A Snowy Weekend

Hey guys!  I hope your 2020 is off to a good start so far.  Mine has definitely been pretty busy, but it's good so far! Not too much to update you on, but this weekend we're getting some pretty decent snow here so I'll be sure to take some pictures of that for you! And because it's snowing, Kevin and I are just hibernating all weekend and we're SO excited about it! 

Last weekend was crazy busy because that's when we celebrated Christmas with the McGee side of the family, and we had it at our house so we were very busy with cleaning and cooking on Saturday!  We'd kept all of our Christmas decorations up (including our tree!  It made it!), so then on Sunday we spent the day taking down all of our Christmas decorations and cleaning up from the party.  We were quite exhausted by the end of the weekend! 

A pic from our Christmas party! In the back row is Kevin's Dad, Kevin, me, Kevin's mom, Mook, and in front is Mo and Mook's boyfriend Ethan! 

So, I don't know if you heard or if you care, but the Oscar nominations were announced!  And every year Kevin and I try to watch all of the Best Picture nominations.  I think we've only successfully seen them all once or twice, but we have fun every year trying!  I think this is the first year where haven't seen ANY of the pictures on the Best Picture list by the time they're nominated, so we have a lot to try to watch this year!  We'll see how far we get.  Here's the list of nominees, and my thoughts before I've seen them:

-The Irishman:  This one looks good, but I really wish it wasn't 3.5 hours long!  That is a ridiculous length for a movie... If it was like 2 hours long, I'd be a LOT more excited to see it. I've heard it's amazing though, and the cast is definitely amazing, but 3.5 hours?!  Crazy.
-Once Upon a Time in Hollywood:  I've heard Brad Pitt is pretty much a lock for Best Supporting Actor for this, and I've heard it's good?  I feel pretty neutral about this one right now - I'm not dreading seeing it, but I'm not super stoked either.
-1917:  This looks amazing!  So excited to see this one.  I think we'll go see it at the movie theater maybe next week?  I feel like this is one that should be seen on the big screen.
-Marriage Story:  I'm not excited to see this one, because I think it's going to be a downer.  I think it's mainly just about the 2 characters getting a divorce?  I do love Adam Driver though, and he looks amazing in the trailers for this movie.
-Parasite:  I've heard this is awesome and creepy and has subtitles, and that's really all I know!  I'm pretty interested to see this one.
-Joker:  I've heard this one is super dark and very rough and super violent, and I've heard that from people that even LIKE violent and dark movies... so I'm not feeling suuuuper excited to see this one, but hopefully it's great.  The trailers all looked great, so who knows.
-Ford v Ferrari:  This one looks fun!  I am excited to see this one, and it seems like it'll just be pretty exciting and fun to watch. 
-Jojo Rabbit:  This one looks great!  I'm very excited to see this one.  The plot sounds craaaaazy too. I tend to love almost anything Taika Waititi does, so I'm kinda guessing I'm gonna love this one.
-Little Women:  I'm soooooooooooo excited to see this!  I love the version with Winona Ryder in it, and I'm so excited to see Greta Gerwig's version of it. It has some amazing actresses in it.

So, because it's snowing this weekend, we're gonna watch at least a few of those movies probably, and just have a nice fire going in our fireplace all weekend.  We have some amazing food lined up for this weekend too for our hibernating!  Tonight is going to be some roasted chicken with mashed potatoes and green beans, and tomorrow is our homemade pasta with homemade alfredo sauce. Sooo excited for this weekend!  I hope you all have a lovely weekend too!

Christmas / New Year's

Christmas was in California this year, and we had SO much fun!!  It was so great to see everyone, and to hang with family and friends.  The trip flew by WAYYYYYY too quickly though, and I miss everyone so much already!  I can't believe our trip is over, and I'm going to have to plan another trip out soon.  It was a truly amazing Christmas.

I didn't take any pictures (whoops!) in California aside from our amazing trip to Disneyland (see previous post for those pictures), but I did take a lot of pictures of our house in PA all decorated for Christmas!  So here's some pictures of some of our decorations around our house:

Here's our house from our driveway! It isn't fully night, so you can't see the lights super well, but you get a little glimpse of them! 

Here's an up-close picture of our two windows over our garage!  The blow-mold on the left is a candle that says Noel, and the one on the right is a Santa. 

Here's a light we have in our window by our front door!  i think this decoration is meant for your lawn, but we like to keep it indoors because the weather is usually so gross in December.

Our tree! I loooove our tree skirt that my parents got for us years ago.  It's SO my style! 

Here's a closer view of the top of our tree!  We have a cool multi-colored star, and Bumble.

Here's Guinness enjoying our tree!  The tree is where we usually keep his crate, and he loooves to nap in his crate.  We moved it over to the other side of the room, so it always takes him a few days to get used to the new crate location! 

Here's our fireplace mantle! And I put all of the Christmas cards we receive in the art over the fireplace. It's like this metal tree thing, and it's kinda perfect for holding cards! 

