Christmas 2019 (What's New Link Up)

We had such a great December and Christmas this year. It was SO busy leading up to Christmas and there were definitely some tired tears on the part of my beautiful children but they are at a magical age for this season and I loved that.

We had a bit more downtime over the holidays than we usually do too and I appreciated that! I came back to work feeling more refreshed than I usually do after the season, so I can't complain at all! Here are a few pictures of what we did over the holidays:

We spent a lot of time with my sister, her husband and their kids. This was my nephew's first Christmas and he typically seems to let me cuddle with him more than most babies do so I take full advantage of that whenever I can. (not sharing photos because he's not my child ;)). So cute though. We were fortunate to see almost all of our immediate families except my brother who stayed in Alberta for Christmas with his fiance :)

The girls were overjoyed with their lego sets from Santa and had them all built by noon on Dec 26 despite a busy Christmas day. Haha. They got a lot of other fun toys and warm clothes etc. They were happiest with the packages of plain white paper Santa brought them so they can draw pictures anytime they want without asking me for paper (really this was a gift to me from me). My dad also made him this Hogwarts cribbage board so we taught them how to play :)

Molly read a ton of books over the holidays and seemed to spend a lot of the early mornings reading in bed, which was wonderful for me (so I could sleep in) and relaxing for her. I made her take a picture with all of her books :) We also took the girls to see Frozen 2 with my niece. I LOVED THIS MOVIE SO MUCH and cried throughout. Lol. It was really fun though :)

We did a family outing night to the museum in Halifax to see Gus, the 97 year old gopher tortoise, and then to see the incredible Christmas lights display put on for charity by two doctor brothers downtown. These houses are incredible and such a sight to see around this time of the year.

We had friends over for New Year's which was lovely and so much fun and very low key. We celebrated around 7 pm with a toast with the girls which was basically the highlight of their whole holiday season to drink apple juice out of crystal glasses and dance around to Auld Lang Syne #itsthelittlethings

I will also be sharing in a future post all the fun Christmas books we read this year and we didn't get to too many Christmas movies but we did get a chance to watch Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire with Molly while Lucy played at my sister's house and then Lucy picked the movie 101 Dalmatians while her sister was at a bday party the next day.

We had some great food but I was feeling pretty sluggish so I started back at my Couchto5k app on Boxing Day and Molly decided to do some of the runs with me - which was SUPER motivating surprisingly and now I'm on week 3 which is feeling great. I'm actually making a bit of use of the basement treadmill too which means Brian won't make me get rid of it. ;) I also was able to go to a great concert on a night out with my mother and mother in law to see Port Cities in their final concert as a group. It was definitely really special and one of the best gifts I received this season. Brian and I bought each other new cell phones for Christmas which is why some of these photos are exceptional and others are from my previous 5 year old cell phone camera. HAHA. :)

Anyway - all in all, a lovely, magnificent holiday season but really enjoying 2020 so far too.

Linking up VERY BELATEDLY with Kristen today!!! :)

What's New Lately :)

Happy December!! I haven't really felt a strong desire to blog lately, partially because life is flying by at a rapid pace and I just don't feel like I have the time or energy to sit down and write about it, and partially because I have a few new projects on the go and I don't know exactly how to transition from this space online to a potential new one in 2020. That being said, I couldn't miss two months in a row linking up with my favourite Kristen for her what's new link up so even though it's a few days late, here is a bit of what's been going on lately!!!

November was a grey and yucky month in Halifax and the weather took a chillier turn than usual for this time of year. We also had a few snows and we don't typically have a bad snow storm until December. Things have been pretty busy at work AND with children's activities in the evenings but we still had some fun. The girls are loving Sparks and Brownies and they are both taking step dancing now together too. In Sparks and Brownies, both girls had their "enrollment" which is a special ceremony. The sparks one involved a rainbow slide that I made and Molly's involved a fair amount of singing which I had to miss for Sparks :)

I documented one whole day on Instagram which made me realize that my days are REALLY boring hour by hour. LOL. This was one of the highlights:

We finished Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire in November (sob) and Molly has decided this is her favourite of the books so far (I couldn't agree more). We remembered those who fought and still fight to protect our country on Remembrance Day. We saw friends from near and far. As always, we spent a lot of time with our family including celebrating one of my wonderful aunts on her retirement. We also had a little surprise party for one of Brian's friends and that was nice to see a big group of people we've been friends with for years and years and don't see nearly as often as we used to. Lucy also lost her first tooth in November! She swallowed it while we were eating popcorn and watching a movie. OOOPS! Lol. It was humorous. :) I read a lot of books including audiobooks, watched some of The Office with Brian and Miss Fisher's on my own, and did a bit of writing and Christmas crafting etc.

