Getting in the Christmas spirit 2021

Christmas vacation has officially begun!  Today was the last day of work/school for all four us until January 3rd!  To say we are so grateful and excited is an understatement.  This has been quite the fall semester...

To kick off the holiday season, the boys met Santa at the Henry Ford museum when we went over Thanksgiving break.  Thankfully the line was short or they would have totally been fine with skipping it.  I can't believe they're kind of "over" the whole concept of visiting Santa.  

Can you tell we dressed for the occasion?  

Honestly, we came to the museum because our membership was going to expire and the boys wanted to check out the Driven to Win exhibit (which is amazing, by the way).  Seeing Santa was just a bonus.  

We also took Luna to meet Santa for the first time at PetSmart assuming she'd be very shy and uncomfortable.  She surprised us all by going to sit right by Santa and pose for the picture.  Her ears weren't even pinned back!

We put the big tree up and all the decorations, including the boys' little trees they put up in their rooms.  It was such a "magical" wintery day as it was even snowing!  I made these awesome little flower boxes outside of our garage to help beautify the side of the house too from pine tree branches, fake poinsettias, and some pinecones and ribbon.  

We've been enjoying checking off some of Evan's holiday bucket list items!  I love that he made this and I love that it's personalized to our family.  I think we might have him do this every year!

The boys built their Gingerbread Houses last Friday after school.  We made a night of it with homemade pizza, a movie on in the background and a folding table set up for them to work in the living room.  Evan picked a Sour Patch Kid kit this year and Sean picked a Hershey one (both of which I got on sale at Target!).  Scott and I had to help erect the houses, but the boys did all the icing and decorating.  What a mess, but the boys had fun!

Teacher gifts were finalized and ready to go for school this week.  Their main teachers got a basket with a movie themed fleece blanket, popcorn buckets, microwaveable popcorn packs, and their favorite candy.  Kids' Time teachers got a Tim Hortons gift card.  Their music teachers got a gift card to the Coffee Bean in Downtown Plymouth.  And Sean's tutor got a Target gift card.  Whew!  Spirit week started with Pajama Day for me and holiday headwear for the boys.  We've all had a blast dressing up each day this week!

We have lots of Christmas cookie baking and movie watching on our schedule for the next few days.  I have all the gifts bought, but need to wrap them all, but I'm looking forward to it!  I'm excited to have this time with my family to rest and decompress.  Hoping we all stay healthy and can enjoy the holidays with our family members!

Holly Jolly Trolley in Detroit

 A couple of weekends ago, we had a girls' night planned with my mother-in-law and my two sisters-in-law to do the Holly Jolly Trolley that runs out of Eastern Market in Detroit.  Unfortunately, the weather was bad, the roads were covered in snow and we missed the Trolley because we got stuck in traffic due to an accident.  We still ended up going out with for drinks in Downtown Plymouth when we made it back home, but we figured it was a done deal with the Trolley and that we were out of luck.

Imagine our surprise when we got an email from the lady that runs the Trolleys to say that we could get on one the following Saturday.  So, off we went again the following Saturday, but this time much earlier!  We grabbed an early dinner at Vivio's in Eastern Market.  Mindy was the only brave soul to get one of their famous bloody marys.  I enjoyed an egg and bacon sandwich on a pretzel roll that filled me up.  We walked over to Thomas McGee's where the Trolley picked us up.  

Our first stop was the Wayne County Lightfest, where we skipped the line and drove right on through.  It was fun to see it through the Trolley.  Normally I'm the one driving through it.  Thankfully the trolley stopped for a bathroom break before we drove on to our next stop.

Our next stop was the Detroit Zoo in Royal Oak for the Wild Lights.  We got out and had about an hour or so to walk around the lights.  We were actually able to make almost two laps around in that time frame and then made our way back to the trolley.

Our final stop of the evening was back in Detroit at Campus Martius.  We were able to see the tree and the ice skaters, not wanting to skate ourselves.  We walked to a bar across from Comerica Park where Pops met up with us to take us home.  It was a really fun night!  And I'm glad it worked out for us to be able to go!