My group allowed me to share our adventure through the “Lost Mine of Phandelver” module. Spoiler warning for that, but explicitly not for the “Shattered Obelisk" continuation. I will not run it because I am currently experiencing it as a player. Instead, we will be playing the “Curse of Strahd” module after, with new characters.

The player characters are:

Bal, the green dragonborn rogue,
Rhododendro, the firbolg sorcerer (who plays like a paladin and is the tank of the group)
Yasea, the half-drow warlock (using a half-elf stat block)
Ascella, the Aasimar druid of the group (also the healer).

Rhododendro has the player with the most experience; the other ones are first-time players. I started as a very inexperienced DM, so some of the chaos was most definitely my doing.

Session 1: A rocky start

The module starts with a goblin ambush that is supposed to be the fighting tutorial. My first roll against the Ascella was a critical hit, downing her before she got the chance to do anything. I did not want to fudge the roll, in hindsight, I think I should have done so. Two players were downed, and the other two survived with little HP. They took a long rest and then decided to take the footpath to the goblin camp.

Small note on the camp: I might have taken the freedom to change Ripper, the pet wolf Klarg keeps, to Mr. Ripper, his pet otter. The party wanted an otter, and I wanted to be nice. After the first fight I scratched the wolf completely.

Rhododendros player asked me if he knew hobgoblins. The die decided that he did. So he used a shapeshifting ability to look like a hobgoblin. That was the moment the Cragmaw Hideout became less of a classical dungeon and more of a bullshit our-way-through mission. And the moment my players started to get engaged. Yasea rolled deception like her life depended on it- considering how fighting went, it very well could have, and they immediately asked to talk to the leader of the hideout.
Klarg is not meant to talk. At all. The module describes him as the most stupid person alive.
They easily got on his good side; Ascella started flirting and stroking his ego a bit. They got a tour from Klarg, and when Sildar came up, they convinced him that his second in command wanted to overthrow him (which is actually true, not that they knew that).
Influenced by high charisma checks, Klarg killed Yeemig while the party snuck Sildar and Mr. Ripper out. Bal quickly decided to nickname Sildar “Zelda” and Gundren "Gutrun". Rhododendro buried the entrance, and the party continued their way to Phandalin.

Session 2: Phandalin, the cursed session

Serious question: Did anyone here have a group where this session was engaging?
I have experienced it twice, one time as a player and one time as a DM. And not once was it a fun session. My DM told me the same; she ran the session with another group too, and session two was bland again. How do you make it interesting?

My group took the Banshee mission, mostly because Bal thought about selling the comb, and Yasea heard “magic book” and decided she might be able to get it for herself.
Any other side mission was not interesting to them. Fair enough.
They spend some time talking to some people and buying some supplies. This included the beautiful moment where Ascella realized that she had a bedroll in her inventory but just never decided to use it, opting to sleep on the ground. She is just that much of a druid, I guess. The group also had some words to say about the DnD economy; grappling hooks became the measurement for every price they wanted to know.
While asking around, they heard about Reidoth as the druid who knew where they might find the Cragmaw castle to rescue Gundran.
When they heard about the Redbrand problem, they decided to bullshit their way in. They talked their way out of the battle and asked to join them. Glassstaff was warned about them, so there was no way this would work. The thugs agreed to bring them in the next night, and we ended the session there.

Session 3: Redbrand Hideout

The session started with Bal and Yasea “joining the Redbrands” while Rhododenro and Ascella, as a cat, watched and sneaked after them. Yasea and Bal were brought to the cells and told that “The boss is coming soon to recruit them; that is just protocol." They did not buy that, of course, and fought. Ascella and Rhododendro joined the fight a moment later.
They freed the prisoners, found a bit of loot, and killed about half of the Redbrands. Then, they decided, "Wait, we don’t need to actually do this. We know where we can find Gundren” and just left.

I only prepared the hideout for the session; they kind of screwed me over with that maneuver.

Session 4: Traveling Session

Agatha the Banshee was the next goal on their bucket list.
After rolling two random encounters right after another, they reached her lair. Here, they gave her the comb after Bal asked about the selling worth of a healing potion and the silver comb.
Yasea was disappointed to hear that the spell book was not in her reach. After leaving, she suggested robbing the banshee instead.
I looked up the stat block of a banshee and started to panic a bit- Agatha is not meant to fight, but if they try to steal from her, I figured she would defend herself. And her Challenge rating of 4 against a level 2 group would not end well.
Thankfully, Bal decided that stealing from her might be too risky. Thank you, Bal; you might have just saved everyone in this party. Instead, they made their way back to Phandalin to get their reward and talk to Pip's family about the druid.

Session 5: “DANGER! Plant monsters AND zombies! Turn back now!”

After getting their healing potions from Sister Garael and talking to Quelline Alderleaf about Reidoth and where to find him, the group went back on the road. Thundertree was reached without any problems.
There, they immediately used Ascella's bird familiar to get an overview of the surroundings, and I took this as an opportunity to tell them that there is something big and green peeking through the ceiling of the broken ceiling of the tower. I really tried to emphasize that it was big and moving. Players took that as a great opportunity to head there, directly. Because that might be the plant monster the shield warned about, right? Kill it and the mission is a success. The dead and half-eaten spider in front of the tower did not deter them either. So they stood before the tower, failing stealth checks, and I was pretty sure that the dragon, Venomfang, would not be happy about their arrival. So the welcome was a poisonous breath in their face.

That did enough damage to send them running.I decided that Venomfang would not pursue them outside of its lair, so leaving the tower did the trick.
Their next stop was the house Reidoth lives in. He took one look at them and figured that he does not have to warn them about the dragon anymore.
The players took a long rest. Reidoth informed them that cultists had begun moving to Thundertree, and, miraculously