Week 39

Not going to be long before he can't do this.  She's growing so fast.

B's photo of his zoo he made.

As is in nearly every blog book, the annual all day affair of making my grandmother's (and her great aunt's) cinnamon rolls.  

Botanic garden lights with cousins.

The boys school hosted a virtual meeting for parents of 5th grade about the middle school.  In all honesty, it wasn't very informative, but this picture is so funny with Ads playing his video game and watching the information session.

Batman (kind of) ready for school.

She's just the cutest, sweetest and funniest dog.

Brian and I wanted to do something special this year for the holidays (without holiday parties and family get togethers, or my nephew flying in we wanted to do something unique).  We surprised the boys and rented a limo (pictures above are them waiting for the surprise.  They had no idea and asked questions like, "does it take a long time to drive to?"  "Yes".

They were blown away and so excited!  The driver planned out a route of fun lights to look at based on the newspapers recommendations.  But...she forgot to put South into the GPS and so the first few had nothing.  Eventually we got several miles away (and saw a few really cool houses).  The driver would pull over for several minutes at a time.  We didn't think much of it, but eventually he got out and explained that we would need to pull over every few minutes because the limo was overheating.  We figured it would be no problem and we could just continue on our way, but several minutes later, he got out again and said that he couldn't go more than a mile and offered to get us an uber.  We haven't been in an Uber since the pandemic started and it made us a little nervous, so we called my parents who brought both cars.  We didn't want to ride in a car with them (they haven't done anything, but because our kids have been in school we worry about exposing them).  They let us borrow one of their cars and drove the other home (wearing masks in the car) and then we returned it the next day.  Typical 2020 story :)  Its a good one and we were all laughing at the end, and the kids got a limo ride, we saw some lights and once again, embraced flexibility.

I snuck in a weekday hike again before our family shuts ourselves off from the world to hopefully see some family for Christmas.

B's best bud got a puppy about Lexi's age a few weeks ago.  The girls played while the boys played.  They had so much fun.  The next day (no pictures) Lexi's breeder and sister came to play in the yard.  At first they were unsure of each other, but it didn't take long before those girls were playing hard too.  So hard, Lexi took a 4 hour nap afterwards!

We had a virtual game night Friday night with some family friends and made homemade pizza beforehand.  An enormous bubble popped up and Ads was thrilled to be able to pop it.

And obviously the annual cousin gingerbread making party didn't happen, but leave it to grandma to drop everything we would need on my brothers and our porch and set up a zoom "party".  It was not the same, but a fun alternative and the kids all enjoyed seeing each others creations.

"Let's Roam" has become a lifesaver recently in being able to connect virtually with family and friends.  Zoom, while a great resources, gets a little chaotic and this gives some structure to an online get together.