Christmas Bucket List

Hey guys!  I got through my surgery ok!  I'm almost 2 weeks out now, and I'm starting to feel more like myself.  I still can't do much and I'm mostly still on bed rest with small walks here and there, but I'm slowly but surely improving!  Kevin has done an amazing job of taking care of me. 

Not much new to report because I've pretty much just been napping on and off for 2 weeks, but I'm finally able to make it through a movie so we've watched a few Christmas movies to get in the Christmas spirit!  We've also decorated a bit, and Kevin went to Home Depot to get our tree and video-called me from Home Depot so I could "help" pick out the tree!  What a guy :)

So, since there isn't much to report and no pictures of anything from the last few weeks, I'll just post my Christmas Bucket List and my list of Christmas Movies we're going to try to watch, and then I'll post again soon with some pictures of our Christmas stuff!  Love you all, and I hope your December is off to a great start! 

Christmas Movies: 

1. Elf
2. Mickey’s Christmas Carol
3. Muppet’s Christmas Carol
4. Rudolph
5. Santa Clause is Coming to Town
6. Year Without a Santa Clause
7. Christmas Vacation
8. Love Actually
9. The Grinch (old cartoon)
10. The Grinch (Jim Carrey)
11. The Grinch (new one)
12. Home Alone
13. Home Alone 2
14. Die Hard
15. Charlie Brown Christmas
16. White Christmas
17. Miracle on 34th Street (1947 version OF COURSE)
18. It’s a Wonderful Life
19. Prep & Landing 
20. Scrooged
21. A Christmas Story
22. Gremlins
23. The Night Before
24. The Nightmare Before Christmas
25. Klaus 
26. 8-Bit Christmas (it's a new one!)    

Halloween, and Thanksgiving plans

 Hey guys!  Wow, I feel like Fall is really flying by this year... It feels like it just started but it's already wrapping up!  The trees in our neighborhood are looking GORGEOUS right now, and there are leaves on the ground everywhere too.  The temps have been REALLY chilly overnight and in the mornings, so it definitely feels like Winter is approaching already!  Crazy.  Here's some pics of the progress of trees in our neighborhood (I took these pics every week so you can see the progress!): 

Fall's barely starting in this one!  Just some leaves on on the ground and some leaves starting to yellow.

And then here's just a few random trees in our neighborhood that were looking lovely: 

 

Our Halloween was good!  We were able to do most of the Halloween things from my Bucket List (I'll put the updated one towards the bottom of this post). We carved pumpkins and sat outside to give treats to trick-or-treaters.  Our neighbor sat across the street and did the same, so we were able to chat and catch up from across the street which was our tradition until last year (we didn't do anything last year).  It was nice to do our tradition again, and we had fun! 

Here's a few pictures of decorations in our neighborhood: 

These witches were creepy!!  They were up a hill under a bunch of trees, and it looked super creepy and I LOVE it!! 

Here's our pumpkins!  Kevin's is on the left and mine is on the right

There's some bat lights hanging on the fireplace too but the picture turned out funny if they were on, so they're off for the pic.  In the picture below you can see the blue/purple glow from them though! 

Aren't those skulls cool?  Those were my new addition this year and I love them!! 

A blow mold!!  I ordered this online for pickup at a hardware store over the summer because it was on super clearance (I guess because it was like June and nobody else was thinking about Halloween?) and I LOVE it!! It's probably like 3 feet tall and it's just amazing.  Blow molds are just the coolest.  I don't know why, but I really love them.  We have a tall Santa that we got from my parents so I'll show that at Christmas time!  I think I shared a pic of it last Christmas too. 

Here are some mummy lights and a few more Halloween decorations! 

And here's one of my favorite Oktoberfest beers I had this year!  Which brings me to my updated Bucket List, and then I'll discuss Thanksgiving stuff after that. 

So as you can see, we've done almost everything!  There are 2 movies we didn't get to watch (ran out of time!), and I'm still working on making more soups/breads/apple and pumpkin stuff.  And then the 3 Thanksgiving things are left! 

I think Thanksgiving is going to be different than we'd planned though, because I've had some medical stuff going on and I'm actually going to have to have surgery on November 22.  I think most of you already know, and I don't want to bore you (or gross you out) with details, but I have to have a hysterectomy and oophorectomy.  So, my surgeon said recovery will be 4 to 6 weeks, so I don't think Kevin and I will be doing much for Thanksgiving.  Trader Joe's makes a brined and cooked turkey breast that we're going to try to get (it just has to get heated up in the oven for 40 minutes! Easy peasy), and then we'll maybe grab a few other easy things, but I'm not sure.  I have decorated for Thanksgiving (pictures below!), but I think we might take our Thanksgiving decorations down soon and decorate for Christmas early, because I'm not sure when I'll be up for decorating for Christmas after my surgery.

You can see my 3 gourds for this year (2 in this pic and one in the pic before), and these were all from Trader Joe's!  Gourds are so fun.  

