Silver Anniversary

Whoa. Today is our silver anniversary! Twenty five years since we exchanged vows and started this journey. I'm so very blessed to have Nathan as my partner, my friend, my heart. 

It's kind of crazy to wrap my head around, honestly. Silver anniversaries seem like something older people celebrate, lol. I remember when both of our parents celebrated theirs. It seemed so far away and so momentous, and now it's here and it feels weird. ;) We aren't having a big party or doing anything in particular today. (It's snowing finally and Covid numbers have skyrocketed here lately and we like celebrating New Year's Eve with our boys.) But, we're hoping to do something on our own after boys are back in school. :)

In the meantime, here's a quick and abbreviated look at our journey...

Yup, 25 years...10 cars...7 moves/homes...4 states lived in...4 countries visited...3 amazing sons...countless memories. So incredibly lucky in love and in life...and even more fortunate to fully recognize that. Here's to whatever comes after the silver anniversary...and to making even more memories!

Wrapping up the month...

Happy New Year's Eve! I'm not ready to wrap up the year quite yet but figure I should at least wrap up the month, before it's 2022. :) 

So. We had a lovely and quiet Christmas...just the five of us home together. To start Christmas morning, I sent the boys on a hunt for their "Santa" gifts this year. It was just a simple set of clues and was met with mixed responses. (Micah may have started out grumpy because I may have forgotten one letter in his first clue, lol.) We then opened the rest of the gifts and snacked on the delicious box of goodies my mom sent...the always delightful box of cookies my brother and sister in law sent...and all the candy in the house, supplemented largely by the bags of candy Nathan's parents sent. ;)  

In the last couple of weeks, we've also played lots of games...Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride Rails & Sails, Mind the Gap, Relative Insanity, Jackbox games, Ransom Notes, video games, Betrayal at House on the Hill and probably more. Plus, yesterday, Nathan and the boys tried out Asher's new Spike Ball game...

They're not great at it yet, lol...but it was a beautiful afternoon, if a bit chilly. 

Beyond all that, we've also been tidying up financial things, renewing Asher and Micah's passports, putting up my annual display of holiday cards from friends & family, making a very poor attempt to build a graham cracker house (no one wanted to help me so I ended up just playing around and eating most of the candy, lol), sorting through the pile of clothes in Micah's room, and watching lots of movies and shows. 

Yup. It's been pretty chill here. Nothing overly exciting and boys have been sleeping a lot, lol. But it's so nice to be all together. I know I'm running out of years like this so appreciate it now. :) 

Hope your end of 2021 has been warm and happy!

Evolving Traditions, part 2

Remember when I was talking about holiday traditions evolving? Yup. Just keeps happening. Primarily, for instance, here's our tree this year...

Let me back up...

So, a couple weekends ago, Nathan, Micah and I went to get our tree...

We went to the same tree farm we've been going to for years. Unfortunately, we left it a bit long and the year isn't the best for trees here after all the wildfires recently. We found a tree or two that would work but they didn't excite us at all and were about twice as expensive as last year. Given the lack of enthusiasm, we ultimately left the lot without a tree. Sad. Instead, we made a plan to hang lights on our climbing wall. That decided, we spent the rest of the day hanging outside lights and putting up our inflatables...

(Two days later, we brought all those inflatables back inside preventatively due to the high winds forecast for last Wednesday. ;P Fortunately, our little section of town didn't get slammed by the heavy winds that other areas got, and we've since put everything back out. Of course, as I type, I can hear the wind gusting outside again. Oy.)

As I mentioned, all boys are now home so this past weekend we executed our climbing wall tree plan, baked a LOT of cookies (found a yummy new recipe for eggnog cookies), and put up the rest of our indoor decorations.

We're strangely happy with our climbing wall tree, though it did make for many fewer ornaments this year. Perhaps we'll evolve this in coming years to add more strings of lights so that we can put up more ornaments? Who knows? 

Catching up

Yup, went missing for a bit there. Sorry. Here's some of what's been happening in the last couple weeks...

1. I enjoyed an afternoon of lunch, drinks and shopping with Deanna. We didn't get a picture of us, but did take pictures of our drinks, lol.

These were two of our drinks at the outdoor patio area of Coppermuse. It was such a gorgeous day and we thoroughly loved wandering Old Town after that...popping into shops to pick up a few things (mostly for Deanna, as I was pretty much done with my shopping at that point).

