November & December 2024

November 1st was Plaid Day at Mikey's school.

That same day Katie came home for an IV infusion and to watch the Dramafest plays.
She spent a good amount of time petting Ralph.

A lot of time.

After two months of rehearsal just about every day after school it was time for the Dramafest plays to be performed.

This year there were eight one-act plays directed by students with a few written by students.

Mikey was Melvin the Bailiff in "Goldilocks on Trial", a comedy court proceeding regarding Goldilocks' incursion into the three bear's house.

"Lean to the left, lean to the right, stand up, sit down, fight, fight, fight!"

"Do you swear to truth the whole tell and in that telling of that truth leave out only those things which in themselves are not the truth or which might be misconstrued as the truth or any proximity thereof so help yourselves?"

"R-O-W-D-I-E, THAT'S THE WAY WE SPELL ROWDIE! ROWDIE! WHOO! LET'S GET ROWDIE!"

 

On Saturday, after the last show, an awards ceremony is held.

Mikey shared a "Best Supporting Actor" win with another kiddo he's known since the 2nd grade.

All three preschool buddies were in Dramafest plays.

The play that S was in (kiddo in the middle) won "Best Play" and will go on to perform at the state thespian festival.

This picture also shows how much Mikey has grown.

He used to be as tall as I (the kiddo on left).

Yikes.

The next day, we dropped Katie off early to catch her bus back to OSU.

Boo.

Huzbend and I went to a board game night at a friend's house.

We miscalculated the amount of time it would take to eat dinner beforehand and had to scrap our plans to eat mediocre pizza. Sad.
He owed me a dinner date.

Ralph has become very needy in his old age.

He has always followed us around the house, but he takes it to the extreme lately.
Here he is waiting for me to return from an errand.

Somehow, he opened the door to the garage.

He's still cute. He's still fluffy.

That's a good thing.

Especially when he has to go out to pee at 3:30am.

Huzbend paid up. We went out on a date to a dumpling restaurant.

It was pretty yummy.
One of us dropped a dumpling and splattered soy sauce all over them.

I will let you guess who that was.

It being the week before Thanksgiving, in true PNW style, a giant windstorm unleashed its chaos upon us. School was closed for two days due to power outages and trees down.
We lost power for about 12+ hours. Some others in neighborhoods around us lost it for a few days.

With our power on, we were able to host a murder mystery dinner.

Many laughs were had.
I will spare our neighbors the embarrassment of posting a group picture.

Katie decided late that she would come home for Thanksgiving.

Her university is on a quarter system and because Thanksgiving was so late, her finals fell during the first week of December. We thought she wouldn't want to miss study time.

It turned out that she really only had one class that had a final during finals week and she wouldn't need that much study time.

I was able to book her a bus ride home, but I had to drive down to pick her up.

I stayed overnight in a hotel, but we got to eat dinner together.

I met her at rugby practice.

We stopped by her dorm room so she could change.

It looked a bit different than when we moved her in.

At little more, uh, cluttered.
I guess "lived in" would be a good phrase to use.

She also accumulated a few more stuffed animals, including a huge IKEA Djungelskog bear.

We went out to dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory (they have GF pasta with an extreme cheese sauce) and after Katie's morning class the next day, we hit up a local bakery with GF options for lunch.

It was delicious.

We were also able to pick up a GF marionberry pie for Thanksgiving.

After her dance class on Wednesday afternoon, we headed home.

It was a long, foggy drive in all the holiday traffic.

Meanwhile, Mikey was participating in the first ever cooking competition livestream for his eSports club.

Each team had to cook an appetizer, a main dish and a dessert.

Mikey's team got deviled eggs (they ended up with egg soup), meatloaf and mashed potato (meat was raw and there was only a single potato that was mashed) and chocolate cupcakes (actually decent). I felt bad for the judges that had to taste and rank the dishes. 

On Thanksgiving, we parked ourselves in front of the tv and watched hours of Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade followed by the Purina National Dog Show.

We had dinner later in the day.

Katie was tasked with mashing and taste testing the potatoes.

Everyone say, "TURKEY!"

I love Thanksgiving food, but I do NOT love the cleanup.

Ugh.

Cleaning up gives us time to let our stomachs reset for dessert.

We had a Marie Callender Dutch apple pie (they're dairy free) and the GF marionberry pie from the bakery we visited in Corvallis.

