Happy Friday! We have a jam-packed fun weekend ahead of us since it's a holiday weekend! Instead of my usual TGIF-style post, I'm talking about 5 things that are on my mind this week.
1. Halloween is finally here! Woo hoo! Paul has been talking about Halloween since August. Tomorrow we are going a friend's house for a pumpkin carving party and then on Sunday we are going to our neighbor's Halloween party in the afternoon. So it's going to be a very fun, full weekend! And then Monday is trick-or-treating, of course. I think we'll take Will to a couple of houses on our block and then one parent will head home with him and the other will stay out with Paul. It will be interesting to see how long Paul lasts! Last year he was still going strong after an hour and would have kept going if I didn't have to go home to nurse Will before his bedtime. I know Phil is looking forward to enjoying some Halloween candy as his "dad tax."
2. I honestly don't look forward to having a ton of candy in the house as I am an abstainer, not a moderator. I'm a wanna be moderator but I am really good at talking myself into eating "one more piece" or telling myself that I deserve 1-2 peanut butter cups because I had a long day of parenting or a hard day at work. Phil is a very, very good moderator. He could sit down with a half gallon of ice cream and eat less from the carton than I would if I dished up a bowl for myself. I so wish I was like that, but I'm not! But I'm grateful to Gretchen Rubin for introducing me to the concept of moderator/abstainer.
3. I had to get a dedicated work iPhone recently. The reason for this is too boring to explain but it has to do with the fact that I work in an industry that is regulated by the SEC and my company needs to be able to limit how we communicate with colleagues/retain the communications we are sending. But I can I just say how much of a pain in the butt it is to have 2 iPhones to keep track of/keep charged/etc. One morning, it took me 3 attempts to get out of the house. I got out to the car and Phil said, 'do you have both of your phones.' Nope, I didn't, so I went back in the house. I got back to the car and he said, 'are you sure you have everything' and then I realized I had forgotten my air pods. I like to take a skyway walk mid-day to stretch my legs, so I had to go back in for them. So basically I was like a forgetful preschooler that morning, but I'm not in the habit of remembering what all I need to bring with me to the office. I will get better at this since it's my reality going forward!
4. Christmas is less than 2 months away! The grandparents have asked for wish lists for the boys so I scrambled to come up with some gift ideas. Phil and I are minimalists so the holidays are a little hard for us because the boys get waaaaaaay too many gifts in our opinion. But it's just a stage of life and I remind myself it won't always be like this. But we've decided our gift to them will be something called a "nugget" which is a fort-building couch - it will go in our basement. I've been assured by multiple mom friends that our boys will love it. So we'll just buy that and some stocking stuffers/a smaller gift from Santa. How long will we be able to get away with giving so few gifts? We'll see! But I think Paul got something like 13 different gifts from Phil's mom last year so my kids will still have a lot of presents to open. In fact, we spread the gift opening over 3 days last year since he had sooo many gifts! But lest you think I am a total Grinch, yesterday I bought 10 books to give the boys during the season of Advent! We have a really cute Advent calendar and each day they open a drawer that contains some m&m's and then every couple of days there is a piece of paper that says "pick a present." The presents are Christmas-themed books!
5. I'll close by sharing my high of the week which was a fun book club meeting on Wednesday night. I didn't get home until 9:30 which is sooo late for me! But we had the best time. 8 of us were able to attend. We had a great discussion about the October book, "Between Two Kingdoms." Great food, great friends, great discussion!
What's on your mind today? Are you an abstainer or a moderator?
8 comments:
I have read that book, and I have to say: I was really amazed by her boyfriend. I mean, I would not have done even 1% of what he did, if I was in his shoes. I guess I'm not a good nurse. But I thought it was pretty incredible. I liked the book a lot, but it was so graphic in its descriptions, which I found hard to read.
I'm more of a salty person than a sweet person, so I tend to abstain from Halloween candy. That said, I do love a peanut butter cup!
I'm a moderator, mostly. We'll definitely have leftover Halloween candy and I'll have a piece or two every day until it's gone. But there's this Fannie May S'mores stuff that I bought at Costco and it's like crack - it's so good and I cannot stop myself from just eating all of it immediately, so it goes on the list with coffee and butter pecan ice cream as things that just cannot be in our house!
i'm definitely not excited about all the candies. the good thing is that the girls love getting them than eating them. So after they do trick or treat, they'll select 1 or 2 and give the rest to the helper for her kids.
i also have a work phone which I pretty much use it for personal use too. it's so inconvenient to have two phones. In manila, i had to carry two phones one with US number from work and one with local number and I keep forgetting one.
now I learned that I could have e-sim card in iphone and insert the physical sim so I only need to carry one phone while getting messages from both. hope it works.
I got Halloween candy yesterday and who knows -- probably too much. I'll give Rick some of the leftovers and save some for Christmas stockings. (That's one good reason I'm glad the holidays aren't THAT far apart.) I can have it in the house for months and not touch it but if I do, it's bad... hard to stop. So I'm a partially abstaining binger. Which is gross.
I love your book / M&Ms Advent calendar! That sounds so great.
Every year, I worry about spoiling our daughter with too many presents. Ugh. Especially because one set of grandparents always gets her WAY too many gifts. Like... an absurd amount. But every year they say they are going to "really cut back" and we never get their gifts until the last minute, so I admit I often panic that our kid's Christmas won't feel special enough and overbuy. IT IS SO DUMB and yet I cannot stop. Maybe I need to apply some of that abstainer mentality to gift buying!
Speaking of which, no one in our family is good at moderating. (Well, my husband is. But it doesn't work to have one moderator and two people who MUST abstain lest we eat every last crumb of sweets in the house.) My philosophy on Halloween is that you get as much candy as you can eat on Halloween, and then you can keep your candy for one week, eating one small piece (or two) a day, and then we donate the rest. Still results in WAY too much candy, but oh well.
I am a TOTAL abstainer! It's way easier for me to eat no candy than to just have one piece. I've learned this the hard way. So we can have plenty of Halloween candy around- I know I won't eat any. Plus my daughter always wants to give out Sour Patch Kids, which wouldn't be my candy of choice anyway.
I'm excited for you guys and Paul! I always loved trick-or-treating with the kids. Now my daughter has moved on to trick-or-treating with friends, sigh.
I agree with you- little kids don't need a ton of presents. It's so hard though, because I'm sure it's giving the grandparents a lot of pleasure to give them gifts. I think your ideas sound good, and the advent calendar sounds especially fun. We used to do a Lego advent calendar, where there's something little to build each day and they can all go together to make a winter scene. I loved those, but they're kind of pricey. Nowadays we just do an advent calendar for the cats, ha ha. They of course have no idea what's going on, other than the fact that they get extra treats, but it's still fun for us to open the door every day.
I am a moderator 99% of the time, but I will admit that I have days where I need to be an abstainer lest I will eat the whole carton of ice-cream in one sitting LOL
The "nugget" seems like a great gift that will keep on giving. I'd rather "invest" in a bigger gift that will be worthwhile than smaller gifts that end up in a closet.
I am a moderator myself, as I am pretty good at only having a few pieces of candy and then putting the bag away. But I also am the type of person who DOES think having a few pieces of candy for dealing with the hard days of motherhood isn't a bad thing, haha. So I think I just look at treats differently.
I can't believe Christmas is in less than two months. AHHH. I've been keeping a list of some big-ticket items to put on my Christmas wishlist this year. I do like the gift-giving of the holiday season, but I know it's not your favorite at all! I wonder how your kids will feel about gifts as they grow up!
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