Category: Holidays

Ready for Halloween, 2021

Getting into the Fall spirit, making friends, meeting neighbors, and getting settled.

October has already been a great month for us, on multiple levels, and we haven’t even gotten to Halloween yet. Halloween is big for us this year; it’s my Mom’s birthday, and the first one since we moved here. Plus our neighborhood goes big for Halloween with tons of decorations. Apparently we can expect hundreds of kids roaming our streets, meaning we need to make sure someone is always at our door to hand out candy, even if the rest of us are out trick or treating. 

We’re turning this into a family event by having my Mom, Bob, Sandy and Terry out to the house to hang out that afternoon for dinner before we hit the streets. Then afterwards we can have birthday cake with Nana. Luckily all of our local friends are able to come over and join us for trick or treating as well. We’re going to have a big group and I’m expecting a fun night. My Mom will be staying a night with us for the first time as well, so we get to host her for her birthday. Looking forward to sharing more about it next month.

In the meantime the kids have been staying busy, mostly with Nana, doing all kinds of Halloween activities. There’s been a variety of Halloween-themed attractions they’ve been going to on the weekends. Last Sunday we picked them up early from Nana’s and met our friends at Gilcrease Orchard. We got a box of donuts, picked out our perfect pumpkins in the patch, made our way through a corn maze, and got to check out some live animals.

We’ve also got a couple neighborhood Halloween events coming up this week. There’s going to be an outdoor movie night with drinks and snacks, which is for the whole family. Then on Friday night Jessica and I were invited to the adults only neighborhood Halloween party. We thought that would be a fun way to get to know our neighbors a bit more so the kids will be with Nana that night.

Now that the weather has cooled down we’re seeing people out so much more in the neighborhood, and suddenly the kids find themselves with way more kids to play with than we ever had at our last house. There’s definitely no replacing our good friend Avery from Washington, but there’s about a dozen kids near us that are frequently outside now. I always expected it would be in Fall that we would start meeting a lot more neighbors because people aren’t out and about here in the Summer. Fall here is like Summer in Seattle – sunny everyday with temperatures in the 70’s and 80’s.

Once Halloween is behind us we’ve got a lot to look forward to in November. For the first time in her life, Ava’s birthday falls on Thanksgiving Day, and it just so happens to be her 10th birthday, so it’s a big one. Luckily we’ve got Kristy, Beto, and Madi coming out to spend the long holiday weekend with us! We’re really looking forward to having them out and still finalizing plans on how to coordinate birthday and holiday celebrations.

Speaking of family visitors, we just had our first visitors staying at our house. Dana and Brad did a road trip from their place in Fallbrook, CA to come and see us. It was only a 24 hour visit because they had plans for their anniversary, but we packed a lot in while they were here and it was a blast. It was so nice seeing them and we look forward to paying the visit back on the CA side via a road trip of our own sometime soon.

One thing that’s really cool about living in the Las Vegas / Henderson area is that you never know who it’s going to be, but there’s pretty much always someone in town. It was never like that in Seattle but Vegas is so much more of a travel destination. Last weekend, for example, we were out Friday night for dinner with my good friend Shawn, whom I became friends with 20 years ago when we were busboys at El Gaucho, and stayed close with ever since. He and his wife live in Nashville but came to Vegas for his birthday weekend. Then the very next night on Saturday we met up with Jessica’s good friend Summer, whom she met 20 years ago working in a restaurant in Cedar Rapids. She was in town with family celebrating a 21st birthday. Strange coincidence that they were both friends of ours made in restaurants 20 years ago, who both happened to be in Vegas for a birthday on the same weekend, but the point remains, someone is always in Vegas for the weekend. The best part to go along with that is suddenly now we have a full-time babysitter! It’s been really cool catching up with friends from all over the place, and you never know who’s going to be next.

Beyond all the Halloween stuff everything has been great. School is going well for the kids, and they recently started riding bikes to school. It’s not a daily thing, and Jessica or myself needs to be with them, but we’ve started doing that a bit and they love it. We’ve been doing regular family bike rides on various trails near the house, and getting out for some hiking in nearby desert mountains. These are the kinds of activities we were looking forward to doing once it cooled down.

Ava was able to join the 4th grade robotics club and has been attending those sessions before school on Tuesdays. She is also playing hockey twice a week after school, so she is definitely the most busy of the kids at the moment. She also lost a tooth this week, which hasn’t happened in a long time for her, so that was exciting. Elise and Enzo are both doing great. We’re working on getting activities sorted out for them, and not surprisingly, there are so many options here. I’ve been meaning to take Enzo to the BMX track here in Henderson but we haven’t made it happen quite yet. Elise has made a good friend in our new neighborhood so they have been spending a lot of time together.

