This year Eli is old enough to participate in service projects.
We loaded up this morning and went to the store to make, and donate 50 footlongs to the food pantry.
We made all the sandwiches on the back prep tables, so our employees could have the front area to serve customers.
We wrapped them in 6 inch sandwiches.
After making the sandwiches, it was time to make some for us!
We delivered 100 6 inch sandwiches.
Eli has been begging us to ride the train. After all, he is going to be a train driver 🙂 My parents dropped us off at the train station.
Eli was skipping on the platform he was so excited.
Looking at the train through his binoculars (his fingers shaped like binoculars).
He LOVED the ride home.
It was a smooth ride home. My parents drove and met us at the station to pick us up.
It was a fun day of service. We have decided to make and donate 10 footlongs (20 six inches) every Friday when I work. 10 doesn’t sound like a lot, we may have to increase that number…
Every year we say the same thing, “It’s Christmas already? How did that happen?” Sure enough, this year wasn’t any different. Another year ending and another year will begin even if I want to prolong the holiday season.
We left last night with this….
And this…
And woke up at 6:00am to this….
Paul always makes Christmas fun. 15 years ago on our first Christmas, Paul wrote tags: To: me From: Santa, Rudolph, or Judy the Elf. He also had many tags: To: Paul, From: Paul. And when he opens his gifts from himself, he is genuinely excited saying, “That was exactly what I wanted! How did he know?” 🙂
This year, Paul didn’t disappoint. We had gifts from everyone, including the Grinch.
I had to hold back my tears with every tag that said: To: Mommy. I know it’s been 6 years, but I’m still so blessed to have a little boy in my life!
Eli was pretty excited to get gifts from Comet!
Paul did open gifts. A lot of them. I failed him and didn’t get one picture of him, but I do have a tag above to prove he was loved and received many gift from all of us. Including himself!
Every year I give Paul several bottles of different brands of root beers. While shopping for his drinks, I found a bottle of Butter Soda. I had to get it for my butter boy! Eli is constantly asking for a spoonful of butter. I don’t know where he learned to like butter so much. It’s like he was born in the South or something. 🙂
One picture of Paul! It’s bury, but it’s a picture!
One of our family gifts, a paddle board! VERY excited to use it this summer.
I love my gifts from Eli. Last year he got me a goblet and I use it all the time. The goblet was so random, I was really excited to see what he picked out for me this year.
After several hours of opening gifts, with a break of orange rolls, we packed up and left for my parents for our second breakfast.
We zoomed Bryan and Shayna, and Ferelyn’s family. We had four sessions going, including the session Mom and Dad were having on the couch 🙂 I was conducting. It was crazy.
Mom and Dad’s session on the couch, ha!
Eli was very excited to show everyone his gifts.
Rin and Gage showed us theirs.
We zoomed because Dad and I sent out the ties we made to everyone. They all loved them!
This year we all decided to give Mom and Dad a family trip and their gift from all of us. Dad said he would like to go to Italy and Aaron said wanted to go to Norway. Yeah, all beautiful places and I would love to go back and visit again, but I was thinking a little cheaper and closer to home, like Lake Powell. 🙂
I’m pretty excited for where ever we end up going. I miss spending time with the whole family and this summer we will be able to have the opportunity.
After the zoom meeting we ate breakfast. Well, really lunch. Breakfast for lunch. Mom made her usual french toast casserole and quiche. I look forward to it every year. What? No picture? I know. I don’t know what happened to that one as well 🙂
Mom and Dads tree. Easy up and easy down. Or should I say, easy up the stairs and back down the stairs into a closet. I love it. Give me a few more years and this will be my tree. 🙂
We opened gifts.
I can’t handle another dog after Charlie so unfortunately this will be the only dog Eli gets. He had fun with him.
All the boys had fun with him. 🙂
Lu Lu didn’t like him and felt left out!
We opened our Christmas crackers
Read the jokes out of the crackers.
And then we had to say goodbye so we could head over to Paul’s parents house for snacks.
Eli was spoiled here as well. A double car electric race track. He needed a new one. He was using Aaron’s 20 year old version and his track needs to be retired. Paul and Eli opened it and began to assemble.
And assemble…
Look at Paul’s face! Reed jumped in to help out.
They worked and worked on this track.
And finally!!
