November Recap

Before I dive in to the December holidays (spoiler alert: Jason got covid- he's fine), thought I'd take a quick minute to get us through November. My birthday, Thanksgiving, family pics, the fun just doesn't stop. Hit it! 

First, turning 41 was meh. Definitely not as lustrous as 40. We did have Katie and Brian over for a sushi feast that was positively amazing but this is the only picture we took.

It's basically accurate lol. Further breakdown of me at my age:

Peloton rides: 733

New, quite dangerous and impractical obsession: Golden Goose sneakers. I should leave all my Facebook groups but. I. just. can't. I. need. all. the. pairsssss. Count so far: 2.

Persevering pet peeve: In reviewing my 40 post, I do mention packaging and my extreme distaste for opening things. Thought I'd share my latest masterpieces. 

I don't even try to do this. It's become somewhat of my trademark, along with randomly leaving my car door open. This is at the Bentley hockey game whoops.

I have also weirdly noticed that I never fully close drawers. 

Something I could improve on: my road rage. I do, I have it. Next.

Beauty must-have: Lumify eye drops. This stuff turns your eyeballs into dinner plates my friends. In the best way possible. Your whites become white. Like you can't really tell how tired I am at all when I use it lol. I'm also still very into my press-on nails and my skincare routine has become quite robust and expensive.

Other random things about me at 41: During the day I prefer to wear jeans over leggings. Leggings just make me feel like I'm in pajamas. I even tried the Vuori joggers that everyone raves about but the truth is if I'm not in real pants, at home or otherwise, I feel sleepy and lazy. 

Wrapping paper makes me really happy. I have so many rolls! Ironically I'm not the best at the actual "folding and taping" part but I do love giving pretty things in pretty packages :) I also enjoy decorating tremendously, as in all the small Home Goods knick knacks with garlands and whatever else is seasonally appropriate. I think there are 6 bins in the basement for Halloween alone.

I never did watch Hamilton, if you read my 40 post, but none of the other details have really changed. Another year, same me :)

Ok what else happened in November. Oh we took our family photos, usually the worst 30 minutes of our entire year, but actually the boys were SO cooperative and mild-mannered! FINALLY! These are the two I loved the most.

A little behind the scenes for you - Alex's haircut. Thank god you can't tell from the front. 

November was the month that Jason and I got our boosters and the boys got fully vaccinated.

I personally think vaccines are one of the biggest privileges of our society and don't understand anyone who doesn't, but that's a whoooooole other subject.

Lastly, turkey day! Jason's brother and sister couldn't make the trip due to COVID and other reasons. Happily, GG and Erik accepted a last minute invitation. Grandma and Grandpa came early on Tuesday, just in time to watch Ashton win the annual 4th grade Lilja turkey trot. This was like, a very big deal. Pretty much the entire school was betting on him to win - it was 3 loops around the grounds for a total of 2 miles. He smoked everyone and ran at a 7 minute pace!

He's in the very front, white shorts. I took almost zero pictures but this was the beginning and by the end, he came in first by a couple minutes.

And then that night, Jason and Grandma made the apple pie and so commenced 2 more full days of cooking and merriment :)

Don't worry Ashton didn't like it ;)

Boys' favorite part was dessert of course. 

We rounded out the weekend with a Bruins/Rangers game (I admit even I was starstruck by the players and the Garden is HUUUUUUGE! We had awesome seats and it was so fun) 

and then a Bentley hockey game with a bunch of our friends (in which the players came out after to do autographs, it was very sweet).

And with that, we bid November, turkey, and 41 goodbye ;)

Our 10th Halloween

Guys, MILESTONE TIME. We've just hit our tenth halloween over here at A New Nill. There wasn't a post ten years ago, but Ashton (only child at the time) looked like this.

This was before we knew about allergies and eczema and I cringe looking at his skin :(  Oh god plus his cradle cap that was a scaly mess - it's all so painful. BUT, Ashton today, 10 years later, is pretty perfect. 

