For the third year in a row we hosted Christmas at our house with a combined Sharp/Rainer clan. This year’s total was 27 people! The new kitchen vastly improved the experience for everyone – especially Dave and his mom, who did all of the cooking! Overall I feel like we’ve gotten the hang of things and it was less stressful to pull together. We had a quiet, low key Christmas eve at the house and a nice relaxing Christmas morning.
I call this the quite before the storm…
The dogs enjoyed themselves on Christmas morning – doing what they do best -sleeping. Benson got this toy snowman and carried it around with him all day. It was pretty cute. The girls before present opening. The big present this year was a Nintendo switch, which Sophie had asked for and Lauren had not, so the reactions were pretty predictable.
Everyone arrived around 1 and dinner was served around 4. We do it buffet style in the kitchen with everyone sitting in the dining room and living room. We brought out a folding table right before it was time to eat for the overflow.
After dinner there was a lot of dessert, drinking, and opening presents.
December kept us busy this year, including three performances. The first was different for us this year. Sophie got asked to as part of a small group from the Philadelphia Girls Choir to sing with a Canadian group called the Tenors who were touring the US with a Christmas show. The performance was at the Keswick theater in Glenside, PA and it was really great. The girls sang four songs with the Tenors, and they were amazing. It was a sold out show, which was also pretty neat.
Unfortunately she was standing in the middle of the girls behind a tall girl, so we could only see the side of her fact for most of the performance. The girls got a picture with the Tenors after the show. Sophie is front row, fourth from left.
The weekend after this concert Sophie had her regular Philadelphia Girls Choir holiday concert at the Temple Performing Arts Center.
After the concert, Sophie with her friend Sophia Nagel, who she knows from Green Towne Montessori
And the final performance of the holiday season was Lauren’s ballet show, which was Hansel and Gretel this year. The performed at the Suzanne Roberts Theater on Broad Street. There were two performances in one day – one at 2pm and one at 7pm. I watched the 2pm show and then was a backstage parent for the 7pm show, which was a little insane. It was a long day for the little kids, and by the second show exhaustion was definitely setting in.
The full cast for the final blow. Lauren was a butterfly and is sitting front row, third from the right.
The day after the anniversary party we got our tree. That’s a week later than usual, but we didn’t want to have it up during the party to save a little space. The last few years we’ve gone out to a Christmas tree farm called Yaeger’s Farm in Phoenixville. They have tractor rides out to the trees and then give you a saw and you cut it down yourselves.
The perfect tree!
Dave doing the cutting with Sophie keeping a good eye on his cutting accuracy.
In this area there is apparently a shortage of tall Christmas trees, so we found the tallest one we could, which was only about 6 feet. But it ended up being perfect – and we didn’t have to smoosh the star on top.
Lauren had ballet rehearsal for his holiday show and didn’t want to change, so this year she decorated in full ballet gear – making her a perfect dance partner 😉
Later in the month we enjoyed two other Christmas traditions – visiting Santa, this year in the Macy’s Santaland, and going to the Nutcracker, performed by the Pennsylvania Ballet. The girls got haircuts between the two below pictures. Sophie wanted the minimum amount cut and Lauren went for more of a bob, which she likes wearing with one side behind her ear. So stylish.
On December 7th we celebrated Dave and Kathy’s 50th wedding anniversary!! Talk about an amazing milestone! We had a little get together at our house with friends (old and new) and family. It was also a great opportunity to use the new kitchen!
We headed down to Charlottesville Tuesday night before Thanksgiving. It was the usual crowd this year – Doug, Vicki, Quinn, Carley, Nana, and our family.
Since we were last down in Va. Becky has adopted a new pet – Penny, who is a purebred Great Dane. She’s only 6 months old and already over 100 lbs! We were a little worried bringing Benson down because he’s such an old man now and pretty frail. In their first meeting Penny knocked him down, but after that he held his own, even playing a bit.
Benson and Penny playing tug or war
Thanksgiving morning we had the now annual Glenaire Turkey Trot starting at the top of mom and dad’s driveway and looping around the neighborhood. This year Lauren ran it with Dave and me! We had to do a little run/walk action, but she made the whole thing!
The Turkey Trot gang
After the trot we headed back to the house and Dave started cooking. He’s been cooking for so many years now that he’s got the schedule down to a science and the whole day is pretty low stress – totally acknowledging that the person writing this is also the person sitting in the living room, reading a book and sipping wine 😉
Doug deep fried the turkey again, which has been our tradition for maybe the last 6 years. It great – frees up the oven, takes about 45 minutes, and tastes delicious!
