Ten on Tuesday

Time for a brain dump of sorts. :) 

1. Dad's birthday. My dad would have turned 74 last Saturday. He's been gone 16 years now. I miss him. It made my heart smile last week when I was listening to Micah's Spotify playlist and three different Bob Dylan songs came on. My dad loved Dylan and would have loved that Micah listens to him, too. (For the record, Micah's playlist is *quite* diverse, lol.)

2. Decorations up. On Saturday, Micah had another infusion appointment and Asher had decided he needed a break from studying so came home for the weekend. This all meant that I had all three boys here for the last time until December 20th. So, we put up our indoor decorations. (The boys steadfastly refused to do it Thanksgiving weekend because apparently we're not allowed to talk about Christmas until December, lol.) 

We did our climbing wall tree again (adding more density than in past years)... 

We kept the rest of the decorations pretty simple this year...just feeling like our priorities are elsewhere this year. 

3. Stocking order. Every year we change up the order we hang the stockings in. This year, Micah wanted to be on top so decided that we needed to go from most hair (lowest) to least hair (highest). Yes, Micah shaved his head again, despite having claimed that he wasn't going to cut his hair for at least two years (this declaration was made in March). The rest of us are kicking ourselves for not officially documenting our bets on how long/short Micah was going to last before cutting his hair, lol.

4. Fat squirrels. Just so you know, our squirrels are fat again. Nathan took a break for months from feeding them but started back up again recently. This is Tubby. He appreciates Nathan.

(Actually, only I call him Tubby. Nathan thinks he looks like a pear and has named him Bartlett.) While we were watching the show Alone recently we couldn't help but think about how excited any of the contestants would have been to have found one of our squirrels, lol. 

5. Omni. We recently got an Instant Pot Omni Pro. It does a bunch of stuff. We mainly got it for the air fryer features but have been playing with the many modes. If you have any good air fryer type recipes, send them my way. :)

6. Winter cleaning. Rearranging things in the kitchen to make room for the Omni meant sorting the linen closet to make room for some items from the kitchen...which meant sorting things under my bed to group things that were in the linen closet but should have been with things under my bed...etc. All that is to say that I've been doing some winter sorting and purging around here. It's nice. It reminds me of what we already have...clears space before new stuff from the holidays...and helps me feel less cluttered.

7. Shopping pretty much done. Speaking of new stuff, I'm happy to report that my holiday shopping is almost done! Feeling pretty good about that and know that I'm blessed to have more time than most to spend on this...it's nice, too, that I enjoy shopping.

8. Reading glasses. I've definitely been noticing more of a need for my reading glasses lately. It was pretty inevitable and totally expected. I have a number of pairs now, but my favorite is the newest pair I found while shopping with Deanna last month. They're fun! My regular glasses (for when I don't have my contacts in) are kind of boring--very practical--so it's nice to be able to change things up with the cheaper reading glasses. :) 

9. Complaints. I'd like to just take a moment to list a few complaints.

• Why is there no mute button on the Apple tv remote?
• Why have a number of my clothes lately just had big scratchy tags that need to be cut out but then don't have the information (like size) printed anywhere on the item? What's a girl to do if she wants to reorder later or something?
• Why is there no Thanksgiving music? (Seriously. I feel like someone is just missing a huge opportunity here to have "the" Thanksgiving song.) 

10. Blogging. With grown/growing sons, I'm finding the new balance for how much to share and how much isn't mine to share. It's a process and means that sometimes I don't post as much or as often. Along the way, though, I remain so thankful for this blog. I love being able to go back and find a post from the past...to remember a story I'd forgotten...to prove that I was right in my memory of when something happened, lol. Micah even told me recently that he appreciated it and had gone back and read through most of the blog...that it filled in things he didn't remember clearly. Happy sigh. :)

Okay, that's it for now. :) Hope you're all off to a lovely start of December!