Christmas Ornament Countdown 2020: 14 Days Until Christmas

Sequoia National Park is just one of those wonderful places. We were there the last time in September of 2013. Whitman was just a baby-maybe we were crazy for traveling with all of those little kids. This trip we did have Nonna and Pops with us to help wrangle folks. I just love Sequoia National Park; it is a must see on my list of National Parks. I don't consider myself much of a tree hugger, but those trees are pretty amazing. Here is the link to that day's post. 

December 10, 2020-South Carolina Road Trip

(click here for today's pictures) 

(Note: we didn’t do too well on picture taking on this travel day; Tara promises to do better tomorrow!)

The kids were kind of confused today when I woke them up but told them that we wouldn't be working together this morning. Even though I love our work together time, I had plenty of things to do and plenty of trips to the camper to make.

It took a while for folks to wake up and start stirring, but once they did school was a priority. More than anyone else, Whitman has loved this week of easy school. He flies through his math puzzle pages and was done before he even found breakfast.

Campbell worked on making cinnamon rolls for a while today. They were just from the can, but for some reason the toaster oven seemed to take forever to bake them. I think it is because we put foil on the bottom of the pan. At least I hope that is the reason because we can't be without all of my ovens.

At 10:40, I headed to take Reagan to school a bit early. They were having a Christmas party before their classes. We brought cookies, and Reagan said that they ate all of the cookies that we brought. After the party, she had a test which she did pretty good on.

As soon as I dropped her off, I hightailed it to Walmart to pick up a few necessary things-underwear and eggs. We ha about 5 eggs and decided that we needed some more. And also we decided that Anderson needed a few more pairs of underwear-2 just wouldn't cut it!

Then it was back home for some more packing. Really all I did today was walk to the house, walk around in the house and then walk to the camper with my arms full of things to bring in. Not sure what the weight limit is in this thing, but we are at it. Not really, Robby has assured me that we aren't near the weight limit.

Actually, tonight on our gas stop, we could have easily weighed ourselves since we ended up in a truck parking area of the gas station. There were trucks everywhere and we were kind of trapped. We did roll through the scales to escape the truck area. We finally made it out of the truck area and made it to get gas.

Back to the afternoon, I picked Reagan up from school and dropped off Noah and some of his peeps, Then we hurried home and were on the road in just a few minutes. After a few walks through the house, we finally left for South Carolina.

We had a long drive tonight-over 400 miles. For the most part the kids were pretty mild. Robby and I listened to a few podcasts to make the drive a little bit shorter. After successfully leaving the gas station with a full tank of gas, we were back on the road.

We drove just a bit when I started on supper. I am getting good at turning on the generator which start the microwave. Soon I was heating up Hot Pockets one by one. It did take a while to heat up everyone's supper since each one took 2 minutes. I was trying to use a plastic plate-and did use it successfully over and over so I wouldn't dirty alot of plates. Well, I used it over and over again until it started to melt.

That's fine since we have plenty! Soon the kids were fed (Whitman was the only corn dog taker). Then I heated up Robby and my suppers. I supplemented supper with bags of chips and everyone finished happily-especially since they had a drink to go with it.

The boys have played their xbox some and watched some Thursday night football. Robby and I continued listening to podcasts-we listened to a few travel ones, a few crime ones and even a sermon or two. 

Soon we were cruising through Birmingham and finding our Bass Pro to park in for the evening. And sure enough Robby pulled in and wanted to park by the woods. Heavens to Betsy no way! We had been listening to the crime podcasts-no one is going near the woods! Again! Did you know that one man is in jail for killing his wife when people think that an owl really did it? Yep, I'll never walk through the woods again. 

Anyway, we are safely parked away from the woods by a light and all doors are locked and double checked. We probably could easily sleep with the slides out tonight, but after everyone found their pjs and settled in, we did shut them. My clothes and Robby's clothes are accessible with the slides in, but the kids clothes are in a spot that you can't open with the slides in. It is the oddest thing-who would design anything like that. They could have easily put one drawer at the bottom that you couldn't open and then had storage above that you could. Anyway, no one asked me.