Now that we’re totally settled into the new house Jessica is focusing on her next step. She’s considering a job but also considering starting her own business, so it will be fun to see how it turns out.

Railing update

I feel like until this project is 100% done I need to give updates on it. It’s been in progress since July, so I can barely imagine what life will be like once the railing project is no longer a part of it. Since my last post I finished installing all the iron bars below the railing, stained the rail, and finished it with a heavy gloss. We’re really happy with how it looks, and it means our project is down to the painting work that needs to be done on the exposed wood parts. Here’s a recent pic:

I was supposed to have a painter out this past week to estimate on it, but he no-showed twice, so it’s back to square one. We’ve thought about doing the painting but considering this is the main entry of our house, we want it to look as good as possible. I’m planning on doing another video tour of the house but I’m not doing it until this paint work is complete. Hopefully we can wrap it up soon.

That’s about it for now. We’ve got a lot of new photos to share. Happy Halloween!

The coolest thing about losing this tooth is the fact that she pulled it herself in the school bathroom!
Elise & Spencer getting some quality outdoor time
His teacher says he’ll do anything for a laugh

Merry Christmas, 2020

A quick update our 2020 holiday season

Well, we’ve pretty much made it. The most unforgettable year of our lives is now coming to a close. While many people will look back at this year with distaste, and for good reason, I’m planning it to remember as the year I spent almost entirely at home with my family. Gone were the days of hectic schedules and fighting traffic, replaced with a lot more quality time, home cooked meals, and some much needed simplicity. Certainly I could find things to complain about if I wanted to, but I don’t really see the point. My Mom always used to tell me as a kid, “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade”, and this year, more so than any other, was my chance to utilize that philosophy.

Before I get into our Christmas activities, I feel like I need to pick up where I left off in last month’s post, which was written the day before Thanksgiving, on Ava’s 9th birthday. My Mom was visiting us for both occasions and we had ordered Purple Carrot’s Vegan Thanksgiving meal so that we wouldn’t have to worry about dealing with grocery stores or figuring out what to make for our first Vegan Thanksgiving. The menu looked great and we were excited about it.

Normally our weekly meals were always delivered on Wednesday night and we had never had a problem before this. For this particular week, not only were we receiving our Thanksgiving meal, but we also had our normal week’s worth of food, which was 3 entrees (each for two people), so we’re talking about a lot of food heading our way. 

Right around the time that our food should be arriving, Jessica receives an email from the shipping company saying our shipment was delayed and that we would be receiving it by the end of day Thursday. I assume they didn’t know that our Thanksgiving meal was part of this shipment, but from our perspective this wasn’t going to work. We tried contacting them, as well as Purple Carrot, immediately but had no luck because everyone was already gone for the long holiday weekend.

This meant Jessica and I had to do the thing we didn’t want to do, which was go grocery shopping for Thanksgiving, and we were now doing it the night before Thanksgiving. I had already been planning on making Vegan Eggplant Parmesan that weekend for my Mom and was going to need a grocery run anyway, so I decided to get everything that night and have that dish ready to make on Thanksgiving day if necessary. At this point I was still holding out hope that our food would come early enough on Thanksgiving day that our original meal plans would stay intact. So Jessica and I made a big grocery run that night, preparing for the worst but hoping for the best.

Thanksgiving Day comes around the following day and we were just hanging around the house all day, snacking, playing games, watching football, etc. About every hour we would check the front porch, as well as Jessica’s email, hoping for either our food delivery to be there, or for some update from the shipping company. I held out on cooking as long as possible, but finally around 3:00pm I could tell everyone was getting hungry for a real meal so I gave in and started preparing the eggplant dish that I had been planning for later on that weekend. I kept thinking that our food would arrive while I was in the middle of cooking but it never came to be. The eggplant dish ended up being our Thanksgiving dinner this year, and in some ways felt very indicative of the year in which we ate it. The food itself was great, just not what we had in mind.

Sometime after dinner Jessica received a new email from the shipping company saying our delivery was now going to be another 24 hours late, and that we would be receiving it by end of day Saturday. Now we’re really angry because there’s so much food in that delivery and I was expecting to be able to make our Thanksgiving meal on Black Friday. I sent Purple Carrot an angry message on Twitter and Jessica did the same on Facebook, but again, no one is around to receive our messages due to the holiday. Turns out we weren’t the only ones experiencing this very unfortunate shipping delay, and they were getting blasted from quite a few customers.