In the past few weeks, I've gotten really caught up in all of the busyness associated with this season and I am really trying to remind myself to slow down and focus on what really matters the most. I am finding it so easy to get caught up in what everyone else is doing thanks to social media and I really want to just sit down and focus on quality time with my beloved family. We did a lot of that this weekend and it was precious. We have also loved following along with Everyday Reading's Rad Reader Advent Calendar for this reason. We are all a little bit overtired but these next two weeks will have some moments of joy amidst all the hustle and bustle too. This time of year makes me feel SO nostalgic and I also feel quite acutely that these moments are fleeting so I want to soak them all up.

That's really about it!!! I'm sure more has been going on but it isn't coming to me at the moment ;) Check out Kristen's post to see everyone else's posts there!!

May 2019 Recap - What's New Link Up :)

As I expected it would, May flew by in a flash!!! We had tons of busy weekends and spring/summer activities overlapped. I can't wait for the next week or two in June for things to settle into JUST summer activities for our little family :) Linking up with my book bestie Kristen to share what's new lately and do a May recap. I bug her all day every day with annoying life tidbits so this recap might not be for her but for the rest of you. Haha.

I didn't take TONS of pictures in May looking back over the month but I did take quite a few screenshots?! I'm not going to include those because they don't really make sense out of context.

At the beginning of May, I was inspired by someone on Instagram to go for a walk every day. It helps that the weather is (generally) better at this time of the year and much more conducive to being outdoors. I missed maybe 3 days but walked for at least half an hour outdoors every single day. It was SO nice and so good for the head. I have put running on the backburner in the last year or so and my desire just isn't there to run these days but walking is a nice pace (I do still try to go fast!!!) and it really allows me to relax and enjoy the outdoors in a way that running doesn't. I love getting in some audiobook time, a phone chat, or a podcast when walking too. Going to keep this up over the summer for sure. I've never been much of a "walker" but it is good enough exercise and makes me happy = works for me!

One thing that was an intense part of May was that I caught a super annoying cold that turned into a crazy cough that I STILL have not completely kicked. That really knocked me out for a bit there - poor sleep and sore tummy from coughing. That was how I spent Mother's Day weekend, mostly, unfortunately!! We had a chance to celebrate my mom and my mother in law too though and my husband made the day unbelievably special for me.

We also got to have a date night which didn't quite go as planned for various reasons, but it was nice to be out and about. The girls had a sleepover at my parent's house and that was nice for all of us - they hadn't done that in a while! It's our anniversary this weekend so we will probably go out for supper again sometime soon. The girls also started their annual running series and they had one race in May and one this past weekend - they are still loving that! It's such a great, happy environment for kids running.

There was a LOT of rain in Halifax this month and it's continuing into June, but hopefully more sporadic. Brian missed at least 4 baseball games due to rain at the start of his season and Lucy's first soccer practice was canceled last night too.

I read a lot of books, as usual, including some re-reads (The Hating Game and Happiness for Beginners, both were amazing), and played a lot of board games with the kids, as usual too. I watched a couple of movies including Always Be My Maybe on Netflix which was really cute. I was happy to see a few friends and try out a pub session playing the fiddle with some friends from university. I don't have pictures of any of these things really but I DID do them. Haha.

Overall, I think I just really tried to focus on being outdoors, stressing less, and being present this month. The summer is almost always really busy and I try to embrace that but it's not as easy as it sounds. I'm learning to say no to things sometimes and say yes to other things sometimes too. I'm trying my best to keep in touch with some important core friends and let them know I am thinking of them often. Here's to an awesome summer ahead. We just made it through the first intense birthday season (kind of) and the next one is in August. :)

What's new with you?!

What's New Link up: December 2018 Recap

Happy New Year!!!!

Eventually (tomorrow probably), I plan to share 2018 highlights in general. Today, however, I'm linking up with Kristen today to chat about what's new and share my December in a nutshell! Go check out her post and everyone else's and send her some love and sunshine at the start of this new year. :)

Every year, December is our busiest month, closely followed by September. This year was the busiest yet (though I see next year being even worse with two children in school). I had a mix of personal fun events and children's events and family events and work was busy and WOW. Luckily, we really slowed down and I was off from Dec 21 until today which is my first day back at work. The downtime (relatively speaking) at home was a blessing and we spent a lot of time as a family just hanging out, which was wonderful.

