Things I’m Loving Friday #537

The countdown to Christmas is officially on in our house — only 5 days!! — and we’re all buzzing with excitement. Winter break kicked off for Rhett yesterday and the big kids are out of school through the new year after today. I was talking to some blog friends about this a week or so ago (hi Lexi, Brittany and Molly!) and we all agreed the week between Christmas and New Years is just the BEST because the internet seems to take a collective exhale and everyone unplugs after so much holiday craziness. I hope to do the same this year and I hope you will, too!

But until then, it’s full speed ahead with holiday fun and I am hoping to share some pics and adventures from the weekend ahead on the blog next week. We have a holiday 5K on the agenda as well as a cookie decorating party and tickets to a holiday show. It should be a fun and festive one!

And now, keep on scrolling for this week’s roundup of favorites, Things I’m Loving Friday style!

Things I’m Loving Friday

• Self Timer Holiday Card

I had grand plans to make a collage-style holiday card to send to friends and family this year but we did not have ONE picture of the five of us together in 2024 where everyone looked decent/normal. (We’re in a super awkward/unnatural smile phase with 2 of the 3 boys at the moment.) I was determined to get one decent picture of our crew and a couple of weeks ago, on a Sunday night before bed, all 3 of the boys were in their Christmas jammies and I said, “Alright, let’s go into the backyard and see if we can take Christmas card picture in record time!” It was a wonderfully stress-free approach to holiday card photos and Pepper had everyone laughing as she barked up a storm at a ferocious airplane flying overhead.

• Annual Christmas Ornaments for the Boys

Four years ago, after Rhett was born, Ryan and I began giving each of the boys a special Christmas ornament on Christmas Eve. (You may see their past ornaments here if you’d like: 2020 / 2021 / 2022 / 2023.) The ornament we select for each of them represents something that made us think about them throughout the year — a passion of theirs, an activity they got really into, a special stuffed animal, etc. This has truly become one of our family’s absolute favorite traditions and it also makes trimming our Christmas tree every year all the more fun as the boys love finding their special ornaments and hanging them on the branches themselves.

All of their ornaments arrived late last week (I almost always use Etsy for their ornaments!) and we cannot wait for them to unwrap their little surprises on Christmas Eve.

For Chase: A running shoe ornament, as this was his first year running a full 5K without stopping! It was a big goal for him and he has big goals for Saturday’s 5K and really hopes to place in his age group. It’s been so fun to see him develop a passion for running and genuinely enjoy the racing aspect, too!

For Ryder: A yellow belt martial arts ornament. Ryder has such a passion for martial arts and achieving his yellow belt is something he’s really proud he accomplished this year. He loves practicing his martial arts skills and demonstrating them for our family and it’s been so cool to see his confidence grow through martial arts this year!

For Rhett: A green tractor ornament as our Rhetty Roo absolutely LOVES driving his ride-on John Deere tractor. We majorly lucked out with this secondhand find and he has the best time driving it all over our neighborhood, hitching his trailer up to the back of his tractor to pick up pine cones in our backyard or harvest carrots from our garden.

• Holiday Activities

As I’m sure is the case for many of you out there, this past week was overrun with holiday activities. On Monday, Rhett made his debut as an angel in his preschool’s Christmas performance. He was buzzing with excitement going into the day and couldn’t wait to celebrate with cookies and milk and his classmates after he was all done. And then his preschool kicked off winter break yesterday with a pajama day pizza party!

This isn’t a holiday activity, but the big kids had some exciting milestones happen in their martial arts class this week as they both graduated to their next belt! This takes months of work and they were both so proud and so thrilled. Hooray for a yellow and orange belt in the family!

On Wednesday, we had a full house for a mini holiday Favorite Things gift exchange party in our Christmas pajamas! Each person was responsible for bringing one “favorite thing” valued at around $30 and we ran it similarly to the favorite things exchange I do with my girlfriends around Valentine’s Day every year. My favorite thing was my beloved Nodpod (I adore that thing SO much and was excited to see it stolen the maximum amount of times!) and Ryan’s was his Dremel cordless electric screwdriver (I cannot tell you how often we use that thing) and walked away with a bottle of wine and Shut the Box, a dice game we’re excited to learn how to play!

Then, on Thursday, Ryan, the boys and I went to a candy cane dash — basically a scavenger hunt for candy canes — through our local parks and rec department and our boys LOVED it. Let them loose to run around and search for things outside and they’re in heaven!

Today should be a good one as well because I’m heading to Ryder’s school to decorate gingerbread houses with his class and I always love that special one-on-one time with the boys when it pops up! And then after school today winter break BEGINS!

• The Mistletoe Mystery: A Molly the Maid Novella by Nita Prose

Genre: Holiday Romance-ish / My rating: B  

When I mentioned how much I absolutely loved Molly, the wonderfully quirky and socially awkward narrator of the The Maid, a few of you piped up to tell me the author recently released The Mistletoe Mystery, a not-so-mysterious Christmasy novella centering around Molly. I couldn’t download it to my Kindle fast enough! I loved having Molly’s voice in my head again, though this was admittedly my least favorite of the three books in The Maid series. However, if you love Molly and you go into this novella understanding it’s not at all a mystery you won’t be able to solve and you’ll know exactly where it’s going from the very beginning, I think you’ll find it to be a charming holiday read with more fluff than the other books in the series.

From Amazon: 

Molly Gray has always loved the holidays. When Molly was a child, her gran went to great lengths to make the season merry and bright, full of cherished traditions. The first few Christmases without Gran were hard on Molly, but this year, her beloved boyfriend and fellow festive spirit, Juan Manuel, is intent on making the season Molly’s mofinst joyful yet.

But when a Secret Santa gift exchange at the Regency Grand Hotel raises questions about who Molly can and cannot trust, she dives headfirst into solving her most consequential—and personal—mystery yet. Molly has a bad feeling about things, and she starts to wonder: has she yet again mistaken a frog for a prince?

• Friday Flashbacks

Easy Holiday Breakfast Recipes (For a festive way to begin the day!)

Slow Cooker Holiday Mulled Wine (One of my favorite festive drinks and perfect to make for a holiday party or even a small family gathering.)

Question of the Day

What is one thing you are looking forward to over the next week or two? 

What is one thing making you smile this week?