One of the must-do's on Katie's visit home was to have ice cream and eat macarons.

She did both.

Katie went back to school to finish up the quarter and take her one final exam.

She was back about 10 days later and then we hopped on a plane to Boston.
Huzbend and Mikey stayed home because school was still in session for another week and there were auditions for the spring musical.

Why Boston?

My brother and sister-in-law were renewing their vows.

We stayed in Boston for two days and then headed to New Hampshire for the ceremony and party.

Upon arriving in Boston, we hopped on the airport bus to get to the train station. We missed our stop and ended up riding on the bus for 20 wasted minutes just to get back to the train station. Sigh.

We finally made it to our hotel (SO COLD) and then headed to the North End to eat some amazing Italian/American food.

Katie had GF cheesy garlic bread (which was more like a cheesy garlic pizza) and GF manicotti with a Bolognese sauce. I had eggplant parmesan with homemade rigatoni.
The portions were huge and it sure was delicious.

We got dessert to go before realizing that we were a short walk from an Italian/American bakery that might have GF cannoli.

We decided to check it out.

There were SO many good things to eat. The pastry case was overwhelming and there was a line to order. The place actually let you customize your cannoli by selecting your filling, and shell (not the GF ones though).

We took our bakery spoils to-go and walked back to our hotel.

It was a tiny bit cold outside. BRRRRR.

This is the old Boston State House.

Katie got herself a GF cannoli. She'd never had one before.

We didn't get any in Italy because they were all covered with pistachios, which she's allergic to.

She LOVED it.

I got myself a cannoli and a slice of  bomba cake, which I'd never had before.
Bomba cake is rum soaked Italian sponge cake with a ricotta and chocolate chip filling that is covered with a green almond paste.
It was definitely boozy.

The next day, we headed out to meet one of Katie's friends who was attending Boston University.

They walked up and down Newbury Street tasting some GF yummies and window shopping and then visited his campus.
I hung out in a cafe bookshop for most of the time.
Later, we hoofed it to the Museum of Fine Arts and toured for an hour or so.

We had to walk by Fenway to get there from the campus.

After saying goodbye to Katie's bud, we headed to dinner.
On the way there, we wandered through an outdoor food market.

We had dinner at the Tavern in the Square restaurant near the TD Garden.
Katie devoured her roasted brussels sprouts and didn't really like the mac n' cheese she ordered.
My burger was pretty good.

That evening we had tickets to see the musical "SIX" at a nearby theatre.

The next morning, Katie was on a mission to get more cannoli.

We went back to Modern Pastry and had some breakfast before ordering two more GF cannoli to go.
We also stopped by a vegan/allergy friendly bakery to get Mikey a GF and DF cannoli.

We said goodbye to Boston, jumped in our rental SUV and headed up to New Hampshire.

The hotel was a refurbished old timey inn. Our hotel room was huge and was located right off of the main hall that the event would be held in.
Of course, Katie had to stop for a bit to take in some Triple D on Food Network.

We left our room to say HI to grandparents and to check out the venue.

It was gorgeously decorated.

We got dolled up, took some pictures and then waited for the event to start.

We may have gotten a little silly while waiting.

Just a little.

The ceremony was short and sweet.

After the ceremony, there was a cocktail hour.
There were appetizers available and an open bar.
Grandma accidentally shared a chicken on a skewer appetizer that we found out had peanut sauce on it.

Cue the panic.
We tried to remain calm.

Although there was no scientific proof that it would work, we decided to try to "get rid" of the chicken.

We went back to the room and Katie was successful.

For the next hour or so we were on high alert for symptoms.

Luckily, there were none.

Bullet dodged and a learning experience for Katie.

ALWAYS ask what is in something before eating it.

Soon, dinner was served.

Chris and Katie were not impressed with the GF dinner rolls.

Since Huzbend couldn't make it, Chris and Sheila had a printout of his head made so that he could be in photos of the wedding party. He was the best man at their original shindig.

We made sure to have lots of fun taking all sorts of pictures with his head.

He had multiple desserts.

I posed with him.

He posed with his parents.

He even got kidnapped and posed with a whole bunch of people we didn't know.

While Huzbend's head was off dancing, wearing earrings and drinking shots, we were enjoying the party.