We got our Christmas tree the first weekend in December (Dec 1) and it is still up, so I really need to take it down tomorrow/Saturday because it is SO dry now. The first full week of December was busy, we had parent/teacher interviews with Molly's teacher, which went well, and then we had Molly's first ever piano recital, which was so well done! She did a great job playing her three Christmas songs and we were proud of her confidence. The other children all played recognizable songs and it wasn't too long overall so it was nice. :) We also had a first fluke "snow storm" day in which the power went out so we all stayed home - it was weird and unexpected.

The following week, I got to go hear Louise Penny speak about her newest book with 600 other people in Halifax with my mom! It was a great event - she spoke a lot about her career as a writer, her relationship with her late husband, and Three Pines and Gamache. It was perfect. We got to meet her (again) and got a picture with her and get her latest book signed. It was so fun and really special. I am a huge fan so I was overjoyed at meeting her again, especially on the last stop of her tour and in my city! :)

Unfortunately, the rest of that week involved all of my immediate family members coming down with a stomach bug (luckily I dodged it but I got very little sleep caring for sick kiddos), but we all recovered quickly. Molly had her school Christmas concert which Brian actually had to miss because he was sooo sick. Her concert was awesome this year and my in-laws (retired full-time teachers) said that it was the best they'd ever seen. There was one hilarious kid who was way more into his class's song than his classmates and his enthusiasm brought me tears of laughter so that was fun :) It was great!

Later that week I was privileged enough to attend a songwriter's circle put on by my work for free with my dad. It was a great night out with some well-known local/national singer-songwriters and some great stories and laughter. As you can imagine, I was exhausted after that week and took the next week a bit slower :)

We wrapped up all of our extra-curricular activities and slowed down a bit for the holidays - although I was still doing Christmas shopping on DECEMBER 23 this year and that was unnecessarily stressful - will do better in 2019!!!! We had a postal strike here this fall so I ordered less online and that contributed to this last-minute stress. Anyway, it all got done, we all got sufficiently spoiled, our house is full of new toys/puzzles/gadgets and we have eaten more treats in the past two weeks than we probably did the rest of 2018...so there's that. We got to see almost all of our friends and all of our family except some of my aunts, uncles, and cousins and my brother who lives out west. We had lots of fun days at home in our pyjamas and some evenings out with friends. The break was wonderful and special this year and I tried my best to soak it all up.

My girls both got Lego sets from Santa and us and some other sets too. They are hooked on Lego!! I also made them Harry Potter robes and Brian 3d printed them wands that light up so they can dress up :) It was so fun! My mother in law made them beautiful mermaid blankets which they love, and we got some puzzles and board games. Brian bought me a surprise gift - a new HP netbook which will make blogging & online activities a bit more fun in 2019 :) 

For New Year's Eve we had one of our favourite couples over for some board games and appetizers for supper and it was great. We get a great view of fireworks in the horizon off our deck and that was fun at midnight even though it was freezing out! The next day was a tough one after being up late with our friends having heated debated about weird topics but we alternated some adult naps with parenting and it was all good ;) Brian spent the majority of the last 4 days of the break working on a 1000 piece Hogwarts puzzle that "Sirius Black" left for all of us for Christmas <--- my older daughter was super stressed and puzzled about that little joke. Haha.

We are heading into the new year rejuvenated and ready to get back into a routine. I am dying to declutter again and I will slowly pick away at it. I am also doing the Dedicate 30 Day Challenge with Yoga with Adriene. 

I'll be back tomorrow like I said with my highlights of 2018 :) And back to chat about the books I've been reading lately next Tuesday for Show us Your Books!!!!

What's new with you? Anyone do anything fun over the holidays?!

What's New - What We Did in August

Happy Thursday!! I know I've drifted off from this space, but that's just how it goes. I am surviving the first week of school - my daughter had a great first day yesterday. She is in a 2/3 split this year (grade 2) and she loves her teacher (who is new to the school). We are so excited to see all of the things she learns this year. If there was ever a kid that was meant to be in school, she's the one.

Linking up with my AWESOME friend Kristen today to share a few of the things we did in August. Mostly, we went to the beach a lot, went on vacation, celebrated my birthday, went to the beach some more, tackled our first case of headlice (OMG), and I'd say that's about it in a nutshell. :)

Here are a few pictures:

We have these wonderful friends that we made through school last year - when my girls are at the beach with them, the hours FLY by and it is seriously some of the easiest parenting I've done. The beach near us is absolutely beautiful and has been SO warm this year (it's the Atlantic Ocean so it normally isn't) - btw - this is warm by Canadian standards LOL. We spent 3/4 days of the long weekend in August at the beach with these friends.

