Happy Thanksgiving

Abbie has really been enjoying her Thanksgiving break. School has been very intense and Abbie is taking it very seriously, so this has been a great opportunity to catch up on sleep and relax a bit. She has also enjoyed all of the traditions that come along with the holiday - decorating, cooking, baking, music, spiced cider, etc. 

Checking the turkey

She was happy to help with the cooking and even captured much of the activity with her camera. Will we ever see any of this video footage? Maybe not (because she doesn't always get around to editing it), but that's okay because she had fun filming everything. Of course, Abbie's favorite part of the meal is always the cranberries. She claims that we never make enough, so this year we stepped it up a bit. We bought five 12-oz bags, and Abbie started out thinking that we would need to make at least four. When she saw everything laid out, though, she scaled it back to three bags and I think that was about the right amount. Now that we have two bags remaining, cranberry bread is on the to-do list.

As for to-do lists, one of the things that has been on Abbie's list for a long time is making some changes to her room. We finally agreed that one of the easiest changes would be to replace the existing border with a new self-adhesive border. We found a website that allowed Abbie to design her own border. It arrived this past week and we put it up right away. As you can see, it definitely gives the room a different, more relaxing look. 

Before

After

The other big excitement in Abbie's life is her time behind the wheel. That's right, I have started teaching her to drive. We have been out driving in the neighborhood a few times now. She has been very cautious and careful, preferring not to go faster that 25mph, which is fine by me. :) As with anything, it just takes time to get a feel for the speed and the steering, so we will work on it slowly as time allows.

With Thanksgiving behind us, we have made the transition to the Christmas season. We have the tree and many of the decorations up already. 

Decorating

 

As a way to deal with all of our COVID fatigue, Abbie has decided that we need to make the most of the upcoming month, so she already requested that we start working our way through the holiday movies. She made us some popcorn and we all curled up with Home Alone yesterday afternoon. It is also probably time to start a Christmas puzzle, so that may be on the to-do list for today.

Halloween

We celebrated Halloween last Saturday and Abbie was super-helpful in terms of getting things set up to make it special for Emily. She helped us make plans, order candy, stuff the pinata, and decorate the house.

Dressing Up

 

As for getting dressed up, Abbie decided to do a low-key costume, inspired by The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I think that she debated whether to get dressed up at all, so this was sort of a last minute decision. Given that we weren't actually going anywhere, the stakes were pretty low. 

Abbie's Jack-o-lantern

 

When it came to carving pumpkins, it was just me and Abbie this year. The weather was lovely, but Emily wasn't interested in dealing with the gooey guts, so Abbie and I did it by ourselves. She carved her pumpkin and I carved Emily's. Because we celebrated at home this year, we decided to bring the pumpkins inside and it was actually really nice to enjoy them in the house. Normally, we leave them outside and we barely get to admire them at all. 

Sisters

Overall, I am sure that it wasn't the best Halloween ever but I do think that the girls had some fun. Abbie has a Halloween playlist that we enjoyed and both girls danced and ate plenty of candy, so that is better than nothing! :)