Getting bedding ready for everyone is always a challenge too. It isn't hard, but it just takes a while. I am sure that we could probably leave stuff out, but I just wouldn't be able to handle that. So everything is folded and put away neatly. And you might find this funny-you would think that with 8 of us, we would have 8 pillows in this camper. Nope, 14 was the last count. We usually have 12 in here on our bed that we pass out, but the big boys brought theirs on this trip. That is why we could never tent camp-14 pillows! We like our comfort!

We just gave the kids a 15 minute warning-they are all snug in their beds. Robby has the new sound machines running and is working on getting the temperature just right for the night. I'll end the blog here and head to bed myself! (And here is one surprising downside of camper living-this place is so tiny that we can't sneak out of bed to get ice cream or everyone would hear us!)

Christmas Ornament Countdown 2020: 15 Days until Christmas

We have been to Legoland twice now-once on the East coast and once of the West coast. This ornament is from 2018 after our Caribbean cruise in Florida. Most of the kids were a bit old for Legoland on this trip, but we all still had a great time. The rides were fun, and there was a lot to see. At Disney, you can trade pins with cast members, but at Legoland you can trade Lego men with the cast members. I think that this might have been one of the highlights of the visit and that is why I chose this ornament for our tree.

December 9, 2020

(click here for today's pictures) 

• Some days just seem long and this is definitely one of them. Wowzers! Let me think back to this morning-we woke up and did our school reading together just like usual. Once the kids got started, it didn't take me long to realize that I wasn't going to have time to work with everyone like I had planned.
• So I started shouting out spelling sentences to Keaton and Campbell so they could finish this week's spelling lesson. I consider a week complete if we are able to finish spelling lessons-now, if you remember I did finally have to just stop spelling with Whitman. My plan is to start again in January-maybe.
• Before I realized it, it was time to jump in the car and leave with Reagan for her driving test. I don't think she was too nervous, but I sure was. The entire time that she was off driving, I walked and prayed. Most of the time I spent praying that she would be able to pull that big ole car back in between those two lines when she had to park. And gracious me, if they didn't make her park between the lines!
• When she was back in the building getting her information, I walked by the man who gave her the test. He said that she was a good driver. He also added that he is impressed when he sees a 14 or 15 year old driving a tank. I guess the suburban is a big car, but I told him that this was our small car since the 15 passenger van is even larger!
• After getting the paper signed, we headed to the revenue office to get her official driver's license. I didn't read the paper well enough to see that I needed a few more documents. Robby met me half way and gave me all the documents we have one Reagan-social security card, birth certificate and passport. 
• We then drove back to the revenue office-the line had been short and was just a wee bit longer when we returned. And bless, I almost still didn't have enough documents. The lady was very nice and finally used my driver's license as what we needed. We left with Reagan's new driver's license, and she was one step closer to adulthood.
• We hurried home-I even forgot that I needed to run to Walmart and didn't remember until tonight. There was some cleaning this afternoon and even some Bible study-ing with the littles-we aren't going to get behind. We are working on getting way ahead.
• Then the party started around here. We have certainly missed our homeschool group. We have seen them all, but last week was our first get together where everyone was together. So I mentioned that we should have a Christmas party and that we did!
• There were cookies to decorate, cake, hot chocolate and apple cider, even more drinks, fruit, chex mix and a ton of games. That along with a few circles of dirty Santa and perfect weather made for a great day. 
• The kids so enjoyed the games and so enjoyed decorating the cookies. I do think that the highlight was the dirty Santa. Now, my Whitman was thrilled to win his huge slinky that he brought. Sweet Keaton chose to steal a gift so a boy wouldn't end up with something that he didn't want. Campbell ended up with something that she didn't like but traded a few times afterwards and was happy. Graham and Reagan ended up with cavities-I mean candy. And Anderson stole a salt rock which we have since lost. (Big house problems).
• It was all lots of fun. Grannymom and Grandpa came over for a bit to see the kids before they headed out to see Tony's light show. And soon Robby also left for a meeting at church. 
• While Robby was at the meeting, I finished straightening, cleaned the kitchen, vacuumed, fed the kids supper and swept the kitchen. I was on a mission to be finished with all of that by the time that he returned from his meeting because I wanted him to steam mop the kitchen floors. They have needed it for months, but there is always some reason that we have waited (We will wait until Thanksgiving, We will wait until after Thanksgiving, We will wait until people come over next and on and on we procrastinated.)
• The floors are finished now and they do look good! A few extra big kids did stay over this evening for a little bit, so the evening was fairly quiet since everyone was entertained. Anderson did wrap a few of his presents and I am now caught up on my wrapping. Hopefully, a lot of gifts arrive early in the morning tomorrow so I can knock out some wrapping!
• Bedtime was a bit later than usual, but that was fine since tomorrow is another light day of school. I plan to do quite a bit of last minute stuff before 10:30 when I have to take Reagan to school early for a Christmas party. 

