What's Up Wednesday

I can't believe this is the last What's Up Wednesday for the year!!!  This time I am just going to recap what we've been up to since my posts are severely lacking these days...

Brad and the girls have been busy at sporting events lately.  First up was watching their cousin play state football at the US Bank Stadium in early November.  Unfortunately they didn't win, but they sure had fun watching Zach play!

Next up was getting to see their first Vikings game with Brad.  He was able to get 4 tickets and took the girls.  They had a BLAST!

About 2 weeks later Brad was offered 3 tickets to see the Wild hockey play so he took the older two.  Brad, Emma and I went several years ago and the seats are AMAZING!  They are right behind the Wild bench and next to where they walk through to their locker room.  The girls not only got to high five them, but one of them threw Rachel a puck!  I love that they have these memories with Brad...

Rachel was able to get into the CNA program offered at her school.  They only select a certain number of kids based on their grades.  She absolutely loved it and will take her exam in January to become a CNA, mama is so proud as I was a CNA for 5 years and loved it!  

Why does she look like she's 25???  Ugh....

We hosted Thanksgiving at our house again and had my brother and his family, my mom and my dad which was SO special for me.  My parents divorced when I was 19, and thankfully they have always gotten along.  We don't normally have all of us together for holidays, but it just so happened to work out.  We had such a blast!

I just freaking love my family.

I think it's clear who we got our craziness from, haha!!

Friday night we put up the Christmas tree and all the decorations despite the fact that we were all wiped.

Saturday we had our annual Rothstein/Zimmer Christmas.  We ate an amazing supper of crab legs, roasted potatoes and popovers.  After supper I had a bunch of minute to win it games we played.  We stayed up way to late but had a blast!

Sunday Brad and I made our way down to Children's Hospital to visit my sister who just had her sweet baby girl.  Laura Grace was born on November 19 and had to stay in the NICU because she has some heart issues.  She is absolutely gorgeous and boy did I love all the baby snuggles. 

She is home now and doing awesome, but will need open heart surgery when she is 4-6 months old.

Alayna took a musical theater class in school and they performed the musical Dr.Suess's Whosical the Musical.  She was a Wickershim Brother and did such a great job, such a fun little musical!

We are still in the throes of puppy hood.  Sigh.  She is adorable, but such a naughty little shit.  If you could see my Christmas tree now you would see the bottom third of the tree has no lights.  Puppies.
#sheatethem. #shegotlit.

She eats socks like its candy, chases the cat like its her job and has chewed more towels and washcloths than I can count, but then at night is such a little snuggle bug, you completely forget about all the previous destruction.

Emma was a busy little bee making these ornaments to sell.  She sold about 22 of these!  That girl is so talented.  #shegetsitfromgrandpa

St. Nick brought shirts for all the girls, Rachel didn't think this one was as funny as we did, HA!!

The first weekend in December we were able to head over to friends of ours who just built a lakehome for some Christmas cheer!  We watched Christmas movies, the girls decorated cookies and then went skating on the lake.

I made a huge batch of Christmas Cheer again for us to enjoy, such a yummy treat!

Friends of ours hosted a little Christmas get together at a local brewery in town.  The theme was to dress up as your favorite Christmas movie character.  Brad and I had looked a little for something, but just couldn't find anything and didn't want to spend a fortune.  So we wore our Christmas Vacation Todd/Margot shirts.  

Everyone else killed it, the outfits were SO fun!!!



And lastly the girls made their gingerbread houses.  Funny how some of those traditions you think they'd grow out of but they don't!





So that's a little of what we've been up to.  The older the girls get, it seems the less stuff we do which makes me a little sad, but I also feel like we're really just enjoying the season.  I am used to packing in as much Christmasy stuff in as we can, but with the girls school work and working, it just doesn't work.  I am actually loving how chill they want to be when everyones home.  They just want a hot meal and a good movie.  Sign me up!

If you want to see some Christmas's past, click these:

2009
2010
2011
2014
2015
2016
2017

I hope you all have a very blessed Christmas!  I pray that with all the crud going on in our world, that you can take some time to truly remember the biggest gift given to us, the birth of our Savior.  Blessings to you all!

What's Up With Us

Since I clearly missed the boat on the last Whats Up Wednesday for October, I'm going to do a What's Up With US instead.

WHAT WE'RE EATING:

Allllll the yummy fall foods!  I love this time of year, I really don't enjoy cooking in the summer, I just get bored with grilling foods and salads.  BORING.  Haha!  This time of year I love making soups/stews and one dish meals.  Here are a few new recipes I've tried that were huge hits.

Stuffed Mushrooms

I made this a few weeks ago when we did an appetizer night on a Sunday.  I added crumbled sausage and they were SO good!

Picture via the blog All She Cooks

Sweet Corn, Kielbasa and Potato Soup

This has been another hit that I've made several times.  I make it in the Instant Pot which is SO easy!

Picture via the blog, Iowa Girl Eats

Chocolate Pumpkin Muffins

If you ask the girls what their favorite breakfast muffin is, this would be it.  They are so moist and delicious.  I actually mix up the dry ingredients in a baggie to keep on hand for the next time I make them.

