The Week Before Christmas

Really really really wonderful to have Luke home for a stretch while the band takes a holiday break.

Our weekend according to my phone.

This is my tracker for the workout below -- I finished it in 37:39. The workout is named after my Iron class-mate Nellie who's completely changed her body in 18 months and is hella strong and keeps me accountable for our 5 am classes! (When I know I can't make it, I check in with Nellie to log my excused absence).

Bedhead.

We've embarked on a low carb (Luke)/lower carb (moi) lifestyle change after Luke read a book I heard about in Better Than Before. (He e-mailed the author a question and received a reply within hours, fun huh?). I spent a lot of time in the kitchen this weekend, which I love. I made our favorite sausage and squash sheet pan meal - C picks out all the cherries and sausage bits to eat. I used sage from my driveway garden. Call me Alice Waters.

Swinging at Landa.

Giggles.

Name That Tune! The last song is "God Our Father" (aka God of Party) or here, God of Food or the Food Song -- they must sing it before lunch at school.

On Saturday night we went to Target because I wanted to pick up their Christmas presents -- a baby doll of her own for Josie (to diffuse the Solomonic fights over Big Baby - a mom can dream) and Magna-Tiles for C because her teacher reports they are her favorite toy. Luke took C in one cart and I had Josie in another. Then I remembered that Luke and I have very different Target shopping styles -- he finds what he needs and checks out and doesn't understand why I need to cruise the aisles and just see what's new and spend some time in gel pen deliberation. Don't harsh my Target mellow, bro!

Christmas lights at University of the Incarnate Word. "Beautiful yights! The yights are twink-a-wing!"

After the girls were asleep we watched several episodes of Transparent. Jeffrey Tambor is a national treasure.

Sunday. We walked to the new little farmers' market in our neighborhood. Luke and Clem have been talking about traffic lights and she points out all the signals and their colors when she spots them. On the way to the farmers' market she said, "Look, Daddy! It's gween!" and I responded, "I see it!" and she pointedly replied, "No, DADDY, it's gween." (Also from the Exclusive Club of Two file from this weekend: in the car I played a video of Luke and Clem singing and C said, "That sounds like you and me, Daddy. NOT Mommy. NOT Josie."

In addition to slow cooker pork and the squash dish, I made slow cooker chicken tikka masala from Budget Bytes and these chewy sugar cookies for the Crawfords' Christmas party. The chicken is great and a definite make-again and the cookies are delicious. I used boneless skinless thighs to skip the deboning step and will add more chicken next time- there's a lot of sauce.

Jingle Bells.

Christmas party! Judy made these garnishes for the champagne-cranberry juice punch - rosemary antlers, clove eyes, and a cranberry nose! Pinterest FTW!

Meeting Santa. I didn't get a photo of Josie because she flung herself away like Santa was a burning building.

Running around in the backyard.

"I saw the big kids in here.. how do I..."

"Let's get ready for the party!" I told Clem and she exclaimed "I put on my beautiful dress with the tutu!" and flew into her room to change. "What shoes do you want to wear?" "My Keens." Glamour and practicality.

Scooting down the incline because she fell the first time.

With the rest of the kids on a Christmas lights viewing expedition, Josie soaked up some attention. We had a great time - thank you, Crawfords, for including us!

Happy holidays, everybody! My plans for this three day workweek (yay!) and long weekend include roasting a beef tenderloin, bookmarking recipes in Paleo Perfected/Sheet Pan Suppers/One Pot, finishing Barbarian Days, getting to work on my 2016 planner, and mourning carbohydrates.