After an hour of building we couldn’t just take it back down. We had to stay for a while to race.
We got home extremely late. Eli hit the pillow at 9:00pm and I don’t think we read a full page of his book and he was out!
We had another wonderful Christmas! Still very grateful and blessed for our miracle, our son. For bringing the magic of Christmas into our home and to celebrate Christ’s birth.
Paul’s family has a tradition of opening pajamas on Christmas Eve and Paul and we have continued with this tradition.
Eli had a lot of fun this year in shopping for a few gifts, wrapping them, and placing them under the tree. Waiting for a few weeks until he could open them was taking everything out of him, and practicing patience was killing him! And NOW he gets to finally open one! He was disappointed that we were the ones to choose which one to open, but he got over it and was so excited to finally open one!
Eli didn’t catch on that all the gifts we opened that night were pajamas. Waiting for us to open our gift was excitement for him.
Paul wrote my tag: To: Kris (mommy). For the last few months, Eli has been asking me why people use my nickname (Kris) instead of my real name (mommy). I have always wanted to be a mother, and this little boy not only gave me the title of a mother, but a mommy!
We put our pajamas on and started to prepare for Santa’s arrival.
We have had a few discussions on what type of cookies were were going to make. Eli said he wanted to give cookies to Santa and carrots to Santa’s reindeer, so we decided to multitask and make orange carrot cookies.
Eli wanted to put out water for his reindeer as well. He insisted on using Charlies old dish. I haven’t had the courage to throw out all of Charlies stuff, so I’m pleased to see it being used.
Just before bed he had to do a research check. What is a research check??
Eli said he saw Santa flying in the sky, so it was off to bed!
We stuffed the stockings with tasty treats.
We loaded up the tree.
While Paul was making several trips bringing up wrapped gifts from the basement, I took one for the team and ate some cookies.
Eli insisted on giving Santa 1% milk, so Paul drank the milk 🙂
And Santa came. He delivered gifts. He enjoyed his cookies and milk. His reindeer were refreshed with their water. It was a successful night.
I think I’m more excited for Eli to see this empty plate than he is to open everything! I can’t wait. Christmas day is never going to come!! 🙂
Christmas Eve started out with a cold run in the snow. We haven’t had a lot of snow this year so I will take what I can get. It was absolutely beautiful out.
Came home to breakfast. Doesn’t everyone wear a life vest to the breakfast table?
I made the traditional Norwegian Christmas Eve dinner. I used a red cabbage for the Surkål. Next time I will use the green cabbage. Purple was kind of weird to eat, but it tasted great.
I used kohlrabi for the kohlrabi instead of rutabaga. I now know why Mormor used rutabaga. Kohlrabi is crazy expensive. I purchased 6 bulbs for $6.00 and it only made a small bowl.
I have never seen kohlrabi before. This is exactly what I thought of them when I saw them!
Where did I find kohlrabi? Sprouts. A note for next year.
I peeled it the bulb and removed the fibrous outer layer.
I cut it up and boiled in salty water like potatoes.
Added butter and milk and mashed like mashed potatoes. That’s all 6 bulbs made. Not a lot.
I didn’t make mutton. I’m proud to be a vegetarian when it comes to mutton.
A game of laser tag.
Against Aaron 🙂
After dinner we decorated cookies. Mom made a sheet cookie. We cut squares and decorated.
Little pea did a great job! He had so much fun.
Paul needs to show me how to do a panoramic photo, but for now we get a video of the table.
This year I made krumkake bowls for the rice cream instead of using the usual dessert cups. This was a fun change.
I hid the almond in the cups, we all got the almond this year :). Added the cream and topped with red sauce.
For the almond winners. Or the non- winners 🙂 Mom spoils us with marzipan fruits no matter who the winner is.
An hour after sunset, we went outside to see the Christmas star. The planets were not as close as I thought they would be. There was quite a bit of space between them, but it was a fun treat to see the star on our Christmas Eve night.
And just like that, it’s December! I was going to do a day in my life back in June, but never made it a priority, so I have to get one done before December ends!
My alarm goes off at 6:40am. My nights are rough and my mornings are brutal. 6:40 can’t come quick enough, but yet it comes too quickly.
This little boy is already up and at ’em. Walking into his room this morning I found him decorating behind his tent with a roll of outdoor Christmas lights. He is a busy body, always on the move and won’t stop till this evening when he’s asleep in bed.