Auntie Sheila donated Chris's haul of GF desserts to Katie.

He was too busy dancing to eat them.

We finally got up and did some dancing.

Here's Katie doing a line dance.

We stayed until the end, had a lot of laughs and did a lot of dancing.

The next day, there was a hosted breakfast at the inn and then we hung out at Chris and Sheila's house for the day until we had to drive back to Boston for our flight.

Meanwhile, back home, Mikey took care of a large branch that had fallen in our yard.

Katie got herself a souvenir before we hopped on a plane home.

The next day, Mikey was able to have the GF DF cannoli we brought back from Boston.

Unbelievably, it was not stale, and he loved it.
I wonder what they used for the filling?

And then, this happened.

Yep. 51.

Katie made me a flourless chocolate cake, which was delicious, and I got some presents.

The last week of school before winter break, Mikey participated in auditions for the spring musical and got a part in the ensemble. Yay!

Katie spent most of her time sleeping or playing video games.

She did see Sonic the Hedgehog 3 with some friends and got dinner with others on another day.

With winter break in full swing, we filled the days sleeping late, relaxing, eating rich foods, and doing various random activities.

Like frisbee golfing.

Mikey has improved and it was game on between him and Huzbend.

Ralph enjoys frisbee golf because he can sniff all the ferns.

It was really close, but Huzbend won.

We always have to stop and do "the egg" (it's a thing that spins you around really fast) at the playground.

Mikey and Huzbend went climbing one early morning.

Katie slept and I hung out with Ralph.

On Christmas Eve, we baked Sunbutter blossom cookies.
Last year, we found dairy free "smooches" from No Whey chocolates that we could use.

The kids love these.
We made about 36 and I think Katie ate about 24 of them in a week.

I made waffles and strawberry sauce for the kids on Christmas morning.

Here is what Katie's waffle looked like.

Ralph always gets new toys for Christmas to distract him from trying to eat wrapping paper or any of the sweet treats the kids get as presents.

He was fully invested in trying to tear this squid apart.

Unbelievably, he was unsuccessful.

Presents were loved by all.

Only Katie could get so excited about Peeps.

And her very own Phryge.

We gave Ralph a pretty purple ribbon off of a gift.

He was not impressed.

Another stuffie.

This time a tardigrade from Build a Bear of all places.

Mikey got a Warhammer 40K cosplay sweatshirt.

Huzbend got presents too.

Thank you to everyone for the gifts!

Yes.

We made Ralph wear the ribbon for the rest of the day.

To get some fresh air and get out of the house, we played a round of Boxing Day mini golf.

Who would be the victor?

Would it be the player who doesn't like touching the wet slimy golf ball?

The wizened old man?

The spunky youngster who runs from hole to hole?

Or the person who went last, held the tiny pencil and scorecard and took all the pictures?

It was a hard-fought competition.

Surprisingly, there was only one ball lost to the mini golf gods.

It was close but I won.

Believe it not, Mikey and Huzbend tied for second.

Mikey was ready for round two, but we decided to head home.

On New Years Eve, we headed out to a local park to take a hike.

It had to be a non-snowy, no-elevation-gain hike so that Ralph could join us.
He's getting on in years.
It also helped get our kids to agree to come.

The park is frequented by horse riders and Ralph was able to bark at a few.

For some reason, the guys thought they would bring home a log.

Except all the ones they found were rotting, covered with mushrooms and too heavy.

It was an enjoyable way to send off 2024.

Katie has been working her way through the video game Elden Ring.

This game allows her to summon other players to help.

Mikey and Huzbend had been joining her to defeat bosses all week.

For dinner on New Years Eve, we had Philly cheese steaks.

Katie had hers without the bun and Mikey had his without the cheese. He substituted Guy Fieri's Donkey Sauce instead.

Mikey headed out to a friend's house for New Years Eve.

We stayed in.

I worked on this here blog.

Huzbend and Katie played Elden Ring.

Eventually, the three of us watched "Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Wererabbit" until it was time to watch the ball drop.

We prepared our Prosecco (gross), fizzy apple cider and grapes (must eat 12) for the stroke of midnight.

3....2.....1.....

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

10 minutes after midnight, Huzbend was already upstairs in bed.

I picked up Mikey from his friend's house at about 12:30am.

Mikey, Katie, and I rang in the new year by watching High School Musical.