Tag Archives: Holiday

Last Minute Christmas Traditions

Kids and trees
Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01088

Today we continued to get ready for Christmas. Allison put up the rest of the decorations last night and I moved the boxes back to the basement. Eva had her friends over for a Christmas gift exchange and games and lunch and to watch Stranger Things. I picked up pizza for everyone while Allison worked on Cinnamon rolls. I also helped Andy clean his room for a few hours. This consisted of me cleaning and he deciding on what to keep and what to toss. I found 6 water bottles in his room during that cleaning and we still have a long way to go to get the room to halfway useable.

He wasn’t much help because his arm is in a cast now. Allison took him to get his cast this morning and he now has a pink and black striped cast. He picked the colors. We tried to suggest red and green for Christmas but his cast would be staying on beyond Christmas and he thought that wouldn’t make sense. All of Eva’s friends signed Andy’s cast for him. He was excited about that.

getting wrapping paper

The kids finally decorated their mini trees tonight. I had put them out weeks ago and fixed the lights and go them ready to decorate but we had not had the time to do so. Tonight we did. We also watched A Charlie Brown Christmas and the Elf on the Shelf special. Both little shows that the kids enjoy.

Allison wrapped the gifts tonight and we thought that we were going to run out of wrapping paper because we were down to a couple of rolls and what I thought was a third roll turned out to be rolled up Jimmy Buffett concert posters. They were in the wrapping paper caddy because that it he perfect size for rolled up paper. So I ran out to Target and Eva came along with me. We flew through the store to get wrapping paper and a zip up hoodie for Andy. all of his sweatshirts are pull over and that doesn’t work great with the cast.

We also ran into Michael’s to get Andy some clay for Christmas. He wrote a Christmas letter yesterday and that was basically the only thing on the list that he’d be getting from Santa. He wants an Oculus Quest 2 VR Headset that is $300 -$400. Not this year. The big gifts were already decided and ordered months ago. they were not VR headsets. His letter to Santa was very nice, though. He did not ask for much other than the headset. He asked about how Santa was doing and what the elves birthdays were. It was a very cute letter.

Thanksgiving and Christmas PJS 2021

Christmas PJS 2021
Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01060

This year we hosted Thanksgiving at our house. My parents came from the Cape and we also hosted Allison’s friend Colleen and her mother. Allison and Colleen prepared a ton of food last night and got ready for everything today. Allison made sure that she made many recipes that were gluten free so that my Mom could eat them including a gluten free green bean casserole. Colleen’s mom brought over a pumpkin bread that we can eat tomorrow morning. We had apple pie, pumpkin pie, pumpkin cake and chocolate chip cookie pie. So much food.

Thanksgiving Food

After dinner and everyone headed home we got changed into our Christmas pajamas. This is a yearly tradition. This was the first year that the pajamas fit well for sleeping. As we lounged in the new pajamas we enjoyed watching the movie 8-Bit Christmas. This was a hilarious movie about one kids’ quest to get a Nintendo Entertainment System. It starred Neil Patrick Harris and Steve Zahn. I really enjoyed it and we laughed a lot during the movie. Although, the movie was set in 1988 and that was a bit late in the NES and Cabbage Patch craze. Seeing as this was something I lived through and it was so close to my own personal Christmases of years past I remember the dates very clearly. Christmas 1984 was all about Transformers and Cabbage Patch Kids. My grandparents scoured the Eastern Seaboard for them. Christmas 1985 was the year of Nintendo and more Cabbage Patch kids. 1988 was way late in the NES game. That aside, it was a very fun movie.