Things continue to be fairly relaxed as far as scheduled events go.  It will be a few more months yet before things really go into overdrive.

• Our oldest had 4 conditioning session and two baseball sessions.
• Our youngest had gym class.
• The twins had their ski lessons.
• They also went to Math Morning and Before School Sports.
• I had a school meeting.

A nice, concise list.  So, what did I do with my seeming abundance of time?

• Most notably, I put to use / put away things we had.
  • We unrolled a new rug and added a rug pad.
    
  • We hung the ball cabinet our oldest got for Christmas.
    
  • We hung a new picture in the dining room.
  • I cut all the tags off the clothing I had ordered for the oldest and put it in his closet.
• I purchased sheets from Target to replace some that had outlived their useful life.  The old sheets will go to the fabric recycling with some other stained/worn items.
• I purchased some heavy duty wall hangers at Home Depot.  I bought a couple of different styles so, now that everything is hung, one will need to be returned.
• I made progress towards cleaning the master bedroom and office.
• I vacuum sealed 6 pouches of potatoes for mashed potatoes to prolong their shelf life.
  

Another snow day!  As you can see we didn’t have that much snow.  And, many people debated the merits of a snow day.  But, I watched more than one vehicle have trouble on the road in front of our house.  Plus these things are so hard to judge, especially when they start in the early morning hours.

Apart from that, we had:

• Three rounds of baseball for the oldest.
• A birthday celebration for the youngest (now 2).
• Three days of after school conditioning for the oldest.
• Before school sports for the twins.
• Skiing lesson for the twins.
• Gym class for the youngest.
• A GNO yoga night for me!
• Math morning for the twins.
• Two doctor appointments.
• And one school meeting.

I’m not sure how many things we finished accomplishing, but we made progress towards many things.

• Christmas & birthday presents continued to be assembled/setup/learned.
• The last of the Christmas items got put away.
• Some other misc boxes found their final resting places.
• I picked out a new picture for the Dining Room.  I still need to hang it.
• I finished up the closet reorg for the youngest two.  I think everyone should be set for clothes this winter, as long as we don’t go through the knees of too many more pants!

Since it was the last week of preschool it was time for me to get everything completed!

• I made more than the usual number of grocery visits.
• I wrapped just about all the presents.  I have five small items left to do.
• I mailed the Christmas cards.
• The boys all had haircuts from the lady that comes to our house.
• We had four swimming lessons plus one free swim session.
• We had two birthday parties.
• I took the youngest to her gym class.
• The oldest had two baseball practices.
• Preschool had their holiday party.  I sent in sliced cucumbers for the red/green theme.
• I made Hot Cross Buns because the younger boys were asking about the song.  They turned out to be quite popular so I’m going to try again with a slightly different recipe.

• I ordered the beef roasts for Christmas dinner.  I’ll pick them up on Saturday.
• We had an early Christmas with my sister who will be elsewhere for the holiday.  They kids enjoyed getting one present early.  And, I think its nice for them to spread things out a bit.

Very busy last week.

• We went to the preschool and middle school winter concerts.  Both boys did a great job with their songs.
• I had a dentist appointment.
• We had the baseball uniform fitting and two baseball practices.
• Two boys were fitted for skis (rentals for their lessons next month).
• We went to four swimming lessons.
• I took the youngest to her gym class, as well as one open gym session.
• The oldest a half day so he went to a trampoline park for the afternoon.
• We took one boy to a birthday party.
• The adults attended the company holiday party.
• Two boys went to math morning.

Along the way:

• I went to the mall twice.  Once for shopping and once to take the youngest two to see Santa.  I was shocked at how empty the mall was on Tuesday (shopping day).  Not only was there parking and relatively few shoppers, but most stores seemed to be on half staff.  Friday (Santa day) was busier, but still not terrible.  I don’t know if its the current state of retail, or if I’m just ahead of the game this year.  I also drove by on Thursday and there was next to no traffic on the main road out front.  In past years that’s been an area to avoid between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
• We had our first snowfall – 6 inches.  The boys all worked together to get the driveway shoveled.  We determined we only have one adult shovel, but five people who could use one that size.  So, I’m on a mission to get a few more.  We have plenty of kid shovels, so some folks resorted to those.  The boys attempted to build snow forts, but ended up with a couple of large snow piles.  It’s been in the 40s since, so I’m not sure how much longer they will last.  It’s raining today, which won’t help.
• Apart from a few gift cards, my shopping should be done.  I just have to wait for a few more packages to arrive by mail and sort through those I have received.  Hopefully I can kick that off today because tomorrow is trash day and I’d just assume get the packaging moved along.

