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- Happy last weekend of 2023!
Turns out – our dog is terrified of .. wait for it, wait for it: confetti.
Guess we won’t be re-creating this photo anytime soon. - It has been a quiet week in the Abbey house. Derrick had off all week, so we had planned a lot of fun, family-things, and honestly we did very few of them.
Leander has been fighting a cold/cough for about 2 weeks at this point, and the rest of us have been up and down fighting sicknesses too. Derrick had some minor flu-like symptoms in the days leading up to Christmas (but thankfully, that all passed very quickly). Braelynn got Leander’s cold, got over it, and then got a second round of it this week? And I just feel like I’ve been fighting a war against the germs all week – thankfully never fully succumbing to anything – but it always just seems to be right there on the edge, reminding me to take my vitamins.
In other words: it’s been a chill, very slow, relaxing week. Most days we spent in our pajamas, snuggled up on the couch, playing with our new Christmas presents, watching movies, reading books, and doing just about nothing.
At first, that really bothered me. After all: Derrick and I have this time “off” – shouldn’t we capitalize on it? But, then I chose (and continue to choose) that it’s okay to take a week completely “off”. We’ve slept in every morning, thrown our routines to the wind, and basically had a “stay-cation” week.
And, considering that we’ve all been fighting different sickness monsters, I think it’s been just what the doctor ordered. - But let’s back up: last weekend was Christmas! (It already feels like it was a month ago!)
We spent Saturday morning having our traditional Christmas Eve breakfast and gifts at Meme and Grandpa’s house.
We made a fancy dinner that night and ate our steak and shrimp by candlelight and the lights of the Christmas Tree.
On Sunday, Paul and Naomi and the kids came over and we had Christmas with them – and then enjoyed a relaxing day of hanging out and playing games.
Monday was Christmas! Ah man, I have so many sweet and precious memories from Christmas Day. I want to share photos and stories from our holiday weekend this coming week, so I’ll just say: Christmas morning was amazing and everything I wanted it to be. Derrick and I talked on Christmas Eve and we both agreed that we wanted to be very intentional about Christmas morning this year. So, we changed things up and did some things we’ve never done before and those little changes made such a HUGE difference. My heart was just so happy.
We had lunch Christmas Day over at my parents – just about everyone in my family was fighting sickness (just like we were), so it was pretty low-key and instead of hanging around all afternoon, everyone went home to rest fairly early on.
I had put a big roast in the crockpot for Christmas dinner, so my parents and Steve and Ruby came over to have dinner with us. The kids got to show off all of their gifts and we played games late into the night – it was such a wonderful day. - We did squeeze in one last visit to Kennywood Park this week! We considered going Tuesday or Wednesday, but both days brought lots of rain. So, we went on Thursday (along with everyone else in the Pittsburgh area). The park was slammed, but we didn’t care! The kids got to do a scavenger hunt around the park and they each got these boxes full of treats and a Christmas ornament for completing it! (If you know me: you know that I collect Christmas ornaments from the parks we visit every year, so getting a Christmas ornament from Kennywood was a HUGE score for me!) My Mom and Ruby joined us that evening and we had so much fun getting some dinner, riding the train, checking out all the lights, and walking through the model train setup. We’ll miss Kennywood so much over the next few months while they’re closed for the winter – spring can’t come soon enough!