2. A few days later I was back at Coppermuse for dinner and drinks with boot camp ladies. Again, we didn't take a picture, but we had such fun with our fire table and patio heaters and great conversation. (It's so much easier to talk when we're sitting and drinking than when we're doing cardio during boot camp, lol.)

3. Enjoyed another beautiful Colorado sunrise...

4. Boys finished their fall semesters. Micah finished Dec 13, Noah finished Dec 14 and Asher finished Dec 15. Whew.

5. I flew to Omaha on Wednesday (Dec 15). When I stepped off the plane, an employee was walking past with a "Tornado Shelter" sign...which was a bit disconcerting. Once Asher finished his last final, he drove to pick me up at the airport. Simultaneously, we started receiving multiple warnings to seek shelter and tornado sirens started sounding. Unsure of exactly what to do, we drove to my AirBNB and contacted the host who offered shelter and reassuring words and additional information. Given the givens, we opted to just stay put for a couple hours while the storm passed. And it was definitely a storm...torrential rains, winds, lightning...apparently at least one tornado touched down just west of Omaha. But then it was past us and the sun came out and the winds died down for a bit. We were so appreciative of the snacks the AirBNB host had stocked in the little kitchen area...as we were both starving but couldn't drive anywhere to get food. They weren't great for us but they took the edge off until we were able to drive and get some dinner. :) Whew.

6. The next day, we returned Asher's textbook rentals, visited the campus bookstore, watched a movie and just generally hung out. That night, Asher finished packing up his stuff. Friday morning, then, we loaded everything up and made the 8 hour drive home. Thankful that our uneventful drive wasn't during the weather that we'd had on Wednesday! 

7. Nathan collected Noah on Friday while Asher and I were driving. Noah got his booster shot (had been waiting until after finals and getting the results from his covid test--we've had both older boys test before coming home for any breaks) then came back to the house.  

8. Asher and I made it safely home, unloaded and had dinner then we all headed out to Karate West. Since the pandemic has kept the demo team from performing at monthly promotions, they'd organized some demo team performances open to the public...Thursday and Friday nights and Saturday morning. Micah went Thursday night. Asher joined in for Friday and Saturday, and they put on a great show, running through multiple routines. (I'll try to post some videos on my Facebook page but haven't figured out how to include videos here.) Here are some pictures...

And now we've been settling into being on winter break. More on that soon... :)

Evolving traditions

Woohoo! I'm in a good mood today...got all our holiday cards mailed yesterday, have only one package left here to mail, and am almost entirely done with my Christmas shopping. Go, me! 

Also, last weekend, I was able to get together with my friend Molly and we went for a great walk and caught up...which was awesome. :) 

During our windy walk, we somehow got on the topic of the holidays and I was telling her about how I used to wrap holiday books for boys as a kind of advent, countdown calendar. They got to open one each night of December for their bedtime story. It was one of my favorite traditions...kept boys from constantly asking when they could unwrap something, meant I didn't have to read the same book every night, and was just plain fun. Over the years, I'd add in new books in the wrapped pile as surprises along the way...which means my holiday book collection is quite large. Here are some that were favorites:

(I'm realizing that this picture is missing at least a couple classics that were also favorites...like How The Grinch Stole Christmas and Twas the Night Before Christmas.)

In any case, I was happy to share that with Molly (who has a 4 year old). Sadly, my guys don't have any interest in reading holiday books with me any more. Soooo...this year I started something new. A parent group I follow online mentioned these punch boxes:

I bought three (from Target) and had great fun filling them with little things for each boy. (I can't say what I filled them with since boys haven't opened them all yet.) Each box is slightly different and I ended up having to wrap the things individually inside the box when I realized that some of the items fit in the box but not through the hole, lol. So, the boys have to open the whole box to retrieve some of the things.

In any case, I gave them to boys as countdown to finals boxes. They each started on a different day and will end on their last day of finals. Obviously, then, I don't have any pictures of Noah or Asher opening their stuff, but Micah enjoyed his first item...which was a flint because we've been watching Survivor lately and he kept talking about how he could use a flint better than the contestants. Turns out, he's right:

After opening it, he immediately headed to the backyard, managed to get a fire going on the patio and then was redirected over to the firepit that was full of old leaves and pine needles. Needless to say, he was happy.

So, a new tradition perhaps? I'm sure things will continue to evolve as we're moving into a new stage with grown boys. Thankful today for the memories of traditions past and the prospect of traditions future.