Month: December 2017

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Christmas 2017

jennypittsburgh

Another Holiday season is in the books. And let me tell you, it was a good one! Our Christmas vacation was essentially stretched out over 4 days, with the kids and I being off on Friday and Monday. We were busy!

Thursday – I picked the kids up from school and we went to BRGR for early bird special Burgers and fries.

Greyson ate almost 2 whole chicken fingers which was a Christmas miracle in itself!

After dinner we headed out to the Butler County Fairgrounds for the Shadrack Christmas Light Show. I had heard a lot of good things about it and it didn’t disappoint. We all loved the music and the lights and the holiday spirit.

Friday we had tumbling and I ran errands and then the evening was spent at Grammy’s playing with cars, eating pizza and petting her cats.

Christmas is almost here!

Sunday – Merry Christmas Eve!

Our Christmas Eve was spent at Grandma & Papa’s house.

We started out the night opening presents

and presents…

and MORE presents! We were all pretty spoiled.

Grandma made an Italian Feast and we were all pretty excited to eat.

Yum!

We started out with stuffies, caramelized onion puffs and snail salad.

And then I must have put my phone away because I missed pictures of the baccala, linguine with clam sauce, fried shrimp, crab cakes…oh boy. There was a lot of food! And it was so delicious. Grandma outdid herself!

We all made it into bed by 10, which is the latest our kids have ever stayed up. I was expecting them to sleep till 7.

Monday – Christmas Day

So, they woke up at 5:40 (shocker!) and wanted to “get in Mommy and Daddy’s bed, drink milk and watch Paw Patrol”. I went downstairs to make coffee, feed the dog and wait to video tape them coming downstairs to see what Santa had brought them.

1/2 hour later and I’m on my second mug enjoying the lights and a little Xmas Vacation.

Finally!

They got a big train table (which Greyson hasn’t stopped playing with)

and a roller coaster.

plus stocking stuffers (Mickey Roaster Racer stuff)

And magic coloring books.

And Mother Nature brought us a white Christmas!

Around 10:00, my Dad & Anna, my brother and his Family and Jarrad’s family joined us for brunch. More presents!

It was organized chaos.

I’ve always said that Jarrad’s Dad and sister have never taken a bad picture. Well shoot them with mouth fulls of food and that’ll do it. Hence why I blurred them out! We had a lovely morning.

After naps, we headed over to my brothers to celebrate with my Mom and Carl. I don’t think I took a single picture! I need to go back and reread Blogging 101. But Katie made the best pot roast I’ve ever had and we opened MORE presents. We are all so very blessed.

It was a beautiful holiday season. I am so thankful that we have our health and our families and our special Beans. It was truly an amazing time of year. 2017 was a good one.

Fynnlee, Greyson

Weekend update

jennypittsburgh

How is there only one week left until Xmas??? I felt like I had all this time to get stuff done but here we are. T minus 6 days till Santa Claus comes to town.

Saturday

We had one of those great weekends with not a whole lot planned. Saturday we went to tumbling class followed by a quick trip to Costco and then home for naps. When the kids woke up, we decided it was time to bake cookies!

I am SO not a baker but I love the tradition of making Christmas cookies with the kids. In future years, I’ll bust out the kitchen aid mixer and whip up a batch of sugar cookie dough. Then we can cut shapes and ice and sprinkle the picture perfect cookies.

But for now…Aldi has cut and bake sugar cookie dough that fits the bill. And for $3, we didn’t really care how they turned out.

We had green and red sprinkles everywhere but they had a blast shaking that sugar on their cookies.

They ended up being pretty tasty too!

Sunday

So Fynnlee has been talking about how excited she is to meet Santa. She wants to sit on his lap and tell him what she wants for Christmas (which is cookies and coffee). We hadn’t planned on doing any special photos because you might remember how well it went last year.

She couldn’t get away from him fast enough.

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But Jerry saw a Breakfast with Santa at the same location as last year. And so we said, what the heck? Let’s do it!

Monte Cello’s does a nice breakfast buffet and they have a Santa that walks around, talking to the kids. After a few seconds of burying her face in my neck and being super shy, Fynn came out of her shell and really liked talking to the big guy.

When it came time to sit on his lap, however…she completely changed her tune. The was no chance she was going to STAND next to him, let alone sit on his lap. But she did let me hold her and got pretty close. I call that a win.

The kids fell asleep on the way home and I figured we ruined nap time. But about an hour after we got to the house, they went in their cribs and settled down for a little snooze.

Or so we thought.

I heard talking coming from their room but let them go, figuring they’d eventually fall asleep. I settled myself on the couch in the living room and relaxed with some Don’t Be Tardy on the DVR. About 15 minutes in, I heard the unmistakable pitter patter of little feet running across the floor upstairs.

JAILBREAK!

Jarrad, I just heard someone running around upstairs! We both flew up the steps only to find Thing 1 and Thing 2 giggling in our bedroom. Every single stuffed animal in their bedroom were piled up in Greyson’s crib and we figured they shimmied down the side of his crib, landing on a pile of pillows.

They’re trying to kill me. At least neither of them got hurt.

Jerry went right out and bought a camera for their room so we can monitor their shenanigans. But I think we need to start thinking about big kid beds for them.

The rest of the night was spent making mounds of GG’s famous Pick-a-mix and watching the Steelers lose to the Patriots #heartbreak

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So that was our weekend. It’s a short work week for us and we’re getting pretty psyched about our holiday celebrations. Ho Ho Ho!

Fynnlee, Greyson

Catching Up

jennypittsburgh

I swear…I didn’t intend for this blog to become so stale! It’s really not my intention to post once a month. But that seems to be the recent trend. Due to forces beyond my control (the holidays, busy schedules, my offices beefed up firewall), blogging has been put on the back burner. But things will be better in 2018 (promise) and I’m not waiting till then to get back in a groove.

So let’s catch up.

Thanksgiving 2017

What a fun 4 days! We had some special visitors

GG

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& Aunt Steph

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And ate our faces off on Turkey Day

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And at Tako the Saturday after

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The 4 day weekend was a blast. Here are some snaps from Thanksgiving Holiday.

Greyson has not stopped playing with this train since Turkey Day.

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The temps were picture perfect…just like our little Beans
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Thanksgiving Eve Soup night at our house.

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And a beautiful tablescape on Thanksving

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Someone loves being the center of attention

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Beaver Light Up night

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Look who showed up!

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3rd Annual Trip to the Christmas Tree Farm

We found the perfect tree!

Girls shopping trip with Grammy

Annual Christmas Photos

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2017

Decorating our tree

My favorite ornaments

So this is not as detailed as I would like but it’s better than nothing, right? The holiday season is kinda crazy so I’m happy I got to capture a bit of it.

More to come!! xo