Here's a ceramic tree that I painted a few years ago! 

And this is one of our tables in our dining room. We have another that has all of our Christmas mugs and Christmas beer glasses and wine glasses, but I forgot to take a pic of those!  

For New Year's Eve, Kevin and I just hung out at home with Guinness and we relaxed.  I still wasn't feeling 100% (I'd caught a terrible cold as soon as we got back from CA), so relaxing sounded perfect for New Year's Eve.  On New Year's Day, I thought I felt good enough to head into the city to see the Mummer's Parade.  We had sooo much fun hanging out for the Mummer's Parade, and we were able to meet up with Kevin's sisters Mo and Mook and Mook's boyfriend (Ethan).  It was a cooooold day though, so it probably wasn't very smart of me to go hang out!  By that night when we got home, I was feeling sooo much worse and it definitely set me back from getting better! 

Here's a pic of Kevin, me, Mo, Mook, and Ethan at the parade! 

Here's a cool pterodactyl that was in the parade! And that's beautiful City Hall in the background. 

Here's two people that dressed as construction cones!  Amaaazing costume idea. 

 

This was an amazing float in the parade that had some AWESOME live music!  And there were drag queens walking along with the float, and they were soooo fun and were really interacting with the crowd.

Disneyland!!!!

Oh my goodness, I only posted one time in December!  I'm so sorry about that.  December was definitely extremely busy, so I'll try to catch up now!  Kevin and I left on Dec 17 to head to CA to meet my family at Disneyland on Dec 18, and then on Dec 21 we drove up to Oakdale, CA with my family, and then on Dec 26 we flew back to Philly!  So, December was definitely a big ol' fun whirlwind, and then as soon as I got back to Philly I was sick.  I had a terrible cold / sinus infection / grossness like literally the day after we got back to Philly, and it still isn't fully gone (but almost!). 

SO, this post will be about the AMAZING time we had at Disneyland with my family, and then I'll do another post about just general Christmas / New Year's stuff, and then I'll go from there!

We had suuuuuuuch an amazing time at Disneyland with my family!!  Disneyland is seriously SO magical for the holidays.  We were there on a Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, and then we left on Saturday.  On Wednesday and Thursday we were able to do TONS of rides and see so much stuff and it wasn't busy, and then on Friday it was definitely a LOT busier so we were able to do a ton of stuff in the morning, but then the rest of the day we weren't trying to do too many rides and were mainly hanging out and just enjoying the holiday beautifulness of Disneyland.  Here's a ton of pictures from our time at Disneyland:

This was the line for Soarin'!  

This was on the big ferris wheel ride at California Adventure, and we were in one of the swinging cars!  This picture was taken before the big swinging started... 

And this picture is DURING the big swinging!!  Brad and Amanda were sitting across from us, so they had a great view of our reactions.  I definitely got a little green on this ride! Haha :) 

This is during the Cars ride!!  It was soooo fun!!! 

 Cars Land!  I loved all of the attention to detail in this area. 

Kevin and I in our Wall-E shirts in front of the cute Wall-E sign! 

The Incredicoaster used to be called California Screamin'!   It's such a fun ride.  You can see Amanda posing in the back!  And that's some random kiddo sitting next to my dad. 

I Lava You!!  This was in the Pixar restaurant, and I looove this Pixar Short!  If you haven't seen it, you're missing out and you should watch it.  It's soooo cute. 

The castle during the day!

The castle all lit up at night! 

Star Wars!

Star Wars!

My mom and dad with Mickey!! 

Splash Mountain!!  This is probably one of my favorite pictures.  Haha 

We saw the Beast wandering around, and he decided to hold hands with the girls and walk around with us for like 5 minutes!  It was pretty funny and adorable. 

One day when we were hanging in the lobby of our hotel, Santa came and surprised my mom and Addison!  He sat right on the side of the chair, and asked Addison what she wanted for Christmas.

My dad and Cassidy, and all of the pretty lights! 

Such beautiful decorations!! 

A family picture in front of the big tree!  This was our last night.  

Christmas Season is Here!!!

Happy December!  I'm soooo excited that it's Christmas season!!  Our house is decorated (pictures coming soon), I've made a good dent in my Christmas shopping, and I'm starting to feel that Christmas spirit!  But, before I can share my Christmas Bucket List and my Christmas Movie List with you, I should wrap up November!! 

My first time ever cooking a turkey went great!!  In case you missed my last post, our sweet neighbor gave us a fresh turkey on Tuesday, so on Wednesday while I was working from home I cooked my first turkey!  It was 20 lbs, so it took like 4.5 or 5 hours, and it was actually kinda fun to cook!  I didn't love prepping it, but I liked basting it and seeing its progress throughout the day.  Plus, the smell was amazing.  Kevin got home from work and it was all ready to come out of the oven (perfect timing!), and then he carved it up!  While he was carving it we both had the idea that we should give one of the breasts to our neighbor that gave us the turkey, so we took that over to her house before we even started eating our meal! 

