Meet Wall-E.

He’s the newest electronic member of our family (a.k.a. motion detecting garbage can). Tee hee! It has made throwing things away a coveted chore. Levi was actually looking around the house for things to throw away.

I kind of want to give him eyes… but that might be too much. For now we just say, “Thanks Wall-E” when we throw stuff away. Hah! It’s the little, silly things that we enjoy around here!

It’s cold here today. The thermometer read -10 as we were getting our snow gear on to head to the bus. And today isn’t the coldest day of the week yet! Brrrrrrr!

Josiah started back to in person school today. And there was much rejoicing!

Maddie is back to in person school after almost 7 weeks of online school.  Needless to say we were ALL very excited.  

Excited enough to take a new “Re-first day of Kindergarten” picture!  

How is it Monday again already? But here we are!

This week was our first FULL week of online school for everyone. It was a bit of a struggle. But you have to keep in mind that they had more days off school in November than they had in school–due to Thanksgiving, and end of quarter and then teacher planning for moving to online school. So… it’s been weeks since they have had 5 days of school in a row. It ended up going fine, but we definitely felt the slump on Thursday.

In other news we got our Christmas cards this week. Yippie! You should expect to receive yours in the mail this week. But I decided, for the sake of my sanity, I’m foregoing the little “Family Blurp” that I normally include. It’s just one more thing and I’m feeling a little overwhelmed lately. So, I decided that I’m still happy to be sending out the cards, even without the blurp. Besides, you all know us! 🙂

In other, other news I’ve started making Christmas candy again! I just love making candy. This year I think I have the most bags I’ve ever made. I have 81 students right now! Can you believe that!?! Now, I don’t see them all every week, because I have a handful of every other week students, but I still have to make a bag for each person. That’s a lot of bags. Good thing I enjoy the process!

Weight Loss Update: I lost a really good amount this week = 4 pounds!! Whoo hoo! I’ve had a couple lesser weigh in’s so I think I finally caught up to where I actually am on weigh-in day. So, I’m officially down to 180. So close to the 170’s!

Well, I broke my streak. No cake today. Although I did make the most scrumptious apple pie over Thanksgiving break… yummmmmm…. and I really should have taken a picture of it because it was quite lovely.

This week we are back into online learning and today was stressful for me. I’m having a hard time getting used to a new rhythm again. I feel like we just got into a nice groove and now it’s all different. And you all know how much I LOVE change. 😉

In other news we had a great Thanksgiving break. I let the kids help decorate the house and tree this year and it was mass chaos. But fun too. We watched a new movie called “Jingle Jangle” and it is so good! It’s a musical. I would describe it as a mix of The Greatest Showman and Annie. Very fun with great dancing and costumes. My only complaint is that the music is too loud compared to the speaking… but I thought the same thing about The Greatest Showman. It must just be a style…

Weight Loss Update: I was down another pound today bringing me to 20 pounds officially. Yippie! That means I’m 184. Boo yah! I didn’t loose much this week, but considering it was Thanksgiving, I actually am pretty stoked that I didn’t go crazy. I did enjoy letting loose on Thanksgiving day, but then pulled it back in check after that. And there have been more times throughout the days that I’m finding I’m able to not need a snack because I’m just not hungry. And that’s pretty surprising because I tend to snack just because it’s snack time. 🙂 Progress, people!

Well, it feels like it just wouldn’t be a Monday unless I showed you another cake. Tee hee! So, here you are! But in my defense, this one was requested by Jen and we didn’t eat any. It was for her friend’s Birthday. I was actually really bummed about this one, because I tried doing a larger flower pattern and discovered I didn’t have enough of the piping tips that I needed… so I had to scrape it off half way through and start over. Plus it wasn’t turning out as nicely as I wanted… It was a good lesson in how it’s never too late to start over. 😉

Weight Check-in: I actually had a pretty good weekend, but our supper on Sunday night was really salty (frozen pizza and chips) so I was not down this morning. I know it sounds like an excuse, but I was actually lower on Saturday and Sunday, so I’m sure it was a temporary weight. HOWEVER, I didn’t let myself take any chain links off my chain today since I officially weigh the same as last week today.

This was a unique year.

Normally if Halloween were to fall on a Saturday night, a Full Harvest moon, with no snow on the ground AND daylight saving tossed into the mix kids would have been crawling all over town. It would have been teeming with kids!

But when we went out this year it was incredibly empty.

On a side note: I just love the sense of community on Halloween. I love watching all the kids running up and down the street and the parents mulling around behind them talking to neighbors they haven’t seen in a while. Or groups of families huddled around a little bonfire in someone’s driveway, thankful for the warmth. While I do not agree with some parts of Halloween, I do agree with community and believe in the freedom to let kids dress up. And candy. I believe in eating candy. 😉

The kids decided to dress up as:

Chloe – Queen of Hearts
Josiah – Mario
Madison – Wonder Woman
Levi – A Dragon!

Of course, Jen was here (because it was a Saturday!) and also because she is the Captain Trick-or-Treater. Hah! She is the one that pushes the kids to go faster and further when they are out. Don’t worry, everyone has fun. 😉 We were able to have even more fun this year with a sleepover with Ali and Stephanie! Oh, and Abby came over to trick-or-treat with us too! The more the merrier!

It was crazy windy when we started, but the wind died down after an hour or so. We had the biggest amount of candy we’ve ever collected–mostly because there were hardly any people out and about, but there were still a lot of houses giving out candy. So the ones that did get kids were a bit more generous.

But enough talk, let’s get to the pictures!

(Update: I’m having a hard time adding pictures. The site is being wonky. I’ll put those up tomorrow)

We had some frosting left over from our cake adventure last weekend, so Chloe asked if she could make a decorate a cake herself. She only needed a tiny bit of help (and some helpful tips to make things easier) and I was super impressed with how lovely it turned out. And it tasted good to boot!

Pretty spectacular for her first cake, wouldn’t you say?

Weight loss update: I’m down another 2 pounds this week bringing me to 185. Only one more pound until I reach my first 20 pounds! And in more exciting news I was able to move into my next size jeans. Boo yah!

I don’t know where last week went! I blinked and here we are back at Monday again! I WILL do the Halloween post this week still. Sorry about that…

This weekend I made an adorable Mermaid cake for one of our friend’s daughters who is turning 7 tomorrow. She had no opinion on it–I basically just made it for fun and asker her what her favorite color was (gold!) and then went off of that. Frosting a cake in gold is pretty tricky, so I decided to just make the focal point gold. 😉

I think it turned out super fun!

The mermaid tail is a paper plate cut and white frosting smoothed over it then sprinkled in edible gold. It was delightfully sparkly, but you can’t really capture that in pictures…

She really liked it.

Weight Check-in: I lost another 2 pounds this week bringing me firmly into the 180’s (187 to be exact)! I’m pretty stoked about that. And Tim is into his off-season and starting to make healthier food choices, so it’s starting to get more fun being able to eat healthy together. My chain is ever so slowly shrinking!