Real Life: It's December!!!

I turned the calendar page once more. It says December on the top. That means I need to buy myself a new calendar for 2016. Mike and family keep saying to me, "Why don't you use the calendar on your phone and skip the paper one?" Why? Because I like my old fashion way of keeping all our family activities together. I like when I can see the whole month on one page. Not the kind that has only one week displayed. They are too big and too bulky. My phone calendar would probably work ok but call me old fashioned ... I like a paper calendar! So, the other day when I had the whole day out with mom and sisters to shop, I bought a new calendar at Target. I already wrote down some appointments that are scheduled for twenty sixteen. It will get written all over through out the year!!! Maybe too much at times! But before I focus too much on the new calendar, we need to finish out the old one.

We have upcoming Christmas activities coming up. The school program that is always so good! A banquet for our employees and families. Family gatherings with extended and immidate. School Christmas parties. We are helping with the navitiy play that Honeybrook Church does such a good job with! Please come out and walk through a live nativity! You will not be disappointed! You end with some hot chocolate and cookies!!! It's such a great way to remember how the birth of Jesus may have been long ago!

In the midst of all the wonderful parties and Christmas celebrations, we hope to move into our house! I can't explain how ready I am to move back home. With the weather getting colder outside, I can't wait for our garage! I can't wait to get our beds set up in each of our bedrooms. It will be great to get the cabinets stocked and ready for cooking in the new kitchen. It's all I have to not get impatient! I knew I would have all these feelings because the home stretch with this whole project gets us all excited! I did have a shocker the other day when I walked in the house. The cabinets guys were working in the laundry and installing those cabinets. I asked, "What are you doing?" They both looked at me like I was crazy. What? What was wrong? "Yellow cabinets??? I thought I said white ones???" Oh boy, we got on the phone with the cabinet maker right away and he said that's what we had decided on. I didn't even remember picking out a yellow paint color!!! But, I must have been under some kind of stress that day, because when I got back home and looked at my papers ... they were exactly right. I had picked out yellow cabinets for the laundry and chose "lemon grass" as the color. How in the world could I forget this? It took me for a loop but after my brain got in the right gear, I called up the painter and said that now the laundry walls need to be repainted. Gold walls with cheery yellow cabinets do not go well together. :/ No problem there ... we just painted it Revere Pewter. :))) So, the laundry cabinets are staying yellow and it will be my cheery place to fold our clothes. Again, I can't wait to use the laundry room! Especially after yesterdays story. I had a whole line full of wash hung out and the last push on the line, made the line come off the wheel. I was annoyed but my husband was the one biting his tongue when he was up a very high ladder, in the dark, in the cold, having his brother Ervin shine a flash light so he could see to put the wash line back on the wheel!!! At 8:00 PM, I was folding our cold, damp laundry!!!

I think one of the things I miss the most about our home is being able multi task. You don't really realize how you do things until you do things differently. Like do one load of laundry first thing in the morning and then dry it. Do another load and by then you can fold the first load. Meanwhile, you can do other house chores. Now, I take my laundry up to moms washer and else hang it out or go for a walk to the dryer! :) It takes me longer to do simple chores. But, it sure beats having to go to the laundry mat!!! Thanks mom for sharing your house with me!!! I also have a Christmas letter that needs to get printed out. I will take a drive to the shop to use the printer there because our printer at home is missing cords. They are somewhere in all our boxes. Yikes!!!

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We had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday! Mike's mom had the family over on Wednesday night for dinner. The food was great! I have to admit that it was nice to just bring Austin downstairs when it was time for bed. :)

Thursday, we had our fourth family meeting. This is when we meet with just our children and talk about goals, things we learned from the preveous year and what some things are that we would like to do in 2016. Then we went over the house and got some staining done. We ate a late lunch at home and then at 5:30 PM, Hadassah and I headed out to do some late night shopping. It was a blast! The lines were not too bad and we had a great time together! We got back home at midnight!!!

On Friday, we packed up for a fun weekend with my family at the cabin again. We did our usual chocolate coatings on Saturday. It seemed never ending but was fun to do it up there while the kids played nicely together. The guys hunted on Monday! It was a great time!

We made tons of these crackers!!!

So sweet Colson!

We laughed at mom that she doubled the peanut ball recipe and now we have many, many peanut butter balls to eat and share this Christmas season!

Mike is loving these pretzel rods ...

Then we ended the day with making sand tarts. Megan liked to put the sprinkles on top.

Mike and Matthew had snack on the back porch one evening. All bundled up! :)

Cousins and sure to be great chums as they up!!!

We got back to the basement on Monday evening.

Tuesday we went out shopping with mom and sisters. (We missed Mindy but she was already shopped out and decided to stay home with her girls.) We shopped in Exton and laughed and ate some great food from Chipotle! I love days out with these ladies and we even found some great bargains!!! :)

Gotta love the cheesy grin there Mim! Her and I were both out all day shopping without our baby boys! We enjoyed the short break! :)))

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The house project is in the last stages. There is still lots to be done in two weeks but if things go as planned, we still are hoping to be moved in by Christmas. It's gonna be close but hoping!!!!! :)

Kitchen is being installed.