My turkey!  I rubbed it with butter that had sage, thyme, and I can't remember what else.  It was delicious though! 

Our Thanksgiving was awesome, and McGee's dad out-did himself again!  The food was awesome, and we also got to hang out with Kevin's cousin's new baby!  Her name is Elena, and she's only about a month old.  I didn't take any pictures of her or of the family, but I did take a picture of my handsome husband carving the turkey on Thanksgiving at his parents' house! 

Ok, now onto Christmas!!  I have a list of 26 Christmas movies I want to see this year!!  I was going to do 25, but then I just had to add one more!!  Here's my Bucket List first: 

Here's my list of 26 Christmas movies: 

1. Elf
2. Mickey’s Christmas Carol
3. Muppet’s Christmas Carol
4. Frosty the Snowman
5. Rudolph
6. Santa Clause is Coming to Town
7. Year Without a Santa Clause
8. Christmas Vacation
9. Love Actually
10. The Grinch (old cartoon)
11. The Grinch (Jim Carrey)
12. The Grinch (new one - never seen it!)
13. Home Alone
14. Home Alone 2
15. Die Hard
16. Charlie Brown Christmas
17. White Christmas
18. Miracle on 34th Street (1947 version OF COURSE)
19. It’s a Wonderful Life
20. Prep & Landing 
21. Scrooged
22. A Christmas Story
23. Fred Claus
24. The Night Before
25. The Nightmare Before Christmas
26. It Happened on 5th Avenue (1947).  My Uncle Jim just told me about this one, and it sounds great!  I want to find it and watch it.  

And just for fun, here's a cute picture of Guinness from a few days ago: 

November is almost over!

I can't believe Thanksgiving is in just a few days!  I'm sooo excited for Thanksgiving.  I love the parade, I love football, and I love food!  So, it's a great day.  Now, I usually wish for crazy weather (snow, rain, freezing temps, winds) for Thanksgiving for the parade to make it more exciting, but now I feel really bad because apparently the winds might be SO bad on Thanksgiving morning in NYC that they might not fly all of the big balloons!  So... it's basically all my fault, and I'm really sorry.  Maybe it won't end up being as bad as they're thinking, and the balloons will still fly in the parade...

I'm making an apple pie as my contribution for Thanksgiving dinner, and tomorrow (day before Thanksgiving) I'm actually cooking my first turkey, because our neighbor gave us a fresh turkey.  So, I read online that fresh turkeys are only good for 1-2 days in the fridge, so I didn't want to risk it by waiting til this weekend!  I work from home tomorrow, so we'll be eating turkey for dinner tomorrow night as long as it turns out ok!  I'll be sure to take a picture of my first turkey!! 

I took a picture of my Thanksgiving decorations! 

Here's everything!  Including 2 gourds :) I love gourds! 

Here's Guinness cuddling his pumpkin toy leftover from Halloween!  He loooves his pumpkin toy.

A few weeks ago Kevin, Mo, and I took the train up to NYC to visit Kevin and Mo's cousin Ryan and his wife Janet in Brooklyn, and their new baby Elena!  Elena is sooo tiny and cute, and she just slept the whole time we were there!  We all took turns holding her though!  

Here's Mo and little Elena!  Mo also knitted that blanket that little Elena is wrapped in!  It looks amazing. 

While we were in Brooklyn, we decided to stop by Brooklyn Brewery because it's a pretty huge and awesome brewery, and it was literally like 2 blocks from Ryan and Janet's apartment. 

Last weekend Kevin and I took a quick roadtrip up to Hershey, PA!  It's only like an hour from our house, and we wanted to go see the Christmas decorations at the Hershey Lodge, and we also picked up some concert tickets at the stadium in Hershey because Hall & Oates are going to be playing there this winter!  And while we were in Hershey, we also stopped by Troegs Brewery for a tour and some lunch. 

Hershey Lodge!

Hershey Lodge! 

Hershey Lodge! 

Troegs! 

Troegs has this whole area where they put really cool art that people have made for a Troegs art competition.  Here's a cool hop bearded man! 

Here's a cool skull made out of some Troegs parts (a bottle opener, some bottle caps, etc)

A little felt man! 

A recipe for making Troegs beer. 

 

And here's a super cool painting of an octopus with a hop body! 

 And lastly, here's my updated Fall Bucket List:

I've finished almost everything!  Still have to watch Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and the Thanksgiving Day Parade.  We did not make it to Lambertville to look at Halloween decorations this year, and we didn't see Young Frankenstein but we DID see Hamilton so that's even better!!  Haha :) . I had never seen What We Do in the Shadows and I LOVED it - It is SO funny!!!!  I was cracking up.  And Kevin and I had never seen A Quiet Place, and we LOVED it too!!  It was so good. 

That's it for now! I'll do another post after Thanksgiving with a picture of my turkey!