Katie painted this cardinal in art club.
I thought it was a good picture to start December off with.
The month started off with bang - us losing power for about two whole days.
The whacky weather didn't stop there.
Because of the snow we got on November 30th, the first week of December set off the melt/freeze chain. Our road was icy for days on end (we don't have a lot of plows here).
It also didn't help that it got downright cold. Like, dipped below freezing cold. That is also something that doesn't happen here that often.
The first draft of Mikey's National History Day project was due on the Monday of the first full week in December.
Not too shabby.
Check out the clock behind him to see when he finished.
That's AM, not PM, of the night before the due date.
I busied myself putting together hot cocoa and candy cane packets for the kids at Katie's school.
There's only 220 of them, so we can do things like this.
Our slow cooker finally crapped out.
We took the opportunity to pick up an Instant Pot on Black Friday.
It actually worked pretty well.
Better than I expected.
The first meal I cooked in it was pressure cooker pot roast.
In addition to the hot cocoa packets, I got roped into finding sugar cookies for those same 220 kids.
I think I cleared our town out of sugar cookies.
Grandma and Grandpa flew in for a visit.
It was kinda of a bummer that the kids were in school, Huzbend was working, and I was doing whatever it is that I do.
They kinda had to find things to keep busy while we were all busy.
Grandma came bearing gifts!
Gideon's Bakehouse cookie bites - YUM.
The last week before Winter Break, Mikey and the advanced drama classes were presenting their winter show: "The Day the Internet Died".
His first night with a part was Wednesday.
But, first, we had to get Katie her IV infusion.
She slept through the whole thing.
Show time!
"Why hello there."
The play was about a town that loses internet access and how the try to adapt to a non-connected lifestyle.
For example, having to shop in actual stores for things, having to mail actual letters at the post office. Things like that.
That evening, Mikey was playing a character named "Uncle Dave".
He was a conspiracy theory nut; his news was so important that he ran over without putting his shoes on.
He was there to let everyone know that elected officials were just reptilian overlords in disguise.
He asked them to each tell at least 10 other people or something really bad would happen to them.
Here's his performance:
Eventually the internet comes back and the play ends like this....all the townsfolk staring into their phones.
Curtain call!
One big bow.
After each performance, the drama teacher says a word or two and draws tickets from a hat so people in attendance can win free tickets to the next show.
We didn't win. Boo.
We found out the spring musical would be "The Fiddler on the Roof Jr.".
Grandma helped him make his hat.
Katie was tasked with baking (or sharing a recipe) for a holiday treat as part of her Adulting class.
She whipped up some "Santa Snacks".
She saved one for Mikey to eat. It was really nice.
I just realized that I haven't mentioned Katie's adulting class yet.
As part of the class, they've talked about/practiced a range of things like; cooking, creating a resume and interviewing for a job, what to do if you have a car accident. Things like that.
Next semester, the class will change to a Personal Finance class.
We have a lot of crows where we live.
I took this picture because I thought it was pretty.
Crow in a tree with the moon in the background.
He didn't stay still for long.
Grandma and Grandpa did some hanging out.
They visited some friends, did lunch a few times, went to the movies, watched World Cup soccer matches.
Grandpa read the NY Times.
Grandma helped Mikey tie a tie for his last performance on the Friday before Winter Break.
This time around he was playing Mr. Tims and a speed dating announcer.
All set and ready for the performance.
Waiting in line at the library.
Mr. Tims was very polite to the librarian.
His ask: "Can you tell me the name of this song?"
Then he proceeded to hum a tune and dance.
See his performance here:
And his last part was as the announcer.
He can't resist a little overacting to get a laugh.
One last curtain call on this play.
Mikey got hugs from Grandma and Grandpa, but a certain someone's butt was in the way.
After yelling at him to move, I was able to get a nice shot.
As is the case with these middle school productions, after everyone leaves the kids hang out.
Here's Mikey with some friends that came to see the play.
One of them made him dairy free rice krispie treats.
Awww.
They also can't resist getting on stage and dancing for some reason.
They did this after EVERY performance that week, eventually ending up outside (when the teacher kicked them out of the theater) to run around and be crazy in the cold.
Guess what?
The next day was my birthday.
Huzbend made chicken and eggplant parmesan and baked up a carrot cake.
He even made a pineapple filling for the cake.
Yum.
