Before I get further behind...

Merry Christmas Eve, everyone! Before I get even further behind, just a few quick photos to share about life around here lately...

First up is this great photo of the demo team 21 year olds...

These three have been together on demo team for years and all turned 21 within 5 weeks of each other this past summer. This photo was taken after the most recent monthly promotion performances. I love the camaraderie!

The following week, Micah finally finished his semester (on December 20th). Asher and I went down to help him pack up to come home for break. It was nice to have all three of us...to carry all of Micah's laundry, lol...

The next evening, we celebrated the winter solstice with a lovely fire...

...and roasted hot dogs, brats and marshmallows over it...

There's been plenty of other stuff...not overly exciting, just living our blessed life. And now the holidays are upon us so I may go missing for a bit but will catch up before too long. Wishing you and yours a peaceful holiday!

Thankful Thursday

Hello, all! How's your December going? Things here are pretty good. :) Here's my list...

1. Asher. Asher's been home from UNC since Dec 5. Finals officially finished on the 8th, but his were earlier in the week. He's been enjoying the downtime and recently bought himself a OneWheel to get around campus (as next semester he has some quick transitions that will require some hustle to get from class to class on opposite ends of the campus...and he's not a fan of bicycles). It arrived Tuesday. He spent the day riding around figuring it out. (Fortunately, he picks physical things up pretty quickly.)

Thankful that he has this time to get comfortable with it before classes start again and that he's taking his safety seriously. :)

2. Micah's fundraiser. Huge thanks to all of you who have helped Micah out with his Taekwondo Club fundraiser!! He's almost at his goal!

(In the meantime, Micah's still in Boulder...as his finals won't finish until Dec 20th.)

3. Tuba Christmas. On Saturday, Nathan and I attended our first Tuba Christmas up in Old Town. Apparently, it's an annual thing...with volunteer tuba players from around the area, ranging in age from 11 to 76 for the Fort Collins gathering. It was quite impressive (and chilly), and Nathan was thrilled that they included Carol of the Bells.

After that, Nathan and I wandered Old Town and did a wee bit of shopping/browsing. It was a lovely afternoon!

4. Friends. Always thankful for friends! I've enjoyed conversations, lunch, coffee, and holiday gatherings lately with all different friends. So appreciative to have such a wonderful community! It's always tricky to get together around the holidays, so I'm especially glad we were able to make it work. :)

5. Packages are in the mail! I have, I think, all my gift packages in the mail as of this morning...woohoo!! There are always more things on the to do list, especially around the holidays, but I'm going to take this moment to bask in having checked this one off the list. 

And then I'll need to get back to that list... ;) 

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!

Catching up

Okay, don't forget about Micah's post...

Beyond that, though, I just wanted to catch up a bit from Thanksgiving break. As I mentioned, we had a low-key holiday. Asher still had classes Monday and Tuesday. Micah had the whole week off, had thought he was going to hang out on campus until Tuesday or Wednesday, but quickly decided to come home on Sunday when he realized that--though the dorms stayed open--the dining halls did not. Noah worked all the weekdays but Thursday. All that is to say...yeah, we just stayed here. :)

The past few years, we've tried to support local restaurants by ordering plenty of food for Thanksgiving but went back to a more traditional meal this year. We had each boy make a dish...which worked out great in getting them involved and decreasing the load on Nathan. (We'll just ignore the increased kitchen mess, lol.) Asher made cornbread muffins. Noah made mashed potatoes. And Micah made stuffing. I was in charge of cocktails/mocktails, deviled eggs, and a veggie tray; Nathan did everything else. 

Let me just take a moment to tell you that we don't normally have stuffing because Micah's really the only one who likes it, hence his pick. :) So, he found a recipe online and then proceeded to ignore parts of it. As he said, "I'm measuring with my heart." He entertains us. :)

So, we had plenty of food and drinks. I didn't take very many pictures over the break but here are a few...

Aside from all the eating (and all the sleeping the boys did), we did all our "normal" things, binged the new season of Loki, played Jackbox games, did some online shopping, and binged season 7 of Alone. (Alone is about contestants dropped off in late fall in the arctic to survive on their own. They get to bring 10 items and, for this season, had to last 100 days to win a million dollars. It was an assignment for one of Asher's classes, but we joined him in watching it. It was fascinating and made us quite thankful for our Thanksgiving, lol.) 

And then Asher and Micah had to head back to their campuses on Sunday. Asher has this week of classes and then will actually be done with finals in the middle of next week. Micah isn't done with finals until the 20th. 

So, that was our Thanksgiving break. It was lovely. And now we're with everyone else in disbelief that it's almost December. :)

Guest post: Micah

Hi everyone! This is Micah writing this. (Thanks for letting me use your blog, mom! <3) 

You probably all know that I’ve been doing martial arts since before I could even do a proper jumping jack, and you probably also know that I’m still practicing. What you might not know yet is that I joined the CU Taekwondo team this semester and that we have a good shot at becoming Collegiate National Champions! (Since Deion couldn’t do it.) Also, unlike Deion and the football team, the school doesn’t just throw money at us. So, if I’m going to join my team at the Collegiate National Championship, I need your help! 

My personal fundraising goal is $500! 

To make this more fun, I’ll also work out based off of donations: every $1 = 2 Push ups, every $5 = 2 pull ups, every $50 = 10 backflips. I’ll document how much exercise I end up doing on my instagram @micah.x.p.  

Working out aside, martial arts has always been a huge part of my life and has shaped so much of who I am today, and I’m sure it will continue to shape who I become in the future. The CU Taekwondo team has made my college experience so much richer and more rewarding, and I love it dearly. Anything that you can donate to help me follow my team to Nationals would mean the world to me. Thank you all for reading this and here is the donation link!

(Amanda interjecting here to explain that the donation page isn't the easiest to figure out. If you click the link, you'll see a note from Micah at the top with his picture. Just below that (in what appears to be a different thing but isn't), there's a large "Give Now" button. Click that and then it will ask you to choose a story--select "CU Taekwondo 2023-2024." Proceed from there with entering your information. It won't ever ask you about Micah or indicate that it's going to his fundraising but it will. Really. I tried it just to make sure. :) Apparently it tracks based on the initial link that he provided and will know that it goes through him.)

P.S. Here are some pictures of me and my teammates...

P.P.S. Here is a fun video we made if you want to meet some of my teammates!

Thank you, thank you! -Micah