didn't have or maybe had already run out of sprigs of mistletoe. 

And here's what it looked like decorated (at first - I redid the garland/ribbon after Leah had rearranged the tree one too many times.) We've had this dove topper for a few years - I think it's a bit too heavy for a real tree. 

The mantle & nutcrackers.

And then we watched the Peanuts Christmas special.

I feel compelled to share with the blog readership the (quite festive!) festivus pole at my mom's house.

We cut paper snowflakes to put up in the window. Amelie cut one & Leah provided artistic direction. Here she is with the haul:

I was trying to make a star and I somewhat inadvertently made a chalice in one of them! I was very pleased!

But when I tried to do another one on purpose, it didn't quite come out as well. 

Someone at church has been delivering chalice rocks to people's stoops and the kids found this one - I'm thinking about leaving it with these others: 

The kids were VERY interested in the candles:

Pandemic Thanksgiving

 I figured I better post something about Thanksgiving before Christmas, so here goes. (Also if anyone was reminded to come check out the blog by our Christmas letter, they might be surprised to see no updates! Oops!)

Not much to report for Thanksgiving other than we decided to keep our germs to ourselves and stay home. 

All we did for prep work the day before was to make turkey handprint artwork and plan out the cooking times for the oven. Since it was just us, we decided to have a special meal but nothing too over the top. There were 3 kinds of tartlets. Sam made 1 1/2 pie crusts and we halved the recipes for 3 pies. He made pumpkin and pecan and I made this delicious chocolate pie.

Here we are with our various handprint turkeys. My neighbor left the flowers for us and a coworker at the library gave us the small decorative gourds.

Here's my plate. Sam brined an 11-pound turkey and then bought a package of extra legs so that everyone could have a leg. I think we could have used one more side dish! Ha! Even though this made a great big meal and we sat down and had it twice. The sweet potatoes were baked with mini-marshmallows but I scooped mine from the middle since I think they're sweet enough already & of course my favorite Thanksgiving side is corn pudding, the only 'casserole' Sam will eat.

Updated with the actual recipe from my Grandma Doris: 

 The big drama of the day was that Spark snatched an unattended leftover turkey bone and ate the entire thing and then had to be fed soft food and monitored for the next 72 hours due to the danger of poultry bone shards. He doesn't look like he feels bad at all (photo taken immediately after the thievery): 

We watched the Peanuts Thanksgiving Special.

First Snow

We got snow two weeks ago (October 26th). It just missed the record for earliest recorded snow with accumulation in Columbia, which KOMU tells me was on October 23rd back in 2017. I was wondering if the kids might have a snow day right when they'd just gotten to go back to school - and if they do end up having a snow day, will they get the day off or will they just have to work remotely via Zoom??

 I was so tickled when I pulled in the driveway after work and saw a snowman in the front yard. 

 

Can you see that Leah made a little snowman out on the deck, too?

Our yard looked the least snowy on Monday since James rolled it all up for his snowman, but then it looked the most snowy by Tuesday and Wednesday since everyone's else had melted.

Apple Tree

Sam and the kids picked apples on September 5th. The squirrels got a big bounty this year, but we had plenty to make pie and several jars of apple butter. Leah's a big fan of an apple butter sandwich. 

The new tree we planted is still not producing - I keep thinking any year now. Here's old faithful: 

And the kids doing their bit: 

 

 

And more of Sam's budding iPhone nature photography hobby: 

 It's just the one small tree, despite the plethora of photographs 😆

Here's the haul:

Plus several artistic photos by Sam.

And the kids:

 Last but not least,  the pie. I used the apple cookie cutter for extra crust decorations, but Amelie thought they looked like pumpkins.

Halloween, Continued

I think this is my third Halloween at the library, but the first time I actually had to work - I'd taken off when I was scheduled my usual 5pm-9pm shift, but since the holiday fell on a Saturday this year I was working during the day. Here's my costume:

James didn't seem too invested in his costume, and we weren't able to go look around at the shop for inspiration. He looks a little like Dash from the Incredibles (actually a little like Mr. Incredible while we're at it) and said he'd rather get this one than the similarly cheap Venom suit I found on Facebook. Later in the night, a kid yelled out 'Hey Dash!' and then they raced for a bit. 

Amelie was very invested in her costume, which, as per usual, is a relatively obscure reference. She's a Nicheling, which is an animal from a video game called "Niche." This one's a fox. 

Here's a screen shot of the game for reference: 

Leah started out wanting to be "Tigger the tiger," then changed her mind a few times along the way, then landed back on Tigger. She just dug through the costume box to make her decision. 

One of the runners-up: Mario Alligator Spiderman.

Waiting on it to get dark outside: 

Our friends came over and walked around the big loop with us: 

I passed out candy while Leah went around the block with Sam. I would guess maybe 100 kids came through in all. One of my bee antennae broke! Emo bee. 

Here's Sam chucking candy down the chute to some early arrivals. Only about a third of the kids caught the candy at the bottom! ha!

This is one of our neighbors with a candy chute - there were 4 on our block and then quite a few folks sat out buckets. I'd say about the same number of kids came through trick-or-treating as usual but there were fewer houses passing out candy. 

Rebecca had another chute (not pictured!) she always gives out full-sized candy bars - even to the adults. 

How it ended: 

The loot: