Hi, guys! Have you noticed that I’ve been a little quiet on the blog? It’s because for the last month or so, I’ve been working really hard with my podcast cohost to launch our new PODCAST WEBSITE! penandpagegals.com is live so take a peek at the internet baby I’ve been spending all my energy birthing the last few weeks LOL!

Last week was Thanksgiving and it was the exact type of break I needed. 9 days of no school, no schedules, just everyone cozied up together at home. We snacked mindlessly and watched tons of movies .. I gained a good 5 pounds (literally) and also slept in one of the mornings until 11 freakin AM. It was glorious. So here’s a recap post for y’all!

Thanksgiving dinner was a quiet one with just our family. I honestly wouldn’t have had it any other way, pandemic or not. These are my favorite people in the world to be with and I felt so thankful that we were all healthy and together at home. Hubby cooked up a bomb dot com prime rib (which is fantastic because I am not a huge turkey fan) and we ate tons of carbs. The best kind of meal ever.

There are some years when we travel to Socal to be with my in-laws on Thanksgiving but on the years when we don’t travel, it’s been a tradition to go on Black Friday to chop down our Christmas tree from a Christmas tree farm about an hour (or more) away from our home. We were woken up pretty early on Friday morning by these two munchkins who were very eager to get the Christmas tree. Our oldest munchkin is wise and mature enough to entertain herself instead of harass her parents hence why she is not pictured.

We loaded up the kiddos, made a pit stop by our local Noah’s Bagels for breakfast, then headed over to the tree farm!

D was very vocal about which tree should be ours to take home this year. The one he picked was one of the very first we saw so I did insist we do at least one loop around to make sure there was no buyers remorse but sure enough, in the end there was no tree that stuck out to us as much as the one that he picked.

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There’s usually a live Santa (who really looks the part!) at the tree farm who will pass out candy canes and the kids were soooo looking forward to sitting on his lap and telling him what they wanted but I told them Santa probably wouldn’t be there because of COVID. Ah, 2020. I was correct but at least I was able to prep the kids for their disappointment. And the tree farm did their best and provided a life-size photo for kids to take a picture with. Baby A was confused but you know what … it’s so 2020 that I kind of don’t mind it. HAHA.

Christmas tree farm selfie!

Our kids have been taking turns every year with whose turn it is to put the star on the top and this year was our big girl E’s turn again. This was also the first year that our kids did the bulk of the tree decorating! We helped with the lights and the star but let the kids go to town with the rest of it (I did artfully rearrange a few of the ornaments since it was very bottom heavy). It is so weird to me that they’re big enough to do this!

After trimming the tree and decking the halls, its our tradition to end the night with apple pie and our first Christmas movie… in our matching family jammies. LOL! The apple pie tradition has actually been J & my tradition for almost ten years now. I’ll admit the Christmas movie and family jammies are only in the years since baby A was born 😉

And our previous family dog (Spartan) never had Christmas jammies to match the family but with a new dog, I guess new traditions can be born. Here’s Kylo matching all of us hahaha!

As if the excitement of the start of Christmas and tree chopping/family movie/etc wasn’t enough .. D LOST A TOOTH in the middle of decorating the tree! He literally was hopping around with so much excitement that he hopped his tooth right out. He has the most ADORABLE lisp now and I can’t get enough of it. He’s at the squishiest, cutest, age when he says the silliest things and we can have real conversations but he still can’t wait for the tooth fairy to come visit him.

I don’t blame him for being so excited though. Obviously the magic of Christmas has rubbed off from parent to child … I love this time of year so much that it’s no wonder he was hopping around with so much adrenaline. I already have our Christmas cards sent out (and a few people have received them as of this post going live!) AND I have most of our Christmas shopping done. I actually started Christmas shopping right after Halloween ended and I was slowly stowing all the gifts in our hall closet. Well, by the time we got our tree, our hall closet was brimming to the MAX so after everyone went to bed this night, I stayed up and wrapped a crap ton of presents. D asked before going to sleep when presents would start to appear under the tree and I had to shrug and give a noncommittal response as if I didn’t know, when really I knew there was already going to be a big pile in the morning.

Unfortunately, even though I stayed up WAY late wrapping gifts, I still had to get up early the next morning to prepare for the return of our Elf and our North Pole breakfast kicking off Christmas! New post with all the details of that coming soon …