Quarantine pods

These girls have been a lifeline for me over the last couple of years but especially in 2020 as we built our little quarantine pod!! 

In the early spring when things were really scary and rough, we would meet up in a parking lot every Friday and sit on the tailgates of our cars in a circle and just talk like crazy for a few hours. It was SO sanity-saving for me during those awful days of total shutdown and elearning. Our group text was equally lifesaving in both providing commiseration and memes and figuring out how to navigate all this. We had Zoom game nights with our husbands (they even started their own group text, haha) and then eventually we all started meeting up in person again (I think I blogged about our first bonfire months ago on my blog...we were all SO excited to see people that I think we burned literally every piece of cardboard that Tracy & Joe had in their recycling!). Pre-pandemic we usually got together for a couples' game night once a month or so & keeping that going was one way to help things feel a little more normal (thankfully Stephanie had a Zoom room for work that allowed us to talk for hours until people literally just started falling asleep in their chairs, haha!). 

We took these two pictures in early November right before Becki moved to Utah and Tracy moved to DC (2020, you just keep those hits coming). 

A few pics from other times this summer--I'm sure I have a lot of Zoom screenshots somewhere but we will focus on in-person stuff. 

One Saturday Becki, Stephanie, and I biked the entirety of the Monon trail--hurray!! This was a biggie and I was SO proud of us!!

The top pic is at the terminus of the Monon (we then biked over to downtown Indy and ate brunch, then biked about halfway back). A big shoutout to Becki's husband Jason for being our support vehicle!! 

And here we are at the start in Sheridan, Indiana. 



I think in total we ended up with 37 miles? 



In early September Becki, Stephanie, Melissa, and I went to the Springfield Flea & Antique show. This was SO fun. 


We had a great morning and found a really cool vintage croquet set for Tracy, who had wanted to come but was recovering from surgery. (Brandi was running between soccer games.) 

Totally forgot to get a pic of the four of us but I did get this one of Steph, Becki, and Melissa! 

And this mirror that I ended up buying and hung in my foyer--every time I see it I smile. 

And this little silver gravy boat that was completely blackened with tarnish and was a total steal--I think I paid $2? 


Right before school started, we all went to Lake Michigan for a day. It was totally perfect. 

A bit of our group--this was the first time our kids had seen each other since March and it was SO exciting!!! 

Just a truly gorgeous wonderful day. We had so much fun talking for hours, swimming, and playing Nerf football in the lake! 

Let's see if I can get through this next one without crying--on my birthday I was just feeling AWFUL. I'd been off Zoloft for just long enough that I was having terrible withdrawal symptoms (and we'd just started 75 Hard so I also wasn't eating any sugar). We were supposed to all get together that night (with husbands) and I broke down crying and it just all felt SO overwhelming. Everyone was so kind and wonderful and understanding and we ended up meeting at a park with just the girls and when I pulled up they had put together an amazing no-dessert no-sugar spread and the sweetest assortment of gifts that are the kind that make you feel VERY seen & known. It was just incredibly touching and I am so darn grateful for these girls in my life! 

 


As I'm typing this I feel both super grateful for this particular group of friends and like I'm shortchanging some of my other truly fantastic friends in this area, but for various reasons (health and exposure) these are the ones who I have seen the most in-person during the last few months, but I am also INCREDIBLY grateful for all the friends who I have been texting with every day even though we haven't been able to spend time together in person! I'm also grateful in a weird way for the pandemic in helping me keep up friendships that I likely wouldn't have been as diligent about had I been able to see people more in person (how's that for convoluted)--but my running partner Kelsey, who moved in February, and I have texted each other every single day with details of our daily workouts, which has been pretty great. She was here earlier this fall and we were able to run together twice and it was cool to see how we were both so caught up on each other's life & could just dive back in to talking about whatever was on our minds rather than spending the whole time catching up on the past months. 

Thanksgiving 2020

This Thanksgiving post is brought to you by end-of-semester grading, wherein I am using the blog post as a motivator. For every 2 projects that I grade, I get to type something here! Woohoo!!

Thanksgiving this year looked very different than last year, when we hosted my grandparents and parents. My grandfather passed away in June, and due to the pandemic we weren't able to be with him when he died or to hold a funeral. It was really hard, and I felt pretty emotional leading up to Thanksgiving and the reminders that not only did we not have him with us this year but the reality of his death still hasn't quite sunk in. But as my grandmother reminded me multiple times that week, the only constant is change, and life goes on. I'm really grateful for the beautiful memories we made with him last year and that I was able to talk with my grandmother & parents several times over the holiday weekend even if we couldn't be together.

Luke had been working on this cool float in class with his two best friends Aaron and Cameron. The three of them were the only ones in the whole fourth grade who had a float that was able to move on its own rather than being carried--way to go little engineers!!

The kids had Wednesday off (and Neil was working from home interviewing potential new hires for his lab) so we started off the day with a morning library trip to stock up for the weekend...



...cooked down all our pie pumpkins (can you see Matthew's paint job?)...



...then we refinanced our house that afternoon & met the notary in our garage. Ah, COVID, you do some weird things to our normal lives, but this one was actually pretty darn convenient! 

We also got some awesome news in the morning that Neil was getting a promotion and a raise--

woo-hoo!!! That was a really fun start to a holiday weekend. We went on a lunchtime run together and it was so fun to have such great news to chat about. 

Then we started in on actual holiday prep. One of my favorite favorite parts of any holiday is setting the table. This year, we went with a blue and orange color scheme and I used the felt leaves I'd embroidered the year Matthew was born as place name thingies, then set the table itself with the silver given to me by my Aunt Pam that she sourced from multiple estate sales, the French glasses that Ruth gave me for my birthday two years ago, the solid silver candlesticks my mom gave my grandparents for their silver wedding anniversary that my grandmother gave to me last year, the 100-year-old antique china I found a few years ago while thrifting, and the silver gravy boat I found while antiquing with my friends in Ohio this fall. Just a lot of lovely memories on that table.

