Riley's 18th

I still can not believe that my son is 18!!! We wanted this birthday to be special so we spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to make it fun. We took him to Javier's restaurant in Highland Park. The restaurant is really trendy and cozy looking and has amazing food. It's a fancier restaurant so the atmosphere was more formal than Riley's used to, but I think he enjoyed the special treatment. After dinner Jeremy took him next door to the cigar bar since Riley really wanted to participate in "I'm 18 now" activities. He also bought his first and I'm hoping his last lottery ticket. The cigar bar was guys only, so I don't have much to say about that. I know it was a cool place for them to hang out and have a little father/son bonding. Riley didn't let me read it, but Jeremy wrote him a very emotional letter that made him cry. After the cigar bar we had to ride home, in the cold, with all the windows down because the smell of cigars makes me want to vomit!! When we got home we did his cake and gifts. Our gift was the GoPro which he's been begging for and was super excited to get. I also made Riley a video collage, so I'll post that soon.

Decorating Our Tree

Every year I look forward to decorating our tree. The family....not as much. I am very particular about hanging some of the ornaments and they joke around about how I'm gonna move them where I want anyway so why do they even need to help ;) Secretly, I do move some but not until late at night or the next day when they've forgotten exactly where the ornaments were hung. To maintain tradition we played Christmas music, drank hot chocolate, and then watched a Christmas movie.