Archive for category: Holidays

Old Gentleman Gray on Thanksgiving Day from Christopher Swainhart on Vimeo.

Growing up, every single Thanksgiving, my mom would read this poem to us with those old felt pictures. They did it again a couple years ago and put it on video… I just love it and the message is pretty good! Hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

We had quite the Halloween weekend, actually… Halloween Week.

On Monday, we invited a handful of families over from our neighborhood to carve/paint pumpkins. I think six families came, so it was quite a packed house but so fun to finally get to know some neighbors.

On the Wednesday before Halloween, I took Eva to the Outlets which are like two minutes away for a magic show and trick or treating. The magic show was really entertaining for the kids (kind of dumb, if you ask me, but Eva got a big kick out of it). The trick or treating was a total bust. They ran out of candy in like five minutes. We went home with three or four pieces (and a new cardigan from Banana). Eva didn’t mind too much though, she still had fun looking at everyone’s costumes.

Friday, after I dropped Eva off at school, Finn and I had lunch at TJ’s office and got to see his team all dressed up. We thought they were going to win the contest for the best group costume, but there was another team who were people on a roller coaster and that was pretty awesome. But TJ did win the pumpkin carving contest. He carved a pumpkin of their CEO!

Afterwards, TJ and I went to Eva’s school to see their costume parade and sing-in.

Once school was over, TJ went back to work and Eva and I went over to my father-in-law’s office for another Halloween party. It was three huge floors decked out in amazing decorations and filled with tons of treats! There was even a bouncy house, people making balloon animals, and a cotton candy station. Eva was in heaven!

My blog has officially become just a place to document what I’ve been doing and if you follow me on instagram, then it’s pretty much just a repeat. But this blog is how I journal so I’m okay with that… sorry if it’s boring!

Last Monday, Eva had the day off and my mom was gone so I wanted to have an extra special day to cheer me up! So, I took Eva to see Hotel Transylvania 2 (which she pretty much enjoyed, except the last five minutes with some scary characters) and then we carved pumpkins with all the cousins in the evening. Cohen and Haven painted adorable little pumpkins, Holly made a cat, Emery carved a face, and Eva (with help from her dad) carved Elsa! We had such a fun, festive evening together while snacking on delicious pumpkin bread and pumpkin pie.

In the middle of night before Labor Day, Eva threw up a bunch. Other than one time when Eva threw up from food poisoning (remember the historic Jersey City Ward Christmas Party Mass Food Poisoning? hahaha oh what a memory), she has never thrown up which I think is pretty lucky considering some little kids throw up often! But on Monday she was feeling better, just tired from being up in the night, so we went to Gardner Village with TJ’s family. Afterwards, Eva came home and slept for the rest of the day… she really knows how to celebrate the day of Labor.