We’re settled in to the early winter schedule now.  Things will change up again in January.  In the past week:

• The twins went to math morning and Before School Sports.
• We had two dentist appointments.
• We had four swimming lessons.
• I took the youngest to gym class and drop in gym.
• The oldest went to a friend’s house.
• The oldest had his first two winter baseball workouts.
• On the middle school half day, the oldest went with the rec department to an Escape Room place.  Never been before, but found it fun which is good because he has a birthday party there in another week.
• I had the last middle school conference.  I think the teachers are a bit worn out from conferences and looking forward to their completion.
• I made reasonable progress on Christmas preparations.
• We have many of the decorations up, but not all.  I need a free evening so I don’t have too much “help” to finish them off.  Even Darth Vader got in on the act.

• Our first grader put some rules up for their room.  Not sure of the inspiration, but the translation:
  Rules
  – No Fighting
  – No Destroying
  – Have Fun!
  – No Throwing

• I finished the freezer audit and will write about it this Thursday.
• I continued making progress on the whole house clean.

So how did the November goals go?

• Finish cleaning the house.  This means everything – under/behind furniture, all surfaces, inside the furniture/cabinets themselves, unfinished areas, etc.  My plan is to start at the top and work my way down.  This is halfway done already.  I expect to finish everything (except maybe the basement and garage).  Almost there.  I’m missing the master bedroom, office, basement, and garage.  At this point the garage may wait until spring unless we have another round of really warm weather.
• Inventory the freezers and plan to use up anything that’s been there for a while.  This is largely in anticipation of holiday meat sales.  Inventory the pantry for things that need to be used up / seasonal items / items that go on sale seasonally.
• Get back on track with four blog posts per week.  I got a little off at the end of the month, but overall this was a success.
• Order and send Christmas cards.  Nope.  Need to hurry up on this one.

So, that sets us up for December.  My goals for this month are:

• Order and send Christmas cards.
• Find/buy/wrap all Christmas presents.  Mail if needed.
• Finish cleaning the master bedroom and garage.  With the holiday break, the other spaces are just going to have to wait for 2018.
• A big recipe clean-out.  You know, all those magazine pages I’ve torn out or websites I’ve printed.  Are we really going to try them?  Also, going through my binder of tried recipes to weed out those we really don’t actually eat.  I’m aiming to try one new recipe each week this winter and I’m on track (minus Thanksgiving week) so far.

Yes, the big item of the week was that we hosted a total of 14 people.  Everything went smoothly.  We spatchcocked two small turkeys vs cooking one big bird.  That really cuts down on oven time, and when you’re eating at lunch means not getting up ridiculously early.

The second big item was I had my TSA Pre-Check interview, and got approved within the same week!  I wasn’t doubting getting approved, but I had heard that one had to apply for this months before one’s travel date.  Apparently that is no longer the case.  I filled in the form online, had the interview, and got approved all within the month of November.

Less significantly:

• Three boys had swimming lessons.
• Two went to math morning.
• I went to a meeting to discuss the future of Halloween celebrations at school.
• I fitted the kids for gloves and boots (last items on the winter clothing checklist).  Gloves we’re all set.  Boots we need one pair.  All in all a pretty efficient year.
• A bag of “lost” items was returned to us from school, about a month after it disappeared.  Nothing very valuable, but nice to have it back.  I also tracked down another child’s lost gloves in the school lost and found.  At the moment, nothing is lost.
• We put up the tree, candles, and exterior Christmas decorations.  Still a few more things to do inside.

Apologies for the late post.  And, the lack of pictures.  I noticed a bunch of blogs I follow were off schedule-wise this week also.  Seems to be part of the season!