We decided weeks ago that each person would be in charge of a pie. Neil and I made an old-fashioned pecan pie from my friend Kelsey's DIVINE recipe plus a Mississippi mud chocolate pie, then called the kids up to make theirs...

Abigail opted for an apple pie with caramel cream sauce and crumble topping

Nathan and Matthew sort of floated around helping everyone, but mostly Abigail--I think they did all her apples on the twirly thing!

Juliet wove a really beautiful lattice top for her cherry pie.

Neil helped Luke with his fluffy delicious lemon meringue pie. 

And Isaac used all the fresh pumpkin we'd baked earlier in his creamy delicious pumpkin pies!



Then Neil heroically took on the task of separating the turkey skin from the turkey so we could rub herb butter under the skin (fresh thyme, rosemary, sage, and chives food-processored together with butter and shallots).

He also spatch-cocked the turkey this year. It was SO moist and flavorful!!

Honestly the whole meal was SOOO good!!! And our Thanksgiving morning was super chill. Neil, Abigail, and I all worked out for a couple hours before we even went anywhere near the kitchen, which is basically my favorite way to do a holiday. 

After we cleaned everything up, we watched the extended edition of Fellowship of the Ring. Thanks to those coming out during the holidays when we were newly married it always feels to me like you *should* watch those on Thanksgiving weekend. 

The next morning (Friday) I got up bright and early and met a friend who had moved away but was visiting for the holiday weekend. We are both training for spring marathons, so we ran 12 miles around our beautiful city. I snapped this photo as I was stretching--normally this plaza would be set up for the Christkindlmart, but it's still beautiful! (Last Black Friday I was walking around there getting raclette with my parents...sniff sniff.)

Then I went home and we watched The Two Towers after lunch, put Matthew to bed, and watched Return of the King. It was a really great post-run day, haha. 

While I was running the kids made these cool K'nex headsets: 

And Neil worked on some new built-ins in the basement: 

And Neil donned his Elf clothes so it was officially the start of the Christmas season!!

On Sunday we had our first Primary Zoom! I was called as the Primary president in our ward a few months ago so it was exciting to see the culmination of lots of planning and behind-the-scenes effort. No pics of the Zoom for privacy reasons, but here's Isaac with one of the prep things...

Then we went on a 4.5-mile walk with some of the boys and Matthew's glorious hat hair.

A quick pic before Zoom church!

And that night we passed out Christmas pajamas! A lovely end to a really nice weekend. 

Thanksgiving weekend

Happy holidays 2020! Yay! I took this picture of the kids the day after Thanksgiving and I love it so so so much.

I had a few minutes waiting in the car yesterday so decided to upload some photos from my phone to my blog so I could do a writeup later, but apparently I deleted everything from my Thanksgiving photos and so I had to create an IG stories highlight and then screenshot that...and I just don't have time to crop the photos. So here we go! Built-in captions and everything. This probably won't be very coherent bc right now I'm helping Luke with math homework, reminding Nathan to keep practicing piano (normally he is ALL about piano time but right now he really wants to get back to his book, which is atypical for him so hurray hurray!), redirecting Abigail who is WAY more interested in Isaac's Zoom call (his first Young Men's meeting! My baby) than in her AP Euro homework. Neil is putting Matty to bed and Juliet is going over science flashcards. 

Matty came home from preschool with this adorable little turkey hat!

We had Thanksgiving with just ourselves this weekend. Most of the posts I saw on social media were from friends who were nervous about cooking the whole meal on their own, which made me grateful that I've had lots of practice and I wasn't dealing with all the fear of Thanksgiving prep along with the rest of 2020 stress! I think we've hosted more often than not over the last few ten years. 

Here's Isaac making his pumpkin pies, which we made from pie pumpkins...sooooooo much better than canned and I will definitely be doing this in the future!

Abigail making Pioneer Woman's Dreamy Apple Pie (the BEST!). 

Neil and Luke put together a lemon meringue pie...

And here's Jules weaving the lattice for the top of her cherry pie. Neil and I made a pecan pie (the really really good kind with maple syrup and nary a drop of corn syrup in sight) and a Mississippi mud chocolate and cream pie. 

One of my favorite things is setting the table--there's a story to every single bit of this tablescape. 

This is the first year that we spatchcocked the turkey and it was perfection. So so so much juicier! We also did an herb butter (Kerrygold butter emulsified with garlic & shallots and lots of fresh herbs (rosemary, thyme, sage, parsley) that Neil carefully rubbed over the turkey UNDER the skin. Definitely took one for the team there. 

On Friday I met my friend Kelsey (who was visiting from California) for a socially-distanced 12 mile run, then I came home and we ate pie and marathoned the Lord of the Rings trilogy over the next couple of days (extended edition holy cow it was so long and my eyeballs were on fire). 

Cute little Matty with his Christmas jammies reading Christmas books!

And his crazy hair. I just cut off all this fluff last week and man I miss it, but he told me in no uncertain terms that either I cut his hair or he would (I mean, it was way down in his eyes, but it was so so cute and fluffy and blond, and now it's like a little brown shorn sheep). 

We celebrated Neil's birthday the week before Thanksgiving! I gave him a guitar and we had a lot of really fun evenings by the fire with him strumming and singing. 

And a picture we snapped one morning before church! 

As passionate as I am about the way the interior of our house looks all year long, Neil is equally passionate about the exterior during December. This was the beginning of a LOT of attention to lights and perfectly outlining the roof on all 4 sides of the house.