Paul feeds Eli and gets him dressed. I strap him into the car 🙂 Off to school!
The weather has been really warm. Only 23′ out this morning. Perfect running weather for me.
I have lots to do today, so only 3 miles.
I come home and do a weight workout. Today is a kettlebell workout day. This is one of my favorite workouts. She is really tough, and I get a really good workout!
After my weight workout, I stretch with this gal. She targets older people 🙂 but she stretches the full body in 20 minutes. I’m getting older so I guess I fit right in!
I mix up my banana smoothie for breakfast. Protein and fiber! Ha!
I deliver one to Paul at work 🙂 See the electric blanket and space heater? Just trying to stay warm today!
I take my smoothie and my laptop, and work in front of the fire.
After an hour or so of work, I do the most enjoyable part of my day. I clean and straighten up my house. Carpet lines and the smell of clorox makes me so happy! I have a little germ awareness so I love sanitizing my bathrooms and floors 🙂
Lunch! What do we eat for lunch? Anything that’s in the freezer out in the garage. I know, Paul is so lucky! 🙂 We have to rotate our frozen left overs sometime so why not now, right?
While we eat lunch, we always watch Meat Eater on Netflix. Not sure why a vegetarian likes this show, but it’s entertaining and get’s kind of exciting.
Me: Now! Now! Take the shot. He’s going to run, better take it now!
Paul: What side are you on?
I’m always team deer. I’m a traitor only for a minute. I feel sorry for him when he hunts so hard for days and then he finally sees something, I want him to get the deer.
Paul says we should go on a tranquilizer hunt. Where you hit the deer with a tranquilizer and after the deer wakes up he gets up and walks away. No harm done. Kind of like catch and release 🙂
After lunch treat. Little marzipan cakes. I can’t get enough of these. Layers of cake and cream, wrapped in marzipan. And if that isn’t enough, they are dipped in chocolate. I wouldn’t have to work out so hard if I stopped eating these.
I move to the island and finish the rest of my to do list.
Today I head over to my parents house to finish up a project we are working on. We have to get this done by next week to mail them to Ferelyn and her family.
Nice piece of wood isn’t it?
Sanding our project. It’s a lot of work being an Elf!
Time to pick up little pea from school.
Snack and homework time.
After homework, we either head to the park or go for a bike ride. Today we had an important errand to run. We went to the post office to mail Eli’s letter to the North Pole. He is an inquisitive little boy with lots of fabulous questions! How will his letter get there? How long does it take to travel there? Does the post office need a sleigh to get to his house? I love it!!
Time for bed. Hallelujah! I need a little down time. The three of us jump in Eli’s bed. He reads a book to us and I read one to him.
After Eli is asleep, I do a little reading/study. I’m so far behind and every night I get further behind. I have been on Moroni for the last several days because I keep getting distracted. I just found out Mary and Joseph got married! And they had other children! Wait, what?! I never knew. So, I have been reading and researching this instead of my nightly reading.
Paul and I watch something for a few minutes and then off to bed. We are in bed by 10:15pm. 10:30pm if we are crazy 🙂
Every Monday we go out to lunch and after lunch we find a dessert place. Cookies are part of our rotation of dessert. Aaron says he know which is the best cookie and I thought they all tasted the same until today…
The four of us decided to drive the valley, pick up a chocolate chip cookie from each location and have a taste test.
Then, Bryan said he wanted to have a sugar cookie taste.
Mom and I said we would get a specialty cookie from each store. How many cookies did we end up wtih? A lot! 🙂
We started at 1:00pm. First stop: Twisted Sugar.
This is the specialty cookie.
The chocolate chip cookie looked like unbaked cookie dough. Tasted like it as well. The sugar cookie was good, but the icing was a little bland.
Bryan’s favorite chocolate chip cookie was twisted sugar and mom said it was in her top two and couldn’t decide between the two.
Who liked the sugar cookie? This was moms 2nd favorite.
They had a large selection of specialty cookies and was hard to choose just one. We will definitely be back to pick up another specialty cookie.
Second stop: Goodly Cookies.
They didn’t have any sugar cookies or specialty cookies to choose from.
No one liked the goodly cookie. Maybe we need to heat this one up?
Third stop: Suss.