Grandma approved of the allergy friendly spice cake mix.
Grandma and I escaped and headed to a local nursery to check out their fancy Christmas decorations.
We also stopped at an ice cream place to get a yummy treat.
That afternoon, I sent Huzbend and Grandpa into the garage to do something.
I can't remember what.
While they were down there, Huzbend yelled up that there was a mouse in the garage.
I went to check it out thinking that maybe he found some mouse poop or something.
Nope.
It was an actual brown mouse.
He kinda looked like this:
When he was spotted, he was eating leftover bug carcasses (we have them on the windowsills of our garage - ew).
Then he made his way over to the pantry food that we have on shelves in the garage.
Katie and I set about trying to catch him.
After many attempts, he crawled into a warm pile of hats and gloves that were housed in a basket.
Katie encouraged me to pick him up in the basket.
It worked!
I was able to carry him all the way down to the end of the driveway.
I let him out and chased him three houses away.
Meanwhile, Huzbend made a bee line to Home Depot and bought a whole bunch of
big plastic tubs to put our garage pantry food in.
He also bought a few humane traps.
I will say that the shelves now look more organized...but damn, those bins are a pain in the ass to open.
ERGH.
We have not seen any mice since.
And none in the traps.
Family picture time!
My birthday dinner.
Can I have this right now?!?!
Mikey woke up feeling under the weather.
Seems his week of drama craziness got him a one-way ticket to sickie town.
We had him wear a mask to try to save Grandma and Grandpa from getting it.
Yep. They sang to me.
It was a great birthday.
The next day, Grandma and Katie baked macarons.
They were chocolate macarons.
They filled them with raspberry "butter" cream frosting.
Dinner time!
The macarons came out pretty good.
The cookies were a little chewy and the raspberry frosting a little too sweet, but not bad for Katie's first attempt.
Since this was the last night Grandma and Grandpa would be with us, we took the opportunity to have an early Christmas and opened some presents.
Grandma made the kids scrapbooks filled with pictures of family as well as a family tree.
We had Grandma and Grandpa open their gifts.
Grandpa was most excited about the hand exercise set and the nut selection. He planned to eat it on the plane.
Grandma got a bonsai tree set and a scarf from India that I picked up from one of my friends.
A few more photos before they headed out.
CHEESE!
Always sad to say goodbye.
Grandpa and Grandma got out at the right time!
The evening of the day they left it began to snow and didn't stop all night.
We ended up getting about 3 or 4 inches.
Mikey was just about recovered from his cold.
And, sadly, I was picking it up.
I could tell something was off when I shoveled the driveway.
The boys headed out to do some sledding.
Katie and I took Ralph for a walk and met them at the sledding hill to take some pictures.
Katie couldn't resist a ride or two on the sled.
And Mikey couldn't resist throwing a snowball or two at Huzbend.
Kaite got my gloves all snowy on her ride down.
Sheesh.
Huzbend took a few rides as well.
"Do I have something on my nose?"
Sticking with the wintery theme, Katie broke out another bake box and made snowflake cupcakes.
Since the weather was so crappy and we were all sick or getting sick, the kids were looking for things to keep busy.
Mikey broke out a build kit from LAST CHRISTMAS!
He used this teeny tiny screwdriver to build a laser reflection kit.
More crazy weather!
We had a freezing rainstorm drop about a quarter inch of ice on us.
Crazy.
We couldn't leave our houses for about two days straight. Not even to get the mail or take out the trash.
It was that treacherous.
If you'd like to watch some outright silly videos of Seattleites getting busted up by the ice, check out this link.
Christmas Eve!
That means gingerbread house decorating time.
Mikey and Katie have very different decorating styles.
Mikey began work on his "Chad Fish" roof.
(It's a fish with an extra-large chin - see picture below)
Kaite got to work on her fancy-shmancy roof.
The Smarties roof tiles had to be ALL yellow.
It took her about an hour just to do the roof.
No lie.
Meanwhile, Mikey had finished both his sides.
Finally, after another hour or so, she was done.
This is the look of insanity that comes after carefully placing one million Smarties on your gingerbread house roof.
Here's the front of Katie's.
Check out the inspired use of chocolate bar pieces for the doors.
And Katie's roof.
Who is going to eat that many Smarties?
Mikey made this side for me.
Here's his "Chad Fish" roof.