Picture via blog Thirty Handmade Days

WHAT I'M REMINISCING ABOUT:

Um, it's more like, what am I not reminiscing about??  I literally realized last week that this will be our last holiday season with all three girls at home.  Ugh.  It makes me sick to me stomach to even think about that.  I am  SO excited for Rachel next year when she heads off to college, but on the other hand, this is it friends.  Next year she won't be here to watch Hallmark movies 24/7 and what about when the elf shows up?  She won't be here.  I have decided this year I am going to be SUPER selfish and not plan any extra things for the holiday season.  I just wanna soak this all up.

WHAT I'M LOVING

Enough said.  Also, Emma and I had a daye date yesterday and we had such a blast!  We went to a couple Christmas open houses, Hobby Lobby and Target to look at all the Christmas stuff.  I just love that kid.  We had such a great time!

WHAT WE'VE BEEN UP TO:

Finishing this...

And this...

And this...

We were SO proud of our girls this year, they all played/swam awesome and accomplished some pretty amazing goals!!

Unfortunately Rachels' season ended on a low note as she messed up her shoulder.  We are hoping to avoid surgery and she's doing physical therapy now.  She may be smiling here, but this was after LOTS of tears...

We also had Brad's nephews wedding in September.  This handsome guy wasin the wedding and we all had such a blast!!

We also had the joy of waking up to a TP'd yard for homecoming, haha!

They got us good, and even though this pic is blurry, they actually saran wrapped Brad's truck!

PowderPuff game, seniors take the win!!

Love, love, love these girls, I will be so sad to not see them and cook for them.  I just love that they all come in the house without knocking and sit and talk to us before finding Rachel, haha!

Grandpa Lynn will be so happy to know that the girls put up Rachels Christmas tree a few weeks ago!

And we started the college tours.  We toured Bemidji State which we all loved despite the fact is was like 20 degrees and SUPER windy!

And the next weekend we toured Mankato State.  I think she is leaning towards Bemidji, we just really had a wonderful tour guide and she was also able to see the nursing clinical area which was so, so neat!

And of course we've been enjoying all the puppy shenanigans!

Jumping in the leaves with Alayna

Picking on the cat

We decided this needs to be a part of our Chrismtas card!!

WHAT I'M WORKING ON:

A small group of us ladies started a Bible study and I am so excited to see what we do.  We decided we really want to give of our time to our community, so lots of fun stuff in the works!  I am also gearing up for taking an HR certification test which I'm nervous about.

So there's a  little bit of what we've been up to!

Halloween 2018

Another fun Halloween is in the books!  October is slightly crazy as all the girls' sports are wrapping up, so I feel like we didn't really do ALL the things.  However there are still a few traditions I love to keep going...

Carving pumpkins!  They still love to carve and I still love roasting the seeds.  SO good!

Finished products, pretty cute! (And a cat photo bomb)

We also always make Halloween bark.  Just white baking chocolate, pretzels, candy corn and sprinkles.

This year I also got a little rafty and made a few mummy cards for some sweet girls that are in college. I forget how much I love crafting!

Sadly I have no pics of Halloween costumes, Rachel and Emma don't dress up and Alayna went to a friends to trick or treat, they were all dressed up as babies.  We went over to Brad's brothers house in town so Emma could hand out candy (all those "fun" things we don't get to do in the country, haha!!) and eat pizza.  Such a fun night!

How We Do Fall

Today I'm linking up with Shay and Erika for their monthly series, "How We... Wednesdays"!



This month's topic is "How We Do Fall".

Fall is one of my favorite times of the year!  I love all the pumpkin hype, the crisp, cooler weather, the trees, smells, everything.  I have loved blogging about fall in the past several years which you can find here, here, here, here, here and here. 

So, how do we do fall? 

We always go to the pumpkin patch.  We typically grow our own pumpkins, but the girls insist on going every year haha!  We have 2 local pumpkin patch/apple orchards that have their festivals on the same weekend.  They both have food/kid stuff and fun little boutique stuff to buy.

Love this pic of them when they were basically babies...



Gimme all the fall scented candles!  I typically stay with soy based candles since they burn cleaner, but I found this one at Hobby Lobby and I couldn't resist, it smells HEAVENLY!!



We also love to go for walks in the woods.  We have woods behind our house that we love to go explore, or we go to St.Johns which is about 10 minutes from our house, it's just gorgeous out there!





Brad and Alayna start duck hunting the end of September.  She LOVES going with him, even though it requires her to get up by 3:30-4:00.  Thankfully she is easily persuaded by Little Debbie Snack Cakes.



We have a large apple tree in our front yard that produces the worlds smallest crab apples.  Even though it takes forever to peel the little buggers, I still use them.  I canned 8 quarts of apple pie filling this year, and we love to make apple crisp, apple pie and glazed apple pie squares.





And of course it is not fall unless you rake all the leaves and jump in them! 



I am looking forward to the cooler temps and the time changing (I know, I know!!).  I like having cozy evenings at home.  I hope you enjoyed a little peak into how we do Fall!!