Y'all has it really been since November that I've done a life lately post? Let's catch up! We hosted our very first Friendsgiving and I took 9,000 fewer photos than I should have. #fail. BUT that's what happens when you have a great time with your friends! I'm already looking forward to doing it again next year. We had really fantastic food -- people even brought delicious sides like awesome sweet potato casserole and spinach artichoke bread. Obviously I made a cheese plate. One of the biggest reasons we wanted a house was so we could host people. We love doing it. Making our house clean and pretty is nice but mostly we feel honored to be able to host the people we love--to be able to make your house a home for family and friends, to feed them, and show them you love them--that's the best. After way too much food we went for an evening walk in the woods on a nearby trail and it was so cool to be out there talking with friends and having fun while the moon came out. When we got home we ate pie, obviously. Then of course we had family Thanksgiving (because we totally needed MORE food)! We started the day off on the best foot by doing the Turkey Trot! I haven't been running enough so it wasn't easy but I felt SO GOOD after and it was so fun to do as a family. Mom and I even went to yoga right after which was the best decision ever, especially since it was a donation class for the Humane Society--which holds a special place in my heart more than ever after adopting Oliver. We were brave enough to bring him to my parents' and he actually did really well, thankfully. Right after Thanksgiving we started decorating for Christmas because I'd already been listening to Christmas music for weeks. It's just my absolute favorite time of the year and it was so fun to decorate our house for the first time. I feel like I blinked and then it was Christmas! The holidays are so wonderful yet really exhausting #amiright? It was so nice to be with family though; that's always my favorite. So, not the best picture but we're so cute, right? It's hard to reach my arm far enough to fit all of us in! Really happy to have gotten to see them a few times over the break. I'm pretty sure I promised you an update on advent and that's most of what we did in December so let's get to it! I always do 24 days of fun for David every December, like I did in August for his birthday advent, though that was my first time doing it for his birthday. I try to make it better and better every year but it's always a mix of a few things: gift cards, coupons (massages, chores, etc.), adventures, and food (uh, obviously! ). One of the things I made this year that was David's favorite was the pizza ring, from Pinch Of Yum, for a Packer's game. It was really fun game food and it was so delicious! One thing that's always been a part of advent: making and decorating sugar cookies. *all the heart eyes* Some Christmas shopping in Freeport. Isn't he so handsome?! Christmas tree decorating! A fun adventure to the Boothbay Botanical Gardens for Gardens Aglow where they put SO MANY Christmas lights on the gardens. After we went to dinner. It was a chilly, romantic, lovely date night. There were many other fun things too like going to Five Guys for dinner (David's dream Friday night), ice skating, Christmas movie night, a sweater, some socks, a coupon for a nag free night of video games, breakfast in bed, and more. Advent and preparing for Christmas pretty much took up our life in December. Mostly I ate candy and cookies but I did sneak in a healthy oatmeal a few times! I also took way too many pictures of our cat. Even though he's a kitten and is so crazy sometimes I still love him so much. It's weird. He also helped me wrap presents! One of my students curled my hair for a how to presentation and I was relieved that she did a really good job -- and didn't even come close to burning me! I made a LOT of cookies (I think the final tally was like 8-10 different kinds!) including these from How Sweet Eats. I'm not even sure I want to talk about this, but our Christmas got majorly disrupted by a bad car accident two days before Christmas. We are very lucky that everyone is okay and with everything that we have and this post has been about so many happy things that it feels wrong to end it on a down note. BUT that's life--it's not perfect. It's messy and hard. In the future I might do a post on this, but for legal and emotional reasons, I'm going to just say that this was hard, is hard. I feel very grateful that David was able to walk away from this. We're going about things slower and more intentionally these days and I'm in NO rush to take down our Christmas tree. People kept asking what we were doing to celebrate New Year's and I just kept saying "sitting on my couch and celebrating this year being over." After David's accident plus all of the travel and chaos of the holidays, being home was all I wanted. So, we celebrated with some tortellini (fave!) and ice cream, with gold sprinkles to make it celebratory, by the tree. I intended to do a New Year's Day post but couldn't get to it as so much has been moved to the back burner. So, I'll just tell you that I'm not setting a hard and fast resolution. I'm trying to make my health and happiness a priority despite the longer commute and more responsibilities; I"m trying to sleep more, drink more water, and be online less, and my words for 2017 are present and grateful.
Happy New Year friends. I hope you're feeling present and grateful these days, too.
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