The following weekend we went to a family reunion with 150 people in my mom's extended family at a little cottage resort area in Cape Breton. It was tons of fun - so nice to meet cousins I'd never met and reconnect with people we hadn't seen in ages. My husband had a bit less fun although he did get to golf for 7 hours one of the days we were there. The girls were in and out of the pool and playground constantly and met a lot of their family. It was great :)

From there we packed up and took the ferry over to Prince Edward Island. We camped there for 2 nights near Cavendish (home of Anne of Green Gables) and it was really nice. We took the girls to a waterpark/amusement park and they had the time of their lives. I'm not going to lie - Brian and I loved the waterslides too and I was really just so happy that our girls are actually old enough to do stuff like this now!! Our summers moving forward are going to be incredible. 

We celebrated my birthday by eating donuts for breakfast in the campground, visiting the Green Gables historical site, going out for lunch, spending a few hours at the beach, checking out a used book store :D, and checking into an Airbnb in Charlottetown to have pizza, cheesecake, and watch Guernsey once the kids went to bed. It was perfect in every way and I am going to try my best to be on vacation for my bday moving forward - I've often worked but this was the best. :)

The day after that, Molly and I went to see Anne & Gilbert in Charlottetown and we got some Cows ice cream YUM. The Anne & Gilbert musical was SO good. It follows the second and third novels so it's more romantic than the first Anne of Green Gables and the music was incredible. It was very funny and although it is mostly about their love story, it was perfectly good for Molly (almost 7) and she laughed a lot. We then drove home (~4 hours) and it was great to be home with our air conditioning to sleep. Haha.

We took a day at home after getting back and then we took a day trip to another amusement park that we'd bought a Groupon for earlier in the summer. It was fun and a bit tiring. :) The next week we were back to reality and that was okay too.

We spent the last weekend of August at a wedding in Antigonish where my grandmother lives and where I went to university. It was a lovely wedding and we saw a lot of people I hadn't seen in years. It was definitely a very fun time and the girls enjoyed their sleepover with my in-laws. We hadn't been to a wedding in awhile and we don't have any more on the horizon - most of our friends are married now actually! Brian and I also played our favourite wedding game which is requesting certain songs from the DJ and then watching everyone flood the dance floor and love our requests ;)

The Monday after the wedding away, we realized Molly had head lice and that was probably one of the worst moments ever. I guess you could call it a parenting rite of passage but I hope it never happens to us again. I think we fought it off and none of the rest of us seem to have gotten it but it was a lot of laundry, hair combing, and shampooing. Ugh.

That's pretty much August!!! September feels fresh and new and I am loving it so far. Make sure you check out Kristen's blog to see who else is talking about what's new lately :) I will be back tomorrow for 14 Things Friday and next week is Show Us Your Books so I am trying to finish a few more before the link up! ;)

May recap - What's New Lately :)

Linking up with my awesome friend Kristen to share what's new and exciting around here lately :) I'll be doing a brief May recap!

May was a good month here with a lot of sunny days and time outside. Molly is learning how to ride her bike without training wheels and she's doing great! Here are two videos (the first is an awesome example of my husband's incredible falling skills) and the second is her success!!!

We also had a lot of time at various playgrounds, celebrated a few birthdays, saw a few friends, and celebrated Mother's Day (which was lovely this year). 

I got into biking a little bit mostly due to Molly and that was fun!! Things changed a bit at work and my workload is changing off and on, so that has been interesting too. 

I went to see I Feel Pretty with a good friend and liked it more than I expected to - it really made me think. That same weekend, I also spent most of that Saturday watching the Royal Wedding <3 and listening to You are a Badass, so there were a lot of thoughts swirling around my head about being the best you can be and really believing in yourself. More thoughts on that if I ever get them written down. 

I went to the ECMA awards show with my friend Laura and that was a fun night! So many different musical performances in one sitting. Definitely did not regret that night out :) 

I got quite involved planning Molly's school's spring fair fundraiser with the PTO which was a ton of work and was last weekend, so that was basically the entire last week of May in a nutshell. 

June is shaping up to be pretty busy with soccer season starting and the girls have another race this weekend. We have a lot of birthdays and our anniversary and father's day in June too, so it feels like a celebration every few days, haha. We were fortunate to have a visit from my sister in law and brother in law this month too:

As usual, I read quite a few good books this month and listened to a few awesome audiobooks too. I also re-watched Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Pride & Prejudice (2005) and enjoyed both of those. Brian and I have some plans to watch a few more of the Harry Potter movies again this month - it's more exciting to share the story with someone else although I am also hoping to re-read Goblet of Fire this summer!!

