December

Now that the kiddos are back in school, I can catch up on our month of December.

I won this years fantasy football league!  We have an official trophy, but that floats house to house depending on the years winner, so it's currently in New York.  Caleb was super sweet and made me a little keepsake in the meantime :)

We had I think my favorite Christmas Eve yet.  We have a tradition of going out for Chinese for dinner.  This year, since we've moved, we made reservations and headed back to our old area to our favorite Chinese restaurant

We came back home and enjoyed some Mario castle building.  Caleb got the kids some hot chocolate bombs.  It was a big chocolate ball with marshmallows and candy inside you poured hot milk over to melt and make hot chocolate.  It was a big hit.

We enjoyed some chestnuts and lots of games of trivial pursuit family edition.  This game has been the hit of our winter break.  We've played so many games of it and it's so nice to have questions directed to adults and kids.  The kids beat us way more times than we beat them.

And, of course, everyone gets new pjs for Christmas Eve

And after we tucked the kids into bed, Caleb and I kept up with our Christmas Eve tradition.  We opened our fresh box of chocolates, had some wine, and enjoyed White Christmas.  This is the first year we got to enjoy it on the big screen in our theater room though, and it was pretty awesome.

Christmas morning thankfully never starts real early at our house.  We enjoyed opening presents, cinnamon rolls and breakfast sandwiches, and then we got to hang out the rest of the day waiting for our yummy prime rib to cook and playing games.

 Caleb even got me pretty Christmas flowers :)

The basement isn't quite finished so I don't have pictures, but we got a pool table and darts set up and the kids got some kinetic sand for down there, so the basement has been quite the happening place.


We had a blast on New Year's Eve as well!  I think almost the entire night was more trivial pursuit, some family friendly competition of Mario Kart, and yummy food and drinks.

And we, of course, had to finish off vacation with some ice cream for lunch.

We have thoroughly enjoyed spending our December/January in 60 and 70 degrees and are very much looking forward to our January visitors next week!

Better late than never...

This would normally be in my last post, but we were way late to the game on decorating this year.  Caleb and I have had so much fun putting our new home together and just haven't felt the urge to break out all the christmas decor.  But we finally got there and the kids loved it.

And every year since Caleb and I have been married we pick out a new ornament for our tree that has something to do with our year.  This year we found the perfect ornament to remember that 2019 was our first year here in Powhatan.

November

November was a fun busy month for us.

The first half of the month we went to work on turning the downstairs "office" into a theater room.  When we moved in we weren't quite sure what we were going to turn the room into.  I know, I still haven't posted pictures, but if you've been able to tour our house at all, you know that we have an upstairs that includes the kids rooms and bathroom, a main floor with everything else, and then a big basement that they partially finished.


Here's the before...Well they did attach the other door before we moved in.  That would be where whoever took the picture is standing.

So if you're on our main floor you'd go into this hallway and take the door you see on the left

Head down the stairs to the basement

Take a left and you'll get to our new theater room

Eventually we'd like to change the seating to a theater sectional, but we're doing what we can for now.  We have been loving it!  Football days, family movie days, date nights.  The kids are loving the snack bar and popcorn...and mom and dad are loving the stocked fridge :p


If you know Arya, you know she loves anything to do with art.  She's becoming quite the little artist.

Caleb's parents were able to make a trip down to see us.  And just like with any guests I sucked at taking pictures.  We enjoyed an early Christmas with them, playing cards, yummy dinners, and the kids loved playing outside with them.

Soon after they left, we got to work on Thanksgiving.  Caleb, unfortunately, had to work this year, but we made the best of it.  I have the best stuffing helpers and Arya even helped on some extra things this year.

Caleb got the Christmas lights hung up to round out the month.  Now, I suppose, we should probably get the Christmas tree up.

October

Our October started out pretty great.  My parents were able to make it down and were our first official guests in the new house.  My mom came down to help us move in, but this time we just got to enjoy having company instead of being busy moving.  They were such a huge help.  We got to put in a toilet (super exciting house owner stuff.) Mom helped stock up my cellar with lots of apple sauce and maple syrup.  We got to be with my mom on her birthday for the first time in a really long time, which included yummy food and antique shopping.  We love hosting and I'm so thankful they were able to make the trip down.

Really wish this wouldn't have come out blurry!

Jo really loved playing football with papa

After they left both kids were hit with some sort of virus.  We got the call from school for Arya first.  She was out for almost a week.  Shortly after Casen caught it and Caleb not too long after that.  It was a long few weeks so we're really hoping we saw the end of it.

Once everyone was feeling better, the kids got to participate in school spirit week and we also got to finally decorate some pumpkins.  We did mini ones this year so they could do lots of different designs.

And last but not least, we of course celebrated Halloween.  It's a favorite in our house.  We got to go to our first trunk or treat in this county at the fair grounds.  The kids got tons of candy!  We got to finish the night at one of our favorite restaurants and I think we may make it a new Halloween tradition

It was 80 degrees on Halloween....just like my childhood :p

But we were right ahead of a big storm so it got super windy.  The kids took full advantage and wanted a photo.

We're looking forward to November.  We've been thoroughly enjoying football and now that it's cooled down a bit we've been having some family game nights on our new porch.