We had John's family and my parents over to celebrate Thanksgiving at our house. It was a very nice day with lots of good food, enjoyable company and kids playing. Ava and Blaine were also very excited about getting to go home with my parents to spend a couple of days with Grandma and Grandpa. Since Ava did not have school Friday, we decided to let them have some grandparent time and we then met for lunch in Peru to pick them up on Sunday. They had a great time with Grandma and Grandpa as well as getting lots of time to play with their cousins. We also had a good time with a couple of kid-free days. I never do the Black Friday shopping thing, but decided to maybe give it a try this year since I didn't have to work and had no kids. I got to Menards around 8AM and was pleasantly surprised that there were no crazy crowds. So I decided to keep going and ended up hitting several stores and got most of my Christmas shopping done! Wow! And to end a busy shopping day, we headed into town to go out to eat at Milly's - an actual sit-down bar place where we never get to with kids around all the time!
Then on Saturday, I started putting up my Christmas decorations. This is a totally different experience when doing it with no little helpers, but enjoyable:) I probably took a little extra time pulling out all of the Christmas tree decorations since I had no one rushing me to help hang them. A lot of memories attached to many of the ornaments - what they mean, where they came from, who gave them to us, ones the kids have made, etc. These ornaments always make me think about not only when Ava and Blaine were born and their first Christmases with us, but also the two babies that we never met. I don't dwell on those miscarried children a lot, but this special ornament always makes me reflect on them at this time of year at least - wondering about all those things that I will never know about them this side of Heaven.
The finished product! We have a very colorful tree with that huge menagerie of ornaments. I also decorated small trees for the kids' rooms too. They were thrilled when they got home to see their own trees in addition to our big tree. Actually, I think that they were most excited to get home and see their advent calendars that were hung up and filled with treats:)
After getting the tree put up and decorated, John came home from work Saturday and we decided that we should cut down a tree in the yard that we had discussed cutting down for a while. It was a nice day and we had no kids, so why not??
This was a Tree of Heaven - although I consider it anything but heavenly!! It always loses branches when the wind blows and it is very noxious - producing seedlings all over the place that are stinky and hard to kill. So we decided it was time for it to go. We got all the main branches cut down and cleaned up before dusk and were left with a big trunk. We decided to tackle that Sunday afternoon after we went to pick up the kids. Of course, they went out to help too. But Blaine was sure to grab his saw before heading out to help Daddy:)
But even with Blaine's saw helping out, the bar on John's saw was too short to cut through the large diameter of the tree. So we thought we would try to wrap a chain around it and pull it down with the truck, but to no avail. The kids gave it their best effort though - kicking and pushing with all of their might:) I think that this one is going to take a bigger chainsaw or a backhoe!
We had a weekend full of projects and business, but all enjoyable. The kids even admitted that they missed me while at Grandma and Grandpa's:) Now lots more Holiday business and fun to look forward to the next few weeks!
No comments:
Post a Comment