The Sunday 7

Sorry for the delay. Yesterday was crazy. 

1. Last Sunday we did one of my favorite Advent Activities to date. We "jingled" the cousins. I had gone to the dollar store earlier in the week and stocked up on candy, jingle bell necklaces, cookie decorating kits, and some supplies for a craft. Then on Sunday, the kids helped me assemble them. Lucy even participated!

The craft we made was an "I Spy" ornament. I bought large plastic ornaments from Dollar Tree and then walked around the Christmas section trying to find things small enough to fit through the hole on top. Haha. I found erasers, bows, and jingle bells. I also bought a strand of lights with large-ish bulbs and just cut individual bulbs off the strand, and I cut wire brush Christmas trees off of an ornament that was a truck with a tree on top. We filled the clear ornaments with epsom salts to look like snow and hide the objects, then I hot glued the tops on and tied the list of things to find on with a cute ribbon. So fun and easy, and relatively cheap! 

I got the rhyme from this lady. I made the tags in Canva. 

I got the phrasing from this lady. Here's the printable I made.

Then came the fun part: delivering them! Lucy wasn't interested in that portion of the evening, but Lena and Levi had great fun running up to everyone's door, dropping the bag, knocking on the door, then running back to the car. I personally would've appreciated if my siblings/nephews lived a little closer to each other. Haha. It took us over an hour to do the loop to each of their houses, but it was worth it. 

2. On Monday, we went to a movie immediately after school. We saw the new Trolls movie and there wasn't another soul in the theater with us!

I thought the movie was very dumb, but I don't know N'Sync enough to feel any nostalgia. I'm sure I also missed a few references that boy-band-fans would know. The kids were entertained by it and enjoyed dancing in the theater. Lucy decided to stay at school to watch the basketball games instead of coming with us. 

3. On Tuesday, Lucy had a band concert. Middle school band concerts are not my favorite thing. Lol. At our school, all 6th through 8th graders are required to take band, so this was our third Christmas concert (they also have one in the spring), and just as I was starting to rejoice to myself that it would be our last, I realized that I had my kids 3 years apart. Lena will start band next year, and the year she's done Levi will begin! It's non-stop band concerts for 9 years!! Lol. Anyway, we usually send Levi to my parents' for band concerts, because he cannot sit still and be quiet that long. But my parents were busy this year. And then at dinner, Lucy announced that she didn't want any of us to come, and she'd be happier if no one was watching her. I took that as permission to stay home with Levi, and let Justin and Lena take one for the team. Lucy is actually fairly talented, and made it into honors band this year, but it's not like I could pick her clarinet out of the cacophony anyway. Haha. Sorry band people. 

Levi and I worked on a Christmas puzzle and listened to an audiobook the whole time they were gone. 

4. Good news, everyone. I have arrived. I finally have a room in my house devoted to wrapping presents. Kind of . . . 😂

When we bought this house 4 years ago, this little room off the laundry room was technically considered a bedroom because it has a window and a closet, but it was mostly unfinished and scary-looking. I referred to it as the dungeon room for a while. 

As we've had time and money we've slowly been working on updating it (and by "we," I mean Justin). We got it drywalled and had the electrical fixed. Justin dug a hole outside of the house to fix the crack in the wall that leaked every time it rained. He even painted and hung up a Michael Scott TV. But then we started filling it with junk and it became a catch-all. A few weeks ago, he finally hauled everything out of it and poured self-leveler on the floor, so we're one step closer to putting down real flooring and finishing this bad boy up! In the mean time, I'm making use of the empty room. I stored all the kids' presents in there and told them to stay out. They will because they like the anticipation and surprise of Christmas morning. This week I sorted everything and started some wrapping! I think eventually it will be Justin's exercise room/fishing supply closet. But for now I'm enjoying pretending to be a rich person with a wrapping room. 😁

5. Yesterday was a full day of VanderKodde Christmases. First we celebrated with the extended family at "the gym" (as Levi calls it). Levi's been really into doing his hair the past few days, and insisted on sporting a mohawk for the party:

We ate lots of yummy food, caught up with long-lost cousins, opened presents, played in the gym, and played Bunco.

The girls have graduated from gifts and got money this year! Sweet Great-Grandma still gives gifts to all the littles.

Lena was the Bunco queen!

6. After that party wound down, we ran home to get our food for the next party, only to discover that we didn't have power! It was super windy all day yesterday, so I'm sure that was the issue. Honestly, though, it was the best day to lose power. We were gone most of the day, and it was unseasonably warm, so our house didn't get super cold. So we headed off to Justin's parents' for our immediate family Christmas. His parents are leaving soon to go be snowbirds in Florida, so we get to have early Christmas with them. We also got to see cousin Persephone, which happens very rarely now that she moved away. It was a delightful evening of more food, more games, and more presents!

These three know how to have a good time!

Lucy has been begging for new earbuds for a couple weeks. In fact, hours before this party she was telling me that if she didn't get earbuds for Christmas she'd be really sad. So this was her reaction when she opened earbuds that night. Haha.

Levi's still all about the cars - especially anytime he can race them.

Storytime with Jesse.

We didn't get home until 9:30 (and our power was thankfully back on!), then it took me an hour and a half to get Levi to fall asleep, so I didn't even attempt the Saturday 7. So sorry for my tardiness. 

7. And now for a bit of bad news . . . Justin and I are taking a hard look at our screen time usage and considering making some big changes. Last February, I was really convicted about how much screen time I do and how much I let my kids do, but I prayed that Justin would be on the same page before I made any drastic decisions. And then of course I kind of forgot about it. Well last week, he came home from his men's Bible study fired up after watching a video about how screen time is destroying us and our kids. We're going to pray about it for a while, but we've both been trying to cut back on our mindless scrolling, and I just got this book in the mail:

All that's to say, I have a paltry amount of memes to share this week because of said cutting back. So enjoy these few while they last . . .

I tell this to Stella pretty much every day.

This made me laugh. Poor Zacchaeus.

I knew it! Kid after my own heart. I always said that I couldn't be an English teacher because I can't stand classic literature and searching for subtext in every stinkin' book.