Doug pulling the turkey out of the deep fryer
Penny is nose height with the turkey. Luckily she was caught before that tongue came out!
Obligatory pre-meal picture! Kids table
The day after Thanksgiving we enjoyed another tradition – hiking and then wine tasting. It was a beautiful day and we hiked Sugar Hollow and then headed to King’s Family Vineyard in Crozet.
Hiking in Sugar Hollow. We brought Penny and the Rainer’s dog, Jasper, with us. Penny loved jumping in the creek, Jasper, not so much.
The cousins at King Family Vineyard
The long weekend wouldn’t be complete without some good family pictures
In November I received a very cool honor. I was named the 2019 Young Entrepreneur of the Year by The Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia. The award recognizes someone who has achieved business success before the age of 40 and demonstrates a high level of entrepreneurial spirit, leadership, perseverance, creativity, and determination. I’m so proud to be recognized and also acknowledge that this recognition is possible because of the amazing people in my life – endless support from family, an amazing business partnership with Rebecca, and a dedicated, smart, and driven staff.
My parents and Becky came up for the event, which was held at Rivers Casino.
I got to give a short acceptance speech and was also the last award recipient of the night, so was basically sweating bullets for the entire event!
With Mom and BeckyThe Maven staff: Veronica, Alexa, Rebecca, me, Emily C. and Emily K.
It’s Halloween! Last night was like Christmas Eve in this house. The kids were too excited to go to sleep and were up by 6 this morning.
This year I am a classroom parent for Lauren’s first grade class, which means I was responsible, along with another mom, for putting together the classroom Halloween party. We brought in a craft and then the kids broke into groups for a game of wrapping one of the group members up as a mummy. It was pretty funny.
Lauren’s team wrapping their mummy
Ms. Gorodesky’s First Grade Class
After the party the school holds an all school costume parade. Unfortunately it was raining so instead of having it out on the field and open to all parents, it was held in the gym and open to only classroom parents (happy I volunteered this year!). Lauren decided at the last minute that she didn’t want to participate (apparently her dress was too long and she was afraid she was going to trip on it), but Sophie the vampire marched happily.
Sophie the vampire walking in the school Halloween parade.
On Halloween evening we invited some neighbors over to the house for pizza before heading out to trick-or-treat. It was a quick get together because every kid was bouncing off the walls to start trick-or-treating.
Sophie, Lauren and our neighbor Gabriel
Vampire & Zombie Bride
Luckily the weather cleared and the kids were able to trick-or-treat with no rain and unseasonable warm temperatures. It was a good night!
It took 2.5 months, but the kitchen is finally done and we love it! It’s an old house so we didn’t really know what we would find when we tore it down to the studs. There were some definite structural issues, some very uneven surfaces, and even some bowing of the front of the house. We also discovered that the ceiling was sinking, by 4 inches! Our contractor was amazing and propped it up, but not completely because it would have cracked the walls in Lauren’s room (which is right above the kitchen), which Dave redid a few years ago, as well as crack the tiles in the girls bathroom, also a project that we had done recently.
down to the bricksstuds from the wall that was diving the laundry room and kitchen
One the wall between the laundry room and kitchen came down we realized that it was built without proper support, so we had to get a beam put in the ceiling, as well as another vertical beam put in the basement to prop up the floor. Thank God we did this project when we did. I can’t imagine what would have happened if we waited another decade.
Wall down, horrible vinyl floor gone, Sheetrock upCenter island, cabinets and floors in.
We’re so happy with how it all turned out! We have so much more space now and I live on that Center Island. The kids sit there in the mornings for breakfast, and I can talk with them while getting lunches together. We’ve gathered around it for parties, holidays, get togethers with friends, etc.
We doubled the size of the door between the dining room and kitchen, so you can now see and talk with people in the diving and living room. Before the kitchen was really closed off from the rest of the house (which I have to say was not the worst thing… but this is better). Dave made the bar backslash out of old wine corks (which we have an abundance of)
We headed out to Milky Way Farm to pick our pumpkins again this year. It’s always worth the hike to get out there. The farm is beautiful, with farm animals for the kids to pet, hay rides out to the pumpkin patch, and homemade ice cream – the best part.
Although we brought the pumpkins home at the beginning of October, we waited until closer to Halloween to carve them because of the stupid squirrels in our neighborhood, which ravage everything in site and can devour a full pumpkin in about two days.