The next day we both got responses, and of course they were mortified to hear about what had happened. Obviously we were refunded for our purchase, and they offered us quite a bit of extra meals to try and win us back over, but we ended up canceling our membership. Although the food was always great, this was too big of a mistake for us to accept. We entrusted our family Thanksgiving with them, and regardless of whose fault it was, we were too disappointed to carry on as customers.

In the end we never did receive our food. According to the shipping company it had been delivered to us on Saturday, but that was not the case. We hope some family who could have really used it got the surprise of a lifetime with all this food magically appearing at their doorstep, but who knows? The thought of all that food going to waste is such a shame so hopefully it’s not the case. Either way it carried on our recent tradition of memorable bad luck on Thanksgiving. We had Turkey-gate and Stuffing-gate in back-to-back years not so long ago. I guess we can call this one Vegan-gate.

With Thanksgiving behind us, we transitioned straight into Christmas mode, and although we wouldn’t be able to do all the usual things like family gatherings and Snowflake Lane, we were still excited for the holiday season. I worked the week after Thanksgiving, then (like last year) began a three week vacation which actually ends today. I would have rather started and ended it a week later, but I’m on call for my team starting tomorrow so that’s just the way it goes. It should be a really quiet week as most of Microsoft takes the week between Christmas and New Year off, so hopefully it will be an easy way of transitioning back, plus we have Friday off because it’s New Year’s Day.

As expected, my time off this month has flown by, but it’s been great. I was able to help out with the kids’ homeschooling, I designed a new logo for our Jiu-Jitsu school, rebuilt our family recipes website, and nearly finished recording a new instrumental song. I like staying busy during my free time, and consequently each day flew by quicker than the one before. Hopefully this is just a sneak preview of what retirement will be like someday, but I’m sure I’ll be keeping just as busy then as I am now.

Last week the holiday spirit kicked up a notch for our family as Grandma and Grandpa Martin came out to visit, and although our options for activities are limited this year, we’ve still been having a nice time just relaxing and hanging out. There’s been plenty of Christmas movies, baking, games, and naps. We even got about 3” of snow the night they arrived, so that was timely and fun. They have a couple more days with us, then head home on Tuesday afternoon.

Christmas morning was obviously fun and exciting, as it should be with three young kids in the house. There were tons of presents under the tree and I think everyone got what they wanted. Some of the stand out presents this year included Kindle Fire tablets for each of the kids, a Nintendo Switch from Grandma and Grandpa Rudd, the SuperDeker Advanced Hockey Training System (something I’m enjoying as well), fitness tracker watches and dolls from Nana, and a ‘Glamper’ camper for their dolls from Grandma and Grandpa Martin. My Mom got Jessica a really cool table to do jigsaw puzzles on, plus Jessica got all kinds of workout clothing and cat paraphernalia, and I got some great music and Jiu-Jitsu books, plus a countertop herb garden allowing me to grow my own parsley, basil, etc. Even the kitties got presents – a cat house that looks like a stack of Christmas presents and a little indoor grass growing kit with a special kind of grass that they can eat. Hopefully now they’ll leave the rest of our plants alone!

There was a lot more than what I just listed, but those are the highlights. Overall everything was great, and I even heard the kids saying amongst each other yesterday afternoon that this was their best Christmas yet. I don’t know how non-biased they can be when compared with previous ones, but it was still nice to hear.

With Christmas now complete, I think we’re all excited to see what 2021 brings. Certainly the kids will continue homeschooling for the remainder of this school year, but we’ll have to see what comes after that. Although I’m generally not one for New Year’s resolutions, as I always prefer taking a ‘do it now’ approach over waiting for a day on the calendar to arrive, I was speaking with my Aunt Norma (who is 94 and sharp as a tack) on the phone the other day and I told her in Italian “Voglio ti vedere a presto”, which means “I want to see you soon”, and we made a promise to start doing regular phone calls in Italian starting in January. Neither of us has anyone to speak with, and although I’m not yet conversational, I think I can hang in there and look forward to learning from her. I recently reached 950 consecutive days doing Italian lessons on DuoLingo, leaving me in the top 2% of all users worldwide. Keeping that part of our heritage alive would mean a lot to both of us, and I know Dad and Gigi would be proud.

I suppose that’s about it for now. While we don’t send out annual holiday / new year cards, I like to think the monthly updates on this website make up for that. The kids are aware of all these blog posts and look forward to reading them someday, which is all the fuel I need to keep writing them. To all of our family and friends, we love you and wish you a very happy new year. For those of us that haven’t been able to get together recently, hopefully that will all change sometime soon. Here are some recent photos from our holiday season.