Christmas Eve Eve

 I took December 23 off and we spent the day working on last minute Christmas errands.  The niblings hung out with us for a little while so that Aunt Vicky could volunteer at the mall for present wrapping.  We had lunch and then came back to roll out some sugar cookies.  

Reina is happier than she looks.  

Cousins helped me roll out the dough and bake and then Glenn and Reina decorated later that night.  Some serious artistry happening here. 

We wait until the last minute to put any presents under the tree because several of the four-legged members don't abide by the societal rules of "don't open presents before Christmas morning and definitely don't own presents that don't have your name on them."  When we opened up the box from my Aunt Mary (she always sends cat presents) and put the packages under the tree, it instantly became the hot spot for cat hangouts. 

The face of innocence

Will brought home a gingerbread kit last week so he and tried to put it together.  No pictures because it wasn't exactly structurally sound.  But we had fun.  It reminded me of the days of Lego building and teamwork and all of that good stuff.  It was a sweet way to start off the holiday weekend. 

A weird week

We've had a weird week at the Pauley household.  On Saturday, while walking into the high school (our rival high school) for Will's wrestling meet, I slipped on the one patch of ice in the parking lot and fell like the middle aged person I am and wrenched my ankle.  A lot of drama ensued but long story short, Glenn took me to the ER where I found out I didn't break anything but just sprained it.  For the first time in my life, I have crutches although by this point in the week, I'm feeling much better and don't need them anymore.  

Well that was weird.  And super inconvenient because I had a ton of Christmas chores to get done. 

Yesterday and today, Reina has stayed home from school with a virus that is not covid, the flu or strep.  That's the good news.  She does feel pretty puny and we had to miss the annual trolley/Christmas lights tour but she got some meds for the accompanying ear infection and hopefully she'll start feeling better soon.  I stayed home with her today because she wanted the company and needed someone to bring her sprite and jello every 5 minutes.  

Dress shopping with a teen

 Reina had a school dance at the beginning of December and she wanted a winter-y dress to wear.  She showed me some pictures online and finally on Black Friday, we braved the mall to do a little shopping.  

Our first stop was TJ Maxx because I remember finding cute prom dresses there.  Unfortunately we didn't find anything that passed the Reina Test even though I lobbied hard for these festive kitten overalls.  Holiday!  Velvet!  Cat!  Modest!  

Next we went to our only big department store in the mall and hit the jackpot.  The entire junior dress section was full of moms and teens looking for the perfect jr high dance dress.  Some of the dresses were even on sale.  I really liked this one and Reina didn't mind it so we got it as a church dress but not a DANCE dress.  

Reina and her chaperone on the big night. 

The winner!  She was happier than she looks in this picture. 















 

We are a wrestling family now apparently.

 Will is a couple of weeks into his JV wrestling season.  He's never been on a wrestling team and except for a brief two week camp in second grade (third grade?), he's never wrestled.  He joined to help get him ready for next year's football season.  The workouts are tough, the rules of wrestling are confusing (to me) but he is making it work.  I printed off a 'wrestling for dummies' cheat sheet to take to his first competition last week and he won in a pin after about 30 seconds.  That's one of the fun parts of wrestling - none of these pesky 60 minute games and time outs and halftime and everything.  Just wrestle!  He participated in a tournament this weekend and won 2 out of his 3 matches.  He keeps trying to practice his moves on Glenn and that's probably not going to end well.  Will thinks that Reina should try wrestling next year because there's a girls team too.  Mom has thoughts.  Until then, let's go watch some wrestling!  

Snow Day

UGH it's been way too long since I wrote on this lonely blog.  Fate intervened and we have a snow day today.  A snow day that's exactly 4 days away from a two week Christmas vacation for the kids.  To clarify, today is not a full snow day, it's a virtual learning day which means Will is holed up in his room powering through all of his classes as fast as possible and Reina and I are sitting on the sofa while she works on earth science and I write this post.  Later we'll do some baking, maybe some house cleaning (ha ha ha) and start the Christmas letter.  Glenn is on a work trip and may be there for a little longer than planned if this storm is a bad as predicted.  I'm going to catch us up with one post an hour today.  Here we go!  

Obligatory cute cat picture