Around Here Week 48: 11/27-12/03

 A glimpse into what it is like to live in our home just this moment. 

we love you Coach Ang!

Intentional Outdoor Hours: 737+ hours (of 1000)
We spent about an hour down at the farm on Saturday afternoon working on trimming the goats hooves. Two of our goats are clearly in heat (they're driving us nuts!) and so I reached out to a local goat farmer to see if we could maybe set up a copulation visit for our two girls who are desperate for boyfriends (LOL). It's nearing the end of prime breeding season, so we are cutting it close - but fingers crossed that maybe we'll have some baby goats this spring! 

Reading and finishing The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris. It was a great and important read. I am still reading How We Show Up by Mia Birdsong and it is so impactful that I can only read a little at a time because I need to ruminate and soak up all the value. Honestly, such a great book. I started our December Project Lit book - Almost America Girl by Robin Ha. It's an illustrated novel so I'm moving through it pretty quickly, I am loving it

Trimming the tree and putting up all the final decorations for the season around the house! I just love the vibe that the Christmas tree lights give to the living room, it makes me so happy and cozy. 

Baking again! Brandon and I worked together to fix the oven door after the new hinges arrived. First thing I made was a batch of cake-mix chocolate chip cookies! Thankful for my handy husband and very thankful to be able to bake again. And this week I started thinking about my Christmas cookie options for this year (I really could use the time in more efficient ways, but I love Christmas cookie baking so much!).

Hauling in the outside play equipment to keep winter kid energy in check. We bring in our mini playground every winter and the kids love flipping, jumping, and playing all over it in the living room. We also brought in the little yellow/red car and the toddler quad (not motorized, lol). We also run laps around the 'circle' and use all the couches and cushions for tumbling/jumping spaces. It's a wild zoo around here, but these kids have energy that need released! 

Listing all the Christmas movies we hope to watch this month. Besides the standard movies that most people watch - we also included Babes in Toyland (Drew Barrymore version) and Gremlins to our list, plus a few of the sweet Netflix romantic ones like Christmas Calendar and Knight before Christmas.  The Holiday, The Family Stone, and While you were Sleeping are some of my favorite movies to watch while wrapping!

Shh!! Putting our deposit on our Great Pyrenees puppy!! We will be getting the sweet girl right before Christmas and I'm so excited I could squeal all day. She's coming from Iron Hawk Farm which is owned by my friend (and fellow big family momma) Alicia. Our Bullet and Trixie are really getting older (13 and 11 respectively) and we have been wanting to get a farm dog to keep the goats and chickens safe - especially during fox and coyote season. Alicia posted a pic of her litter and it took a matter of .25 seconds for Brandon to be on board. SO EXCITED!!

Making magic for the season. Our elf, Marco has arrived back to our house this week and has been up to his regular mischief. Reddy and Olive are starting to realize that he is a beloved little creature in our house. At school, the office secretaries and I are taking on the high school elf - we put on the face of our athletic director (Stacy) and have made a plan to set him up in the trophy case near the front doors. It's called Stacy in the Trophy Case-y and it has been making me laugh everyday so far! 

Mom's night out with just me and Heather. We met at The Fifth and enjoyed such a delicious dinner (that neither of us made or cleaned up!) It was so wonderful to spend the evening together catching up and laughing. So grateful to have you as my friend and family! (love you xxo)

Enjoying "Candle time" each night of December. My sister Uch made us an Advent candle that has all the days numbered off down the candle. So each night, we lift it and sit together while listening to carols on Echo or reading Christmas story books. I love that the kids just go along with their weird mom's ideas at this point - they're just like, 'yeah, this is normal for her.' LOL forever.

Fangirling at the Nutcracker on Friday night with my mom, Gemma, and Violet. One of my ninth grade students (hi, Ava!) performed and she did beautifully. So proud of my kids and glad to have a night out at the ballet with my oldest girls and my momma.

Teaching only 4 days this week because we get off on the Monday after Thanksgiving for rifle hunting season. We read Capibara con Botas novel chapters 3-4 in Spanish 1. We also voted on all the Spanish 1 capibara designs and picked our top 3 winners - my sweet cousin Gracie won first place with her giraffe/capibara design. I had so many creative and cool designs this year (2nd place was a Spongebob/Patrick/Gary trio and 3rd place was a Firefighter)! Spanish 2 finished Somos 12 and Spanish 3/read chapters 1-3 of La Llorona de Mazatlan. In most of my classes, we did another baseline writing and compared it to the first one they did at the beginning of the year. It's not how much you know, it's how much you grow!! 

Sporting Gemma had a basketball practice and two games this week. On Saturday during the game, she had a bad ankle twist and only played for the first half. This is the ankle she has broken in the past, so we are icing and elevating and crossing our fingers that it is not broken again even though it is very swollen and bruised. Grey had basketball practice all week in preparation for his first Jr High game next week! 

Making Thanksgiving leftover casserole, "Crack" chicken slider sammies, taco pasta, baked/breaded chicken and veggies, Asian ground beef with rice, and homemade pizza. Baking cake-mix chocolate chip cookies and then a batch of peanut butter cookies later in the week too.