Peanut Butter Fingers

Well THAT was a much-needed and delightful winter break. Aside from the fact that our winter break included a hefty sprinkle of that weird sickness that’s everywhere this year (ongoing intense congestion + lethargy + funky throat stuff but no fever), it was such a good one. It passed by in a swirl of puppy craziness (Comet is the funniest, floppiest, most urine-filled and fastest-growing pup), travel to Florida to see family, holiday activities and adventures and a solid amount of unstructured downtime at home.

Our boys deemed this Christmas the “best Christmas ever” which, as parents, makes your heart sing.

Prior to Christmas, Ryan and I implemented something we’ve never done before with the kids that made our Christmas Eve so much more relaxed so it felt worth sharing in case you found yourself up until midnight the night before the big day. We told the boys we needed about 2 hours of “private parent time” downstairs (yuuup, I know how that sounds — ha!) to take care of wrapping and organizing the Saturday before Christmas. We gave the boys the option to  go to a drop-in childcare place in the area or play together upstairs. They chose playing at home and seemed all giddy about the idea of some of their Christmas presents being out in full-view downstairs as they came up with a million and one games upstairs. It was such a game-changer to have everything DONE days before Christmas and we’ll 100 percent do it again.

We also took the boys to Great Wolf Lodge for our annual Snowland visit but shifted our usual overnight weekend to a few hours of daytime play since we didn’t want to leave Comet for too long just yet.

For anyone with kids who also LOVE MagiQuest at GWL, our little ‘”hack” is to pay to activate our kids’ wands ($15/pp) and then do a little arcade time before leaving. This takes the waterpark out of the mix but also makes visiting GWL a lot less pricey and still super-fun for the MagiQuest lovers out there like our boys. (And for those who may be considering a trip to GWL in the future, here’s an old post I wrote sharing our experience: Great Wolf Lodge)

A few days before Christmas, I was down for the count with the aforementioned funky sickness and had to miss out on a few family activities which bummed me out, most notably attending the Panthers/Bucs game with our crew and a cookie decorating party.

I always say as long as nausea and vomiting are not involved, I’ll take it and thankfully we all avoided any tummy troubles. And everyone was healthy (with the exception of some lingering congestion) on Christmas Eve and Christmas, so we’re counting ourselves lucky.

(Sweater: Target — currently clearance and would be so cute for Valentine’s Day, too! / Pants: Albion / Booties: Amazon / Purse: My grandma’s) 

Every year, we ask the boys what they’re feeling in terms of holiday travel to Florida and, yet again, they were all up for making the drive to my parents’ place on Christmas Day. Since everyone was awake by 6 a.m., it still felt like we had a slow and relaxed Christmas morning before we got on the road around noon. (We just had to be okay with knowing we’d be returning to a disaster of a house.)

Also, I tried the viral heavy cream cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning this year — I just poured 1 cup of heavy cream over 2 cans of Annie’s cinnamon rolls before baking — and I will 1,000% make them this way again.

They reminded me so much of the kind of cinnamon rolls you’d buy from a bakery and were a million times less work than made-from-scratch cinnamon rolls. Plus, the boys liked them even more!

Our drive to Florida was a breeze — perks of Christmas Day travel — and we arrived in time for Christmas dinner with my family. The next day we kept the Christmas cheer going and did Christmas 2.0 with my parents and sister’s family. Everyone is at such fun ages for holiday magic right now and seeing all the cousins together was such a joy.

As always, searching for the hidden pickle ornament was another highlight!

(A handful of trips to Jeremiah’s for gelati had to happen!) 

(Rhett and Ryder braved the freezing pool water for their own “Polar Plunge” and were so giddy! Chase takes after his mom and cannot stand cold water so was like, “Yeahhh, no thanks.”)

One tricky thing to navigate during our time in Florida was Mr. Comet. When we told my parents about our newest furry family member, we weren’t sure if that would impact staying with them during our annual Christmas trip to Florida but they encouraged us to bring our 12-week old puppy along, knowing full-well potty training and chewing are in full swing. We are so grateful to them for embracing Comet so well but even with their patience and kindness, bringing a puppy into someone else’s home had us on high alert. (Pee on our carpets, sure, but someone else’s carpet? Nooooo.) Thankfully he did really well, all things considered, and even enjoyed some romps on the beach!

We left Florida after a week and arrived home just before the new year. This gave us a handful of days of unstructured time for our family of 5 and it was time Ryan and I really valued. Ryan’s work is the most relaxed during the week between Christmas and New Year’s so we had a mini staycation of sorts and filled our days with the boys with backyard football, various card games at home, Legos, ice skating at the Whitewater Center (SO FUN!), dirt bike rides, trail walks, a little crafting, cooking and more.

And we also spent a LOT of time organizing and purging and taking down Christmas. After we un-decorated our living room and kitchen, Chase said, “It looks like the Grinch came to our house,” and man I felt that. I love holiday decor and the cheer, color and coziness it adds to our home. I once had a friend say “Christmas decorations fill in the blanks of a home” and now I always feel that each year we decorate and un-decorate.

Now winter break is nearly over and I’m a little ready for the return of routines but mostly just over here wishing we could extend this time off. I always like to take inventory of how we handled the holidays each year — what worked well, what didn’t — and the thing that stuck out most to me is to try our best to build in several days of nothingness at home with all five of us during time off. Something about our kids growing older has me increasingly aware that the time they prefer to spend with just our little family unit will slowly morph and change as their friendships become deeper and increasingly important. This is to be expected and is a good thing, I know, but it also makes me want to hold on tightly to the time we have with our boys in these younger years and fully appreciate them for what they are — a gift and the exact thing that matters most.

I hope you’re entering 2026 feeling ready for the new year and are reading this blog post after some rejuvenating time away from the chaos and demands of everyday life. Thank you for entering another year with me. I am wishing all of you a very, very Happy New Year!!