Christmas Ornament Countdown 2020: 16 Days until Christmas

This is my last Disney ornament to showcase this year-after three in a row, you may be getting tired of them. You never know when and where you will find ornaments that you just want on your tree, but as we were on our mad dash to Disney last December, we found this ornament at Walmart. We felt like we had been a part of Mickey Mouse for most of his 90 years so we quickly bought it for our tree. Robby has been to see Mickey 15 times at Disney World and 4 times to Disneyland. Whitman has been a few less times with only 6 trips to Disney World and 1 to Disneyland. Here is the current official Dennie Disney count.

December 8, 2020

(click here for today's pictures) 

• I sure do enjoy our light days of school-wish I could finish out how to do have only light days of school. Maybe my kids get their lack of motivation from me! They sure don't get their procrastination from me-Reagan has told me at least 4 things that she plans on doing tomorrow night. I keep reminding her that her people will be over here then, but that doesn't seem to want her to shorten tomorrows' list at all.
• We did our school, but unfortunately I had to return all of our Christmas books to the library today. Really we just didn't get to one of them so that is pretty good, so I just had to put it on the list for next year.
• We did our little school work, then a big group of us took Reagan to school. Robby and I had talked about how I needed to bring money to pick up some salsa from someone at church, but I forget. So after dropping Reagan off, I immediately remembered as soon as Robby called me. 
• We turned around and ran to Pops' house since I had no cash on me. I got my loan and returned to the church for my salsa. Then it was the 5 Below, the Dollar Tree and Walmart. We were shopping fools. Ha! It was fun buying a few presents-right now I have about 4 more things to buy and then I am done! Whoop! Whoop!
• Once at home, we worked on loading up some clothes in the camper before I turned around to go and pick up Reagan. On the way home, we worked on parking some and then went to pay off our loan. Pops did find out that he is no longer contagious with the Rona so that is good. Nonna will find out tomorrow about her contagiousness.
• For supper tonight, Robby and I pulled out all of the fridge items-including some foul smelling chili. We didn't eat that but we did urge folks to pick something from the fridge. Surprisingly, no one is eating our baked potato leftovers. Hmm. wonder if I can repurpose them somehow for tomorrow's supper.
• Robby had finished making rice krispy treats, and I was working on my banana bread when Shannon called asking if I wanted to go shopping. We ran to Walmart and Kroger and had the best time. I bought a few things, but my main task was to help Shannon spend lots of money! I succeeded! Ha! She spent more at Walmart, but I did spent more at Kroger so I guess it was a tie.
• Once at home, I had some of banana bread and quickly wrote out the blog while the kids headed to bed. Maybe we have time for a movie tonight!

Christmas Ornament Countdown 2020: 17 Days Until Christmas

A fun first for all of this year, well actually late last year, was getting to attend Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party. It was misty rain most of the night but that didn't stop us at all from having a great time. We waited in line to take our pictures with the 7 Dwarfs and then started our cookie haul. We came home with 237 cookies plus the 100s that we probably ate while we were there. To end our evening, we were riding Space Mountain as the clock struck midnight and Anderson officially turned 13. Here is the link to that days excitement.