Earlier this week we were invited to an open house at the new apartment building behind us. Meadow was sick and Scott didn't really want to go but I convinced him. Hey, I can see our house. Except there's the part Brooke is leaving out where we went on the tour and then got stuck in an elevator with like 14 people for an hour. Still nice to see the new neighbor. The first thing Theo does when he wakes up or comes home from school is play the Switch. Can you blame him? The new Zelda is rad.    I made a rare breakfast for the family. Well at least part of it: sweet potato latkes. He forgot he was suggested having these so we were all waiting for him to have breakfast.  Meanwhile, I whipped up our egg sandwiches.

As always, we made the trip to Little Chute and the Fox Valley for Thanksgiving. Since we don't eat Thanksgiving dinner until the evening. I suggested this year we drive on Thanksgiving day instead of leaving the night before.  First thing when we arrived, G.G. was already giving Meadow gifts. My mom is always spoiling her.   Then we were off to Brittany and Jeff's for Thanksgiving fun. Theo got the longest piece of cheese. Marina showing us her island on Animal Crossing.  I made some maple whipped cream just before everyone arrived. All the cousins wanted to do at first was watch each other game.

We were excited to decorate our Mario gingerbread house but had to let it sit over night after gluing the castle together.  Meadow has been asking for chocolate rye pancakes for awhile now. So today was the day.  Almost 2 months into moving and two weeks into December we finally got a snowstorm and I got to try out my new electric snowblower.   When I saw how long our walkway was from the garage to the house I was like, maybe we should invest in a snowblower.  The kids had so much fun making a gingerbread house over Thanksgiving that we had to get one for ourselves too. Of course we went with a Mario themed house.  By the time I got back inside Peach's gingerbread second home was nearly complete.       I took some time off of working on the house to play outside with the kids. All of our backyard needs a few more trees planted.   We have a few, but I wish we had more.   We played some football... And attempted to make a snow castle, ...

Blake decided he wasn't going to travel to our parents for Christmas this year and asked if we wanted to spend Christmas with him. Scott wanted to be home for Christmas day so we went up a couple days before Christmas Eve to spend a few days in Duluth. We had big plans for Christmas morning, but I also didn't want to miss a stay in Duluth. Somehow we always end up in Duluth around Christmas time. It would have been weird to skip it this year. We haven't visited Duluth much this year with COVID. It was nice to be up here. Both of our households have been very careful and this was a much better option than going to Little Chute. We haven't been around other people without masks since October. It felt a little strange at first. No monster pancakes this time. Blake's bed and breakfast had waffles made with a vintage Nordic Ware waffle iron. Yum!

While driving through the Linden Hills neighborhood with the trees all lit, Meadow said, "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Oh that's what the song means!" Since it was the weekend after Thanksgiving we had to make that a reality. We decorated our little place with the Christmas decorations that made the cut in our downsize. You didn't think we'd get rid of our collection of nutcrackers? Did you? My good friend and realtor Nate invited us to his companies Christmas party. Meadow was super excited. Upon walking in they had her favorite cutouts for photo ops. Meadow was also super pumped to pick her own cookies. First we ate said cookies. While waiting for our turn to see Santa Meadow wrote him a letter. Both kids did great. Though none of them smiled. Nate later asked me, "Is Santa smiling?" Indeed he was not. We were number 87. I'm sure he was done with smiling by number 50. ...