Okay, maybe not ever, but the weekend was pretty good. First up was book club on Friday night. Starting the weekend by taking some time to take care of me was pretty awesome, I’m not going to lie.
(btw, this reminds me of when we visited Henry’s grandmother, Gladys, over Thanksgiving. She said, “I spend all day taking care of Gladys and let me tell you, Gladys is a lot of work.”)
Saturday morning we got up leisurely (the kids slept in until 8:30, whoot! whoot!, and didn’t get out of their pjs until noon) and started decorating for Christmas. This meant packing up all the fall decorations and getting up some stockings and garland. We are by no means done, but we got a good little start.
(see the cardboard NOEL letters? They’re supposed to be wrapped in yarn; however I left the yarn and hot glue gun at my mom’s. My goal is to get them done by Christmas. If not, there’s always next year!)
I scored those advent trees at a yard sale for a quarter a piece a few years ago. You flip the little drawers to make a picture. My kids don’t realize there’s supposed to be candy inside. They actually think the picture at the end is the goal. I LOVE this!
The girls setting up our Willow Tree nativity. My mom has given all my sisters and I a complete set over the past few years. I love this nativity set and think of mom every time we set it out.
Putting out the fisher-price nativity.
As if our weekend wasn’t perfect enough, Henry and I went out on a date Saturday night. It’s been a little bit since we’ve had our weekly date. It felt good to be out connecting and having adult conversation. We tried a new place, Braddock’s American Brasserie in the Renaissance Hotel.
Then we walked around Market Square which was all lit up for Christmas.
Not quite ready to go home yet (I refuse to go home unless until the chance my kids are in bed asleep nears the 100% mark), we went to Perle (at Market Square), a trendy new champagne bar. We sat for a few hours sipping a drink and talking the night away. At one point I was very intently explaining how I thought the storage room should be organized when Henry looked at me and laughed. “I want you to look around the room and imagine what everyone is talking about. Do you think it’s basement storage?” I had to laugh, too, right before pulling out a scrap piece of paper so we could visually map out where the Christmas bins should go.
Me, out on the town, with my hubby.
Sunday afternoon we grabbed some grub at Doublewide in Mars. I had to run out there to drop off a check for Girl Scouts and we didn’t want to waste the trip.
We’ve taken a picture by this post before so when we were leaving Ryan said, “Picture. Camera.” How could I say no?
Next up was the grocery store. We decided to do Random Acts of Kindess this Christmas season. courtney from Lil Light of Mine came up with something called Light ‘Em Up. Her family counts down to Christmas by doing something nice every day for someone else. I can’t commit to every day. Not right now. Not during this season. But we did decide we’d try to do several every week. Here’s what the kids decided on for this past weekend:
Quarters for the carts (at Aldi you have to put a quarter in to unlock your cart. You get the quarter back when you return the cart). Ironically, we didn’t have a quarter to get a cart ourselves so we had to use our canvas shopping bags to carry our groceries to the checkout where I changed out a dollar for quarters for OTHERS.
Candy canes to randomly pass out: Ryan gave one to a little girl – probably around 10 – who smiled at him in the next grocery store… she was very happy when we said, “It’s for you. Merry Christmas!”
Small Chocolate bars: The girls gave one to the lady who checked us out at Aldi and told her Merry Christmas. I wish you could’ve seen her smile and happy voice when she said, “Thank you so much. Merry Christmas to you too.”
It’s really neat to see the reaction of people and the excitement of the kids as they look for people to bless.
And the last thing on the marathon-of-fun weekend was getting our Christmas Tree.
I wish I could tell you we are a family that bundles up and goes out to a Christmas tree farm walking a field for the perfect tree. We are not. We’ve gotten our tree from a lot every year. To be honest, it fits us just fine. We pick out the tree within about 10 minutes and then create memories decorating it in the warmth of our home.
Unfortunately, it was raining last night so we have to let the tree dry out overnight in the garage. That means we’ll decorate it one night this week. At least we have something to look forward to.
The kids with daddy in front of our tree.
Ryan watching Mickey Mouse while waiting for the tree to be tied on top the car.
And that, folks, was our best weekend ever. How was yours?
(c) 2016 Leighann Marquiss
Comments (1)
Hey Leighann thanks for visiting! My parents are German and I used to spend my summers there visiting my grandparents! I love it there! I actually just got back 2 weeks ago from visiting!