Who liked the chocolate chip cookie? No one! This was mom and Aaron’s last choice and this one was at the bottom of the list for me as well.
Who liked the sugar cookie? No one! This was all of our least liked cookie. It also looks terrible.
Fourth stop: Cookie Crave.
We had to have the skookie here. There are a couple places to get a skookie in the valley and hands down the Cookie Crave wins on this one. Two milk chocolate cookies and ice cream. Can’t go wrong with this.
With all of us loving the warm skooie we are all surprised this one came in as our least favorite. I think we need to heat this one as well.
The sugar cookie: This was moms third choice and Aaron’s second choice.
We picked up the chocolate chip cookie and sugar cookie. No specialty cookie here.
Fifth stop: Chip
Picked up a chocolate chip cooke.
Who liked the chocolate chip: I was the only one. This was one of my favorites.
The left picture above is the sugar cookie display. Looks good, right? The one on the right is the cookie they gave us. Totally not the same. Chip lost me on that one for the sugar cookie section.
Who liked the sugar cookie: This was Aarons third choice.
I can’t get these pictures to line up. 🙂 They look great on edit, but preview just won’t work. Whatever, moving on….
Sixth stop: Sodalicious. See, it’s getting darker out 🙂 We have been at this for a while.
Who liked the chocolate chip: No one. This was my least favorite. Paul said it tasted like soap. Which is funny. Because I have had many of these cookies and they are not bad. But when you put it next to a REALLY good cookie, this one is terrible.
We picked up a chocolate chip cookie and a sugar cookie. They didn’t have specialty cookies here either.
Seventh stop: Crumbl cookies.
Picked up a chocolate chip cookie and a sugar cookie
Who liked either ? No one. Didn’t make the list.
Eight and last stop.
I asked my IT guy for some help with lining up these pictures, he said I’m on my own. So, I will just have to live with misalignment. 🙂
We picked up a chocolate chip cookie and a sugar cookie.
Who liked the chocoatel chip: moms second, arron and my first.
Who liked the sugar: This one was pretty good. Hard to compare. It is a good cookie. Mom and Aaron’s number one. I have to say I liked this one from all the others as well.
Brought all the cookies home and set them out. The chocolate chip cookies. For the category of looks, Batch totally won on this. It is tall, lots of chocolate chips and it looks like it just came out of the oven.
The sugar cookies. Lots of variation.
We cut them up.
And had a taste of each.
Dad stopped after two of them. He said they all taste the same. Interesting. When we get a cookie every other week or so from each of these places, they all taste really good. And when I tasted them all at once there is a cookie that I thought was pretty good, but next to the winner, it was the worst cookie I have eaten.
Conclusion?
Chocolate chip cookie: Twisted sugar and batch was our top choices.
Sugar cookie: Batch was our top choice
Suss was our least with chocolate chip and sugar. We are definitely taking this one our of our dessert rotation.
6:05 pm. A lot of driving, but a lot of fun.
What’s next? I’m thinking we need to do our top 3 and see who wins. Pizza? That would be filling. Brownies? Oh, yeah, that would be good!
Our 6 year old alarm went off at 6:30am this morning. Thanksgiving or not, he is always on time!
Eli brought us breakfast in bed. What was on the menu? Pie crust cookies filled with cranberries and white chocolate chips. Can’t go wrong with this selection!
Mom is burnt out with cooking Thanksgiving dinner. She has been cooking dinner for how many years? No wonder she’s burnt out! Will I be burnt out when I’m a mormor?
I told her she could have a care free day and I would make dinner-everything except the turkey 🙂 She said she appreciated it, but she had her heart set on takeout and wanted to go to Carvers. Paul and I haven’t been to Carvers since our Discover Card days, so it was It was a fun treat. Food was delicious!
Can’t have Thanksgiving dinner without olive fingers!!
After dinner we watched Netflix, The Christmas Chronicles 2.
For dessert we had pumpkin pie. Paul makes the best pie crust. Cold hands= great flakey crust!!
Ferelyn and I were texting pictures back and forth with each other, showing each others evening. She fried her turkey this year. She said it was so good, she ate so much she sent a picture of her turkey belly. So, I showed her my non-turkey belly! 🙂
That evening we finished decorating the tree.
Eli started to hang the shiny spectacular ornaments 🙂 I sure love this kid. He is so cute!