So, that's our Fall!  I probably won't post again before my surgery, but I'll definitely post afterwards and post my Christmas bucket list (almost all movies this year...) and share some pictures of our Christmas decorations too!  Love you guys, and I hope you all have a WONDERFUL Thanksgiving!! 

Fall 2021 is here!!!

You guys, it is officially FALL!!!  I'm sooo happy and excited.  It feels like this summer lasted a million years.  We've finally had some really cool mornings around here (49 degrees last night!), and the leaves are just beginning to change. The bugs are finally starting to die, and once some freezing temps hit then way more will die (yay!).  I'm so ready for mosquitos and other biting bugs to go away. Here are a few bugs that I've taken pics of the last few weeks (one is cute and alive, the other is really gross and not alive): 

So here's the gross one.  This is a cicada shell.  So, this isn't exactly a bug, but it's part of one! They molt and shed this shell, and it's really gross.  And they are huge, and just SO gross.  Did I mention they're gross?  

And here's the cute one!  It was soooo hairy and adorable.  So here's a few more pictures of it: 

And now... It's finally time for my Fall Bucket List!!  I'm so excited for Fall!!  Yayyy!! 

I hope you're all doing really great, and I hope you're as excited as I am for Fall!  I'll make sure to post at least a few updates this Fall to let you know progress on my Bucket List and bore you with lots of pictures of trees with pretty leaves! 

Chesapeake City, MD

Kevin and I went on a weekend getaway at the end of August!  We wanted to do something fun as a break, but we don't feel safe doing a lot of the normal travel things we would normally want to do, so we did a little roadtrip down to Chesapeake City, MD (about 1.5 hours away) and stayed at an AirBnB for a 2 nights.  We thought Chesapeake City would be a cute little town kinda like St. Michaels, MD (where Kevin and I met), but turns out it was nothing at all like that!  We thought it would be like a cute calm little town, but turns out it was like a non-beach Jersey Shore party kind of town.  So, we were NOT prepared for that, or feeling up for that.  But, after some adjusting, we managed to find some great places to go that were more our vibe and we had a great time! 

We arrived on Saturday afternoon, and our AirBnB was adorable.  We got all settled in, and then we went exploring around the area, and were getting a STRONG party vibe which isn't our scene right now.  We checked out the quiet dock area by our AirBnB which was lovely and peaceful, and then we got in our car and drove to the brewery nearby that we'd researched, and ALL OVER the website it talked about their outdoor seating (which is all we're doing nowadays) but we get there and it turns out they got rid of their outdoor seating.  So, Strike One.  So.... Then we went to the nearby winery that we'd researched which also had a ton of outdoor seating, and it turns out they were closed for a wedding there that day!  So... Strike Two.  Then we went to ANOTHER winery that had a little bit of outdoor seating and was just a little further away, and we got there... and as we were walking up they started playing some SERIOUS jug-band country music.  So... we couldn't handle that.  Strike Three.  Then, we gave up and went back to our AirBnB for the evening. 

Our cute little AirBnB!!  It was really lovely.  We didn't love Chesapeake City, but we loved this little cottage.

The cute sign greeting us at our AirBnB!  It was really lovely.

The view from the little dock outside our AirBnB! 

That evening we got some curbside dinner from a nearby restaurant, and then we spend our evening hanging out at our AirBnB and planning our next day.  We found a very promising brewery nearby (in Delaware), and we decided to try the first winery again the next day (the one with the wedding, NOT the one with the jug band).  So, the next morning we started off by heading to the winery, and TOTAL SUCCESS!!!  It was lovely.  Such beautiful views and it was so lovely and quiet. 

I didn't take any pictures from our time at the brewery (First State Brewing) but it was lovely.  They had sooo many outdoor tables that were quite distanced from each other, and all ordering was just done on your phone so that was easy too. The beer was great and the food was amazing.  After lunch at the brewery, we went back to the AirBnB to hang for a bit!  At dinner time, we decided that some Curbside sounded amazing, so Kevin went to pick that up and I hung out at the dock and saw a HUGE container ship go by!  I got a few pictures of it. 

While I was waiting for Kevin to return I also saw some pretty sunflowers, and I scoped out a great bench for us to eat dinner on while we watched the sunset and listened to music from one of the nearby restaurants that had outside live music.  We had a really lovely dinner on our little private bench!  We had amazing views of the sunset, and also got to hear a lovely live band across the canal.  They were playing outside with a great sound system, so it sounded pretty great even across the water! 

Pretty flowers!

Some cool art.  It's Maryland, so OF COURSE it has to be a crab.  And on the left side of the picture you can see the little bench that we sat at for our dinner!  It was so relaxing and peaceful. 

That was our trip!!  We had Saturday that was mostly a bust, but Sunday we had a great time, and we went home on Monday.  It was a lovely little getaway with beautiful scenery!  Chesapeake City had QUITE a party atmosphere though, so we were not prepared for that and avoided that like crazy.  But we had fun at our AirBnB, at the quiet little dock and the bench by the dock, and at the brewery and winery nearby.