I've been sick the past few days so I am a bit behind on blogging, but will be trying to catch up this weekend since we don't have too much on the go. 

That's about it - what's new and exciting with you?! I'll be back tomorrow with 14 Things I'd Like to Do Someday for my 14 Things Friday post :) Check out Kristen's blog to see others who linked up today!! 

April Recap (What's New Link Up)

April showers better bring May flowers this year because we are drowning in rain around here these days. That being said, we also had some truly gorgeous weather during April and even some colder snowy days. It was truly all over the place. Our little family had a pretty good month overall though :)

Linking up today with one of my faves KRISTEN to chat about What's New :)

March used to be the month where we started doing things with the outside world again, but I felt like April was that this time. But as always, writing it out never seems like much! With the weather improving, KC and I have gone on a couple of walks and Chelsea and I have been hanging on our little porch concrete square thing.

The girls started their races for the summer! The first one went really well - the second one got rained out.

Brian found a book he actually wants to read! #hehatestrump #fireandfury

We got to see a lot of friends, we had a date night which was great, we watched a few good movies including Still Life (the first Louise Penny book made into a movie), Wonder (which was INCREDIBLE), and another season of Modern Family (love that show). Also watched a few good kids movies like Anastasia <3 and Ferdinand :)

Went to the playground a bunch of times...

Gave the girls both haircuts again despite promising myself I wasn't going to do that again (haha)

Jumped in a bunch of puddles

And looked everywhere for Lucy under this umbrella :)

All in all - April had a few ups and downs, but what month doesn't? We are getting super excited for the summer to come (I will be off on Mondays and Fridays = AMAZING). I'm so excited for a little vacation we're taking to PEI in August and a lot of fun beach days and playdates and all of that. Already May is starting off strong too with some lovely weather and a lot of motivation!!! GO MAY GO! ;) 

PS: I also read a bunch of great books which I will chat about next Tuesday for SUYB!!! And tomorrow I'll have another 14 Things Friday post up :) 

What's New (March recap)

March flew by for sure but I can't say it was overly busy. Mostly, I read a lot and spent a lot of time with my kids and my family. I can't complain - it was great. It was also the most wintery month we've had yet in Halifax this year so there was that. Some snow, an ice storm, loss of power, etc. etc. Linking up with my amazing friend Kristen to share what's new lately :)

Here are a few things we did in the past month:

I got my hair cut - back to my preferred length of a bob (4 inches off - ish)...and I love it. I am SO happy. Also, I can't remember if I mentioned this amazing tool that Brian got me for Christmas but it makes my hair soooo easy to do in the morning and I have been using it often. Anyway - super happy about that :) However I don't have any great pictures of it! LOL. #momlife

The girls had March break so I spent 3/5 days at home with them and that was so nice. We had a few adventures and also did some fun things around the house and had a few play dates. They spent one day with my in-laws and one day with Brian and had such a good week. It was nice to have that extra time with them but we were all ready to return to normal afterwards. My parents also took them overnight one night and Brian and I had a date night out - then watched comedy videos at home for 2 hours on YouTube. lol. We would have gone out to a movie but it was snowing a ton.

We went to the St. Patrick's Day parade for the first time and honestly it wasn't anything to write home about but the girls enjoyed the playground downtown as well as the ferry ride over there. It was a good outing :) We caught some live music a few times during the month too - on St. Patrick's Day at an Irish pub by our house and one other time when my cousin was playing.

Both girls were a bit sick off and on after March break but got over it quickly and it was nothing too major. We began to gear up to celebrate Lucy's 4th birthday (don't even ask me how bittersweet this is) with a few of her little friends. It was such a fun afternoon and made me so grateful that she has actually made a few lovely little friends her age.

We celebrated Easter with my in-laws and my parents/sister and her family and it was very nice and quite relaxed overall. This year, the Easter bunny concocted quite an elaborate 40-clue scavenger hunt for Molly and Lucy which was a bit time consuming but 100% worth it. They eventually solved all the clues and found their Easter baskets in the oven. They absolutely LOVED this so it is obviously going to be a tradition moving forward because the hunt took 45 minutes instead of 45 seconds. Unfortunately I also don't have any great pictures of our Easter because I am trying to spend less time with my phone. My brother in law took some great pictures but I don't have them in my possession yet!!!

Personally, I read tons of books...literally I am addicted to reading lately and I think it is a bit unhealthy to be honest. I finished my second French class and I am moving on to the next level next week. I am trying to get back into running slowly...lol. Really, I just do a lot of reading and parenting and working. haha.

I also wanted to share this wonderful quote I came across this month:

So that's about it - what's new with you?