Myself on the other hand. No, that's not a costume, I really look like that. In my defense, I had just helped to pull off a huge event at Lilja that morning and was exhausted haha. I'm on the PTO and we did a big "Morning Mischief" Halloween party with a trunk or treat, crafts, food, music, facepainting, etc.

Big success. Big. Huge. AND we had GG, Erik and the Braydens visiting this past weekend too so things were lively! 

Back to Halloween though. Some huge differences this year - one, we used leftover pumpkins from Brae Burn. Like, we didn't even go pick them out. Jason brought them home and the boys were like, *shrug*. Sure those look good.

Alex's:

Ashton's:

Secondly, if Ashton had actually wanted to, I would TOTALLY have sent them out trick or treating on their own. They know the neighborhood and all the people so well, it just felt like they definitely could have done it. Luckily, they asked us to walk with them anyway :)

Lastly and this is my saddest observation. It's really no longer "trick or treating". It's "grab candy from an unmanned table in front of someone's house". 

And while I'm on this - what is with the ziplock bags?? The boys must have come home with EASILY 30 ziplocks each. One piece of candy isn't enough? Why not put everything in one bowl with a sign that says "take several"?  SO many houses did this and it struck me as beyond wasteful. I saved the collection for re-use but like, yuck.

Back to my original rant. I get that last year, with COVID, it was all about contactless this and that. So everyone put candy outside for kids to just take. No doorbell ringing, no thank yous, no Happy Halloweens. This year, maybe it was the same rationale, but if you ask me the faceless grabbing is probably here to stay. I mean people that wanted to be friendly sat outside in chairs and around firepits, but others I imagine relished not having to get up from the couch every other minute to greet trick or treaters. And honestly, as a parent, we covered the neighborhood in half the time. But it wasn't the same :-/

The costumes also went off without a lot of fanfare. Ashton wanted to just wear his football uniform and Alex his hockey pads, but no no no. I forced them into a SWAT outfit and some sort of GI Joe whose pants were too small.

Our method of anonymous candy distribution was that butler behind Alex. He moved and spoke, it was creepy. Alex was SUPER into decorating this year, he weirdly spent a ton of time talking about it. Here's a house tour -> https://youtu.be/af4qo1PqJoA

And that's about it guys. We walked around with our usual friends and since it was a Sunday night, we were out early and in early. My kind of Halloween ;) 

Ashton is TEN - Part 2 - a Nerf Party

 It's been twice (half?) of Ashton's life since we last threw him a significant birthday party. That was the Lego party, if you'll recall. Insanity is what that was. So while building blocks were a central part of Ashton's life back then, nowadays it's Nerf and so that's what we went with. 

We did it right before school started because no one is ever around on his actual birthday, ourselves included lol. And we did have to reschedule it once because of the weather but we had 100% turnout and he was sooo happy. 

So here's what we did. The gym up the street has an indoor turf field and they do an event every so often called "nerf on the terf" which is just kids showing up and firing at each other in a controlled environment. Knowing that we didn't want to be inside, I asked if I could borrow their "infrastructure" and for 50 bucks, they said sure. 

A couple truckloads later and our backyard was a Nerf war zone. I made giant darts as decorations from pool noodles and coffee cups, and we had customized water bottles, a pizza lunch, a referee (i.e. paid high school kid - I did not want to be the one calling kids out due to being shot) and even a balloon arch. The play was capture the flag style - two teams trying to infiltrate each others' lines to grab the preciously guarded flag. Even the dads were in at one point. 

There was a lot of yelling. The voices were like, constant for basically 2 hours. "Get him!" "He's going for it!" "He was out!" "Move to the wall!" "Get back!" "Reload! RELOAD!" "Run for it!" "Duck!" "GET HIM!!" and so on. So apply that soundtrack to these pictures and you'll have been there. 

The lone soldier, loading up

Alex and his bro Harry

Ashton and one of his besties Jae

This picture is blurry but somehow, it feels appropriate.

The armies as one!

It was a gorgeous day and the party wrapped at about the 3.5 hour mark lol. So exhausting but so fun. Live footage here and here (kind of cracking up at how into it Jason is). Anyway, that's a wrap on double digits!