Tuesday, December 12, 2017

Counting Down to Christmas (Our Weekend Part 1)

These last two weeks have been a little rough in the Rodrick household--Cecelia had an ear infection and as soon as she was getting better, Lucy all of a sudden had a fever (she ran between 99-101 for like 5 days) and had to stay home from school most of last week.  She just had a cold but of course, Cece now has a cold too.  Between the girls being sick, Todd & I have taken quite a bit of unexpected time off work so let's hope that we can stay relatively healthy and make it through the holidays (especially since I have to work at 4:00 AM twice next week).  To make matters worse, I had to call Todd on Friday morning right when he was getting to work (which, keep in mind, is a 40+ minute drive) to come home because of this:

Our Christmas tree fell over!

The girls & I were upstairs in our bedroom and in a span of 10 minutes when I was showering and changing, somehow the tree fell over.  Apparently the 40 pounds of weights wasn't enough to keep it from tipping over and my attempt to pick the tree up myself were useless so I needed reinforcements.  Todd turned right around and within an hour, he had built a bigger base that he drilled our tree stand to and we had the tree upright and the room clean.  The most amazing part was that only 1 ornament broke.

After that eventful morning, I needed the rest of the day to go relatively smooth and since Lucy didn't go to school that day, we ran some errands and played at home.  I got some time away that evening for our annual "blogger" holiday dinner & gift exchange.  I say "blogger" because while we all were blogging when we initially met 7 years ago, only a couple of us still are, but we've definitely become friends in real life.  Always a fun night with these gals full of gossip and laughs.

Earlier in the day, Cece got into my basket of magazines...

Apparently, the Rodrick girls really enjoy their celebrity gossip while sitting on the fireplace (Lucy on the left around 20 months, Cece on the right around 16 months--chubby cheeks on both girls!)

Dinner at Firebirds Wood Fired Grill with some amazing ladies

My in-laws had planned to come into town on Saturday for the weekend but since Lucy still had a slight fever on Friday, they didn't want to take the chance of getting sick.  We had a few fun Christmas things planned with them (train display, life-sized nativity, carriage ride, and gingerbread house decorating) so even though they didn't come, we were still able to go ahead with all of our plans anyways.

After breakfast (and a fun hot chocolate surprise from Jack), we went to the main library downtown to check out the holiday train display.  My parents have taken Lucy to this library since the remodel last year but Todd & I had yet to go so we spent some time walking around and letting the girls play in the children's area.  After about an hour or so at the library (and after checking out 22 books for Lucy--she definitely takes after me & my love of the library and reading), we bundled up and walked a few blocks over to Christmas Corner to see the life-sized nativity display.  I remember seeing this every year when I was younger and my dad took Lucy last year.  I wish it hadn't been quite as cold that day because we didn't get to spend as much time as I would've liked looking at it.

Jack brought a hot chocolate treat for the girls

Lucy was so excited to see he had spelled her name with marshmallows

This girl was ready for her hot chocolate

Cece tried marshmallows for the first time

Jack even brought a cookie stick to stir the hot chocolate

Sugar high!

Todd decided to make a loaf of homemade bread while we were gone so we could make paninis for lunch

The girls watching the trains go by

I was impressed by the display--I wasn't expecting it to be this big!

There was a list of items you were supposed to find in the display so Todd & the girls were trying to find everything

Checking out the fish tank in the children's section

Part of the life-sized nativity 

Lucy in front of the nativity

We went home for lunch, and Todd & I started wrapping Christmas presents while the girls napped (the bonus of Lucy being sick is that she took a nap 5 days in a row!).  Once they were up from naps, we drove over to Easton for a holiday carriage ride and went to dinner at Sweet Carrot in Grandview.  I'll have that along with our Sunday afternoon of decorating a gingerbread house up tomorrow.  I figured if I didn't split up the posts there would be way too many pictures!

No comments: