Happy November and early Thanksgiving, y’all! It’s What’s Up Wednesday with Shay and Sheaffer!
What We’re Eating…
Steven is on call at the hospital this week, so we have no way of knowing when he will get home every night and if he’ll have to go back in, so I learned last time that our best bet is to have meals that are either easy to reheat (and still taste good), or things that are really fast to make (otherwise he’s hitting take out every night on his way home). Having Thanksgiving this week actually makes it a little easier because that meal is easy to reheat and still tastes good, so that’s one down, haha!
Sunday: Pizza take out from our local pizza place. (I bought groceries and then drove straight from the grocery store to Italiano’s because who cooks right after you buy groceries, right??)
Monday: Pizza leftovers
Tuesday: Chicken spaghetti with green beans and garlic bread
Wednesday: Leftover chicken spaghetti
Thursday (aka Thanksgiving!): Beef tenderloin, Pioneer Woman fancy mac and cheese, asparagus, and dinner rolls with chocolate pie for dessert. (This will be our second time in four married years to have Thanksgiving on our own at our house, and this is my go to. I’m not confident enough to make the traditional turkey and dressing meal and think it will turn out better than what I have planned, and a full turkey dinner seems like way more food that what we need anyway).
Friday: Thanksgiving leftovers. (You aren’t really living until you’ve had cold tenderloin from the fridge as a snack. Or warm tenderloin straight from the oven. Tenderloin is probably my favorite food, haha! Especially sandwiched in a dinner roll!)
Saturday: Lasagna with garlic bread and a vegetable (I’ve been using Ree’s recipe the last few times I’ve made lasagna, and I really like it! The Italian sausage mixed in with the regular ground beef gives it an extra kick of flavor.)
Sunday: Leftover lasagna
(and bonus points for you if you get the pattern, haha!!)
What I’m Reminiscing About…
Look at that precious little turkey this time last year! I thought she was so big back then, so it feels like she’s practically a teenager now!
This was the same day we also ended up with our first picture with Santa… lovebug was not a fan! Luckily this was a free experience at Bass Pro, and we’ll see if we can talk her into it this year!
What I’m Loving…
A few random things…
- Covergirl Trublend Undercover Concealer – this is a decent dupe for Tarte Shape Tape in my humble opinion. Not completely- it’s not quite as heavy of a coverage, but to me, that makes it a little less drying. For a 1/3 of the price and the fact that I can get it at the same place I buy groceries rather than making a special trip to Ulta, I’d say it’s worth it.
- The Star From Afar – When I was pregnant with Olivia, I started wrestling a lot with Christmas and how we want to present this to our children, and what traditions we want to start and how that will shape them as people. We will still do Santa, but I’ve come to a point that I want less emphasis placed on Santa and more mainstream Christmas, and more focus on Advent and Jesus. Not to say that we’ll go overboard that way either- I think you can do both, and everyone can have a fun and merry Christmas, but one of the choices we made leaning toward more Jesus than Santa was to not do Elf on the Shelf, and do a similar Biblical activity instead. The Star from Afar has a book that details the nativity story, and a full nativity scene made of blocks. On the first day of December, you set up the nativity and read the story. There is a star that you as the parent move to different locations of your house (like you would the Elf), and when your kids find the star, you move the 3 Wise Men to the star, and read a corresponding verse from a book of verse cards. As you get closer to Christmas, you move the star and the Wise Men closer and closer to the nativity until they all end up together on Christmas day. I think this is still a little over Olivia’s head this year, but I’m going to set up the nativity and read her the stories and verses. She’s too small probably to actively find the star everyday, but we’ll get some practice this year, and probably be good to go full stop next year.
- For All: An Advent Study of the Christmas Story by Becky Kiser (and other additional authors) – and along the same lines, I’ve tried to refocus myself during Christmas the last few years as well. A few years ago (probably the first Christmas we were married aka, my first Christmas as a full legit grown-up), it somehow randomly clicked with me the importance of Christmas- the birth of Christ makes the way for our salvation, and Christmas isn’t just a sweet Bible story, but a huge turning point for us as Christians. Since then, I’ve tried to do an Advent study each year in December. One or two years, I’ve done the She Reads Truth study on the app, and I think the year before last, I did Ann Voscamp’s The Greatest Gift and it was really good. This year, I’ll be doing this For All study and I’m so excited! It’s a workbook style study, which I am HERE FOR ALL DAY- I love filling in blanks and everything looking all organized and whatnot vs. just a read and reflect style study.
