Happy Birthday

We have an official teenager in the house!!  Timothy celebrated his birthday this week.  He had school, but it was an at home learning day so he got to hang around home and take it easy.  He requested donuts to begin the day.  Troy picked up some cute Christmassy ones from Hy-Vee.

Timothy planned out when to open his gifts so he could extend the fun through out the day.  In this picture he opened a Starbucks card.  

I had to go to work during the middle of the day.  Timothy could not wait until afternoon to open his gift from my mom.  He knew he had to zoom with her in order to make it happen.  He got it set up with Troy's help.  The picture below is a cute screen shot from my mom's computer.  

He opened his gift and was happy to get a dartboard from Grandma!  Troy had to pick up batteries to make it work, but they had some fun games of darts while I was working.

His Birthday dinner request was Happy Joe's.  He continues to say he will pick something else, but he never does!  This was the first time in 7 years that we did not actually go to the restaurant for his birthday.  Hopefully next year we will be back.

His cake request this year was the same chocolate with mint Oreo filling.  The decoration he wanted was the Pokémon app symbol.  Not to difficult of a picture to draw.

He did a good job of blowing out all 13 candles!  We ate our cake while watching TImothy's pick of a movie--Home Alone.  After the movie we had a couple of Pokemon Kahoots and a game of darts.  It was a wonderful day and one he did not want to end!

 We are so proud of this young man Timothy is becoming.  He is kind, generous, loyal and fun.  He has a good sense of humor and has mastered eye rolling already!  He loves video games, and most things techie.  And although he will never admit to loving family hikes he does enjoy exploring the outdoors.  Happy Birthday!

Theme dinner

 Theme dinners bring me joy! I am thankful for the chance to play with my food!  Christmas trees and Grinch fruit!

Christmas Program

We had our Christmas program at church yesterday.  I have to admit, this was just my style for a program!  It was simple and easy!!  We were zooming and retelling the Christmas story. Teresa was the narrator.  Troy was in charge of tech and worked on spotlighting certain kids.  We had a handful of kids dress up as certain nativity characters.  We had a good turn out of congregation members who hung around to watch and join in the event.  The adults and kids don't interact much anymore, so it was nice to have them together.

Teresa waiting to begin the story.

Troy tries to keep track of where everyone is one zoom and when to spotlight them.

Troy made a nice virtual background for Teresa while she narrated.

 

Birthday Party 2020 style

Like most everything this year, birthday parties look a little different.  Although, even if Timothy's friends were here in person, he would have spent the night doing much of the same...video games!  Since we are not ready to host several boys for a sleepover, we let Timothy have a virtual party.  For a couple hours on Friday night, Timothy and three friends zoomed, played a birthday kahoot, and played online video games.  He seemed to be a pretty happy boy!

Like a normal party there were gifts and treats.  We drove some cookies to his friends early in the week to enjoy at the party.  I don't think Timothy had too many complaints about the night.  Plus, he gets a sleepover next spring or summer to celebrate his birthday!  

 

Cookies!

One of my favorite parts of the year...making and decorating sugar cookies!  No one wanted to help me mix up the cookies, but I had two takers for some cookie decorating.  The kids are getting very good at decorating now and even starting to use icing bags to decorate.  It is a fun tradition each year and the results were very tasty!

 

Thanksgiving

 I feel like many of my posts this year contain something to the effect of "well this year was little different..."  Thanksgiving would fall into that to.  We stayed home this year as did most of our extended family.  It just seemed like the right thing to do.  It took some adjusting, but I think we all had a nice time.

On Wednesday we put up the Christmas decorations and on Thursday we put the ornaments on while we watched the Macy's parade.  

It was a cozy morning at home!  We also Zoomed with my family and Troy's family and played some trivia Kahoot games.  Those were pretty fun.

We tried to get a football game going, but we lacked players!  Instead, we played with bouncy balls and went for walks.

And finally we feasted on our turkey, lefse and cranberries.  We changed up the pie and had French Silk which was delicious.  There is much for which we can give thanks!