How has the pandemic effected our lives during the month of October?
Paul is still working from home, which is is still soooo great! I’m getting used to eating lunches with him and will really miss them when this is all over.
Eli’s school is still open full time. All of the public schools have either gone online learning or hybrid learning. All my employees are hybrid so they go into the school 2 days a week and alternate with the other half of the school the other two days.
With having a crazy schedule of not knowing if employees show up to work, I have to have Eli in school full time. We are very thankful Eli’s school has taken precautions and have remained open.
What has effected the stores? The sales are still down, but manageable. I think the sales will remain at this percentage till next year. Our biggest struggle is the public wants drive thru, and we are not a drive thru store, hallelujah! We sold off our drive thru store and will NEVER own another one. I offer curbside, but they don’t want that, they want drive thru.
What is great, is my high school employees are hybrid so they can work during the day, which has been wonderful! It has been extremely nice to have a selection of employees who can work during the day. Finding day help is hard, and not just during this pandemic, but every year for the last few years.
We have been keeping busy with playing games. Eli is hooked on pie in the face. And yes, Paul and I have been behind the hand… 🙂
Hiking trails we frequent are now closed. The state has started shutting down popular trails and we are very disappointed on this one. Every fall we look forward to hiking up to the hot springs and look at all the beautiful changing leaves. We will have to wait till next year.
In March I told Paul I wasn’t going to join the world in mask making, but here I am! Making masks! So, why not make them cute?
Church: We are going into the building every other week for 45 minutes. The other weeks they broadcast it and we watch in our living room.
Back during the crazy panic shopping, we needed milk. I drink skim milk, but wasn’t too picky that week and would have picked up any % of milk I could find. Okay, whole? I would have passed on whole and would have had water for the week. The only milk I could find was chocolate milk. I haven’t had chocolate milk in a long time, so I wasn’t complaining on having to drink chocolate milk for the week! I mean we are experiencing a pandemic. We need to make some changes and sacrifices, right? So, I picked up a gallon. It was so delicious! The next week they had skim milk, so I picked up a gallon of skim and chocolate. I have done this every week since March.
It’s the end of October, I’m still picking up chocolate milk and I’m so addicted to it. It’s now a staple in our house 🙂 Unable to keep up with the calories I needed to start rationing myself, so I purchased these little glasses to keep my portions smaller. Paul laughs every night when I pour my ounce for the evening, but it works!
Eli was pretty excited for this day to come! We went to the pumpkin patch a few days ago and picked up a pumpkin. That pumpkin has been sitting on the front porch just waiting to be carved by a little 6 year old!
And today it finally happened! Eli drew out his plans of what he was going to carve on a piece of paper. He then drew it on the pumpkin, and off he went carving! So pleased with his planning skills. Haha!
Pretty good!
Off to parents houses. What did he want to be this year? Cat boy. The same as last year. I’m not too sad about it. I’m not one to spend money or time on a costume that will be worn for 2 hours.
Next stop, my parents house. Eli was really excited. He has been hearing about what dad and Aaron have been working on for the last couple of weeks.
To keep the social distancing theme this year going, they made a candy cannon. Powered by air, it shoots the treats to the kids.
The cannon was a success! The goal was for the cannon to shoot 6 feet. It went 6 feet and then some.
Prepared with ammunition -treats, they didn’t get a lot of kids this year. About 15 kids for the night. Pretty drastic considering they usually get around 120 trick or treaters.
Without kids to shoot candy to, we had fun with the gun. We kept powering up the poundage to see how far we could shoot the treats.
We had a fun time with the cannon and we decided to head home.
That evening we had a few kids come to the door. I didn’t get pictures or video, but Eli was really cute. I told him to give each kid a huge handful of treats, because I didn’t want any left overs. He did what I had asked, except for one kid. He took almost the whole bag and dumped it into this kids bucket.
After he left, I asked him why he didn’t follow my instructions of just a handful. He then taught me a lesson. He said, “that kid didn’t have as much candy in his bucket as all the other kids had. I wanted him to have as many as everyone else, so I gave him more.”
Thank you, little Pea for teaching me to think of others. You noticed what that child needed and you made him feel better by giving him more treats. Thank you for always putting others first and doing acts of kindness to everyone. Love you little, Pea.