What I’ve Been Up To…
I shared most of the details of our last few weeks on my last post but we found out we’re getting a niece at the same time as Henry and we bought Steven a new truck this past month!
What I’ve Been Working On…
Trying to keep a million lists organized- what we need for Henry, what we need for Olivia (moving to a big girl room, for Christmas, for toddler development, basically all the things, haha!), what we need for everyone’s Christmas gifts (and what can I get on sale on Black Friday!), what I need to be doing at this current moment that I’m probably forgetting…
What I’m Excited About…
Oh, this time of year is just fun- I love the magic of the Christmas season and winter!
What I’m Watching/ Reading…
Well, Dancing With The Stars ended earlier this week (much to my husband’s happiness, haha!), so I’m not sure I have much to keep up with now. I am still invested in the Nancy Drew remake on the CW- it’s a little dark and twisty, but I’m curious to see where they will take it. And Christmas movies, of course! I’m also very, very slowly working my way through the newest season of The Crown. It’s one that requires a lot of time and attention, so I haven’t made it far, but I like what I’ve seen so far!
I’m not reading anything other than finishing up The Meaning of Marriage for Side by Side. It’s been a really interesting look at marriage and specifically Christian marriage compared to a secular society, and then we are studying it through the additional lens of medical marriage, which has it’s own nuances and challenges, so it’s been really interesting! I’d highly recommend it for any couple or wife, and more specifically for physician wives.
What I’m Listening To…
Not anything in particular (other than my usual podcasts), but it’s about to be all Christmas music all the time, y’all!
What I’m Wearing…
I don’t think I’m wearing anything particularly share worthy (aka I haven’t bought anything recently), but just regular clothes with room for my Henry bump. We’ve had the weirdest weather lately- it has gotten really cold some days (like I wore a sweater and a coat) and then some days (like earlier this week) are in the 80s, so I don’t have a clue what to wear any more. But, I’m pretty much like a USPS Priority Mail Flat Rate box at this point- if it fits, it ships, y’all, regardless of the weather, haha!
What I’m Doing This Weekend…
Next week, we are hosting our Side by Side Bible study Christmas party/ welcome event for next semester at our house, and I’m excited to kick off the Christmas season with something fun! This also means this weekend I need to get in gear and get all my Christmas decorations up! Normally I’ve already had them up for at least a week or two by this time, but I just haven’t gone to the attic to get everything down yet. Since Steven will be working, we’ll see how much Liv and I can get accomplished!
What I’m Looking Forward To Next Month…
Christmas with this little baby angel!! We got her a play kitchen for Christmas, and I’m so excited to play with her with it. We’ll see what other Christmas activities and traditions we can get going, but I’d say so far that Christmas as a parent is pretty fun!
What Else is New…
Liv absolutely loves to wear my sunglasses. I have always bought cheap sunglasses from Target because I can’t trust myself to keep up with them (plus, I like them just as much as any expensive pair I’ve seen, so why would I spend more money?), so I don’t really care if she plays with them. And the laughs we get are definitely worth any potential damage because she looks so funny!
On Sunday morning this past week, she took a break from eating her breakfast while I was getting ready, and ended up in my lap. She loved seeing herself in my make-up mirror and regular mirror, and testing out all the brushes after I’d used them. My little tomboy might be a girly girl after all! (also, I had like half my make-up on, so excuse that weird looking face, haha!)
We took our usual Sunday pictures after a few week hiatus with our travels, and grabbed a few of the two of us since we matched (and to semi-document being halfway done with this pregnancy! These aren’t really bump pics, but they are pics nonetheless!)
And that’s about it! Happy early Thanksgiving, y’all!
“Give thanks to the Lord for He is good; His love endures forever.”
Psalm 107:1
Happy Thanksgiving!! I love the meal you prepare for your Thanksgiving together at home 🙂 And those last pictures of you & Liv are beautiful, you look radiant Morie!
I love the idea of the Star From Afar. What a beautiful way to mark the Advent season. We are trying a reverse Advent calendar for our second year in a row (donating an item each day for the Food Bank) so we’ll see how that goes.