I like his use of sunbutter cups and a chocolate piece to anchor his design.
This is a Chad Fish, in case you were wondering.
Christmas Day!
(Sickness update - Mikey: Fine, Huzbend: Still not sick, Me and Katie: Sick)
We gave Ralph one of his Christmas presents to play with.
First up were stockings.
Full of things like Grinch Hershey Kisses for Katie.
And Sour Patch Kids for Mikey.
Then they got down to business with presents.
Gift cards; always a hit.
Katie was very happy with this video game selection.
A Japanese visual novel romance game.
Note: She was not interested in the romance so much as making fun of the romance.
Books are always a good get.
Ralph didn't realize the bed next to Katie was for him.
Mikey was confused by this one.
Santa thought that if there was anyone in the world that would find an excuse to wear an inflatable T-Rex costume, it would be Mikey.
"Sniff. Sniff. Hey, Katie. Is that a snacky present? I like snacky presents the best."
As Katie was still opening her presents, Mikey got his "special" present.
It was a God of War: Ragnarök PlayStation controller.
Huzbend ushered him downstairs to show him that
we had concealed a PS5 behind our ginormous TV with GoW: Ragnarök loaded on it and ready to play.
He was just a little excited.
Almost as excited as Katie was when she opened up this present full of brownies.
Ralph finally sniffed out his new bed.
He spent the rest of the day (and night) on it.
For real.
Made my heart happy to see him so content.
Thank you to all for the wonderful gifts! They were much appreciated!
Mikey and Huzbend disappeared downstairs to try the new PS5 and its games.
Katie began her romance game odyssey.
Meet Arsene Lupin, master thief.
"Take my hand, mademoiselle...Shall we make our great escape out into the night?"
Later in the afternoon, Ralph got another Christmas present.
It was a hedgehog that made pig noises.
What can I say?
The kids really like falafel.
We watched "Glass Onion" for our Christmas day movie.
We did pretty much nothing the entirety of the week between Christmas and New Year's.
I was still sick, and Katie got REALLY sick.
We thought she might have to go to the urgent care due to pneumonia, but it all turned out okay.
There was a lot of video game playing, show and movie watching, reading, short Ralph walks and catch-up blogging.
Ralph spent the time sleeping, guilting us into taking him for a walk and squeaking his hedgehog and new yellow duck toy. We gave him the duck toy a few days after Christmas because I forgot about it - whoops.
We just stayed home and only ventured out to grocery shop with a few exceptions.
When I was feeling better, Huzbend and I went on a date.
It gave me an opportunity to wear a fancy tunic top that I had bought from a friend.
Dinner was slow but good.
I had vegan apple crisp with vanilla gelato and a side of chocolate martini for dessert.
I'm pretty sure that the "martini" was just Hershey's chocolate milk.
That's what it tasted like anyways.
Mikey and his partner continued to work on their National History Day project.
It was going to be due on the Friday that they returned from Winter Break.
The only other thing Huzbend and I did was shop for a new mattress.
Yippee! Sarcasm.
On New Year's Eve, we ate chicken/potato/corn chowder for dinner.
After dinner, the kids and I ventured out to a drive-thru light display.
Since I was driving, Katie was in charge of photography.
It was pretty.
Even in the rain.
Katie did a good job with the pictures.
Mikey insisted Katie take a picture of the giant reindeer butt.
We spent the evening watching comedy movies.
First up was my favorite Mel Brooks movie, "Blazing Saddles."
After that, we watched "Caddyshack".
That took us to 11:30pm when we headed upstairs to watch local TV on our antenna.
At first, I had on "Dick Clark's Rockin' New Year's Eve (with Ryan Seacrest)", but they had on Duran Duran and I found it painful to watch.
So, we turned on the local broadcast of the countdown at the Space Needle.
Katie popped Animal Crossing in the Switch to see their countdown and fireworks.
Happy New Year!
After the countdown, fireworks exploded off of the Space Needle to music.
Sadly, there was no breeze, so the firework smoke just covered the Needle and you couldn't see anything.
They also had a drone show that was supposed to play at the same time, but it started 2 minutes late.
Sigh. Hilarious.
Welcome to 2023!
I wonder what this year will have in store for us.
I know one person that will have A LOT going on this year.....
Egads.
Ralph's New Year's Resolution is to perfect his sad eyes so he can easily guilt me into giving him even more walks.
