this weekend was a weekend of new traditions. we officially kicked off the holiday season in the albers household. joe and i had many before otto came and we hope to continue those but we also decided to kick off some new ones. one of my favorite things joe and i do around the holidays is we have our “christmas date” where we go out for a nice dinner after completing our christmas shopping. this is our chance to tie up any loose ends and get things completely settled for the holidays. we go home after dinner and wrap all the gifts and have a glass of wine and call it a day. that usually happens about a week before our first christmas party.
friday i didn’t go black friday shopping for the first time… ever. i stuck mostly online and worked from home. it was really nice and calm. i went in to the store for a bit before heading out to the griffins game for work. it was the teddy bear toss and it was so cool to see. if you haven’t been to that game before i highly recommend going next year. when the griffins score their first goal everyone throws a teddy bear on to the ice and they get taken to the children’s hospitals. this year they set a new record!
saturday i went in to the shop for a bit because it was small business saturday! i loved seeing everyone coming out and supporting the local artists and our little shop. it was such a fun festive day!
after that i stopped by an antique store with otto who was completely mesmerized by the vintage lights hanging from the ceiling. i ended up breezing through pretty quickly because he did not want to sit in his wrap he was dead set on being carried so he could look up at the lights. bro is getting heavy! makes shopping a bit difficult lol. joe stopped and picked up sushi on his way home from hunting and we ate it in front of the tv watching shark tank. which i know were lame but we are just now getting super in to that show (thank the many nights in the hospital that is where we became addicted). we went to bed early knowing that tomorrow we were going to have a christmas day.
we decided that this weekend we would start the tree tradition the sunday after thanksgiving. we made ourselves a huge breakfast and relaxed a bit before heading to our neighbors tree farm and picking out the perfect tree. we came home and busted out the first round of christmas decorations. after last year i have a bit of christmas decoration fatigue so i decided to do a few simple decorations this year. you can bet though that my vintage ornaments are all out. instead of putting them all on the tree though i put some in jars and bins for decoration. next year otto will probably be pulling them off the tree so might as well enjoy it this year haha.
we ended the night by ordering a pizza and watching home alone. joe and otto bought me a juicer for my birthday and we made fresh orange juice in the morning and spiced apple juice in the crockpot for at night. i snuggled in to the couch watching the movie under the twinkling of the lights and my sweet otter tucked into my side. i just thought to myself life just doesn’t get much sweeter than this. that is my kind of tradition.
