One of the shows we love to watch at bedtime with the boys is "Nailed It".  It's a baking competition amongst people who have no clue how to bake.  Then they have to recreate these masterpieces and they fail miserably.  It's pretty funny and the boys love it.  I saw a cookie kit at Costco awhile ago so I decided we'd have our own Nailed It competition.

The picture on the box...

Kade's

Mason's

The pictures on the box...

Erik's

Kristi's

Yep, that's mine.  

Nailed It!!

Mason showing off the ship him and Erik put together.

Kade and I picked out gifts for the sharing tree this year at the last minute.

He was so embarrassed I made him take a picture but he did pose!

Christmas with my parents.

They ended up going to Atlanta to visit my brother's family.  We were supposed to go too but Covid changed our plans.  None of us had it, we just didn't want to risk it with kids/airports/etc.  So we celebrated with them a week early, since it'll be awhile until we see them again due to their quarantine period after they get back.

Nothin' says Christmas like Grandpa shootin' a gun!!!

 

I've been saying this a lot lately but what a crazy year!!  Last week we "celebrated" Christmas with Erik's family.  I say that in quotes because half of the family wasn't there and we made the plans, literally, an hour before presents were opened.  Poor grandma was frantically wrapping and throwing together a couple snacks at the very last minute.  

We have been quarantining with Erik's sister Jenna's family because of all of us, I'm the only one going in to work and the kids are all so close they're best friends/cousins.  It's helped us all keep our sanity! However, due to some of Jay's family members coming in from out of state for the holidays, our time was limited.  Add to that Grandma and Grandpa taking care of grandkids that are in daycare, we figured last Friday night was probably the last time we could be together before exposure to "new" people.  

Anyway, as confusing as that all was, I had to document it so we can look back and see how ridiculous all of these plans are just because of stupid Covid.  Just to be clear, we're all family but because of different exposures, different daily situations, governor's orders, etc. we can't all be together.  I'm sure we're still breaking some sort of guideline but we're doing the best we can with small children and mental health!!

That said, the kids had a wonderful Christmas sleepover with Grandpa and Grandma H!  Plus, they got to open some presents early and no kid is going to turn that down!!

Kade got set up with new hockey gear!

Can't go wrong with fishing gear for Mase!

After the Friday night sleepover we hosted the annual cookie bake.  Again, 3/5 of the family was missing and it just wasn't the same.  We did manage to make a lot of cookies though.  The kids played and had a great time and the husband's even helped a lot more this year due to the lack of our usual group of cookie bakers.

 

Just a few pictures this week.

A couple pictures my dad sent me of Kade hunting

Mason was supposed to be doing some school work but fishing ALWAYS comes first with him!!

FINALLY got into the Christmas spirit at our house!!

 

My holiday decorating has been very delayed this year!  This would've been the year to decorate right after Halloween (although I'm not sure I could) because of all the extra time on our hands, however we've had some significant house projects going on!  Not only did we replace the tile and trim in our entryway and office, we also took out the carpet island in our living room and replaced it with wood.  That project happened the week of Thanksgiving so I've been spending a lot of time cleaning and wiping up A TON of dust.  I finally got the decorations up this weekend, which just means we get to keep them up longer on the back end of the holidays!!  

The first week of online learning went ok.  Poor Erik is being pulled in a lot of different directions during the day and depending on the chaos at the time, his text updates are either:  the world is ending or heartwarming stories about the boys and puppies.  We just keep reminding ourselves that everyone is in this situation so deep breaths, head down and power through!

Before and after

The weather is insane right now!

I just had to get a picture of the boys playing outside on December 2nd without coats!

And in Mason's case, without shoes and socks either!  The crazy part is, he actually didn't need them it was that warm out!!

This video is from November 26th.

The boys love it when there's just enough snow to cover the ground.

They drive around pulling each other on the sled for HOURS!

 

As I was looking through pictures for this week's post I realized I'm finally caught up!  I better remember to snap some pictures next week or it'll be a pretty boring post (I mean, even more boring than usual).   

Thanksgiving was this past week, we didn't get together with Erik's side because there's just too many of us.  We did have my parents over though.  Kade and Grandpa Ranger have been deer hunting a lot so we've been hunkering down with them anyway.  Hopefully we can get a couple weeks of social distancing under our belt now that Mason is out of school too and can see Erik's family again.   

Such a strange and confusing world we're living in now!  Erik, Mason and I are homebodies for the most part anyway but Kade is a social butterfly who always has to have a plan.  He's been fine because of deer hunting but now that that's over (he didn't get one), he's going to struggle a bit.  Fingers crossed they're able to go back to school in January!! 

For a few weeks it was just Erik and Kade home while I was at work and Mason was at school.

Kade getting in some physical fitness.

(i.e. Erik making him burn off some ever present energy)

The puppies don't know what to do with themselves with all of these people home all of the time!

Working on their Christmas list.

Kade's had exactly 1 thing: Tyreek Hill jersey.

You know you're spoiled when you can't think of anything you want for Christmas!!

Mason's had a couple more:

bait caster

surf board

BB gun

Take one guess which one of those things he'll actually be getting!

You would think that one (or both) of them had farted but nope, they were pretending to be firemen.

Covid hair!

It finally got long enough to annoy him, I cut it right after this picture was taken.