Christmas 2022: Part 1

 I cannot believe Christmas has come and gone. It does not feel like Christmas happened at all. Christmas was so different this year. Mainly because we no longer have our own house, but even with a house I think it would have felt different. 

I was able to get Friday December 23 off, so we decided to make Santa cookies on that day.

Maddy and my mom decorated all the cookies. We usually never decorate them all because it gets tiring, but we did this year.

By the time the cookies were all decorated, it was time to get ready for church. The Christmas Eve service is my favorite service. It is usually a candlelight service with a lot of music. This year was slightly different, but it was still a candlelight service.

After church we headed downtown to see the windows all decorated. Ironically, we had an extreme cold front move in, and the power company decided to have rolling blackouts lasting up to fifteen minutes. In order to preserve energy, they turned off the lights in the windows. 

Once we got home Maddy opened her traditional Christmas Eve present.

I mostly have video and unfortunately the clips are too long to upload. This is the best picture I have of her shirt. This set came with buffalo plaid fuzzy socks and shorts.

After she opened her present, it was time for everyone to get into their Christmas jammies to watch Home Alone 2. Since Maddy has graduated into a Santa's helper, this has become our new tradition.

These were the cookies she wanted to leave out for Santa and the elves.

I was so excited this year for Christmas because for once I knew exactly what I wanted to get Maddy. Approximately two years ago we had the money saved for a PS5, but life happened, and I ended up having to use that money as our Christmas fund. I promised her we would rebuild the sinking fund and try again. She was such a good sport about it. She had a plan to save her money for a PS5 this year. Once our house sold, she realized the reality of her getting a puppy is sooner than expected, so she decided to use her PS5 savings as her dog savings. I knew I had to find a way to get her a PS5 for Christmas. After a little digging I found I could request an invitation from Amazon. I gave it a try and two days later received an invite. I could not believe it happened so fast. As you can tell in the video, she was quite surprised. 

The PS5 was supposed to be her main present. We've been trying to figure out what homeschool curriculum we would use next year. We finally came to a decision. Unfortunately for me that decision required her to have a laptop because it will solely be online. I debated with the do I or don't I decision of getting her a laptop for Christmas. I figured it made financial sense to go ahead and purchase the laptop and make it part of her Christmas. She has wanted a laptop for a while, so she was really excited to get one.

Since she ended up getting two main presents, the rest of her Christmas were accessories mostly. She got a PS5 controller charging station and an extra controller. Mom wants to play too ya know! She also got three games: Avengers, Uncharted; Legacy of Thieves Collection, and Spider-Man: Miles Morales.

The last thing she got outside of stocking stuffers is a JBL Flip 6 speaker. This was something else I knew early on I wanted to get for her. When I tell you it is an awesome speaker, I mean it. The sound is incredible!

Marley had a great Christmas as well. He got a few new toys and a big bag of treats.

My parents got him his very own "human grade" blanket. He is very spoiled and loves his blankets. Maddy took this pic of him. 

I think I will stop here and put the rest of our Christmas in part two.

I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas!

What I'm Watching February

 It's time to recap the movies and tv shows we watched throughout February.

• Gilmore Girls 
• Grey's Anatomy - we have been watching this since September. We are almost done thank goodness
• For the People
• Flash - Maddy never thought she would like anything DC related
• The Healer
• Let There Be Light
• Little House on the Prairie
• The Miracle Season
• Miracle Dogs
• Marvel Assembled: Hawkeye
• God's Not Dead: We the People - fantastic movie over homeschool rights
• Encanto - we loved it and had to watch it again
• Uncharted - we knew nothing about the game going into this movie, but we both loved it. Tom Holland was funny. There was enough humor and action to make it very interesting. We are ready for Uncharted 2.
• My Girl
• 9-1-1 Lonestar
• Station 19
• Madea's Homecoming
• Tick Tick Boom - we found this through our karaoke night. Lyrics caught our attention and we looked it up and found it funny. Andrew Garfield is in the movie, so we decided to check it out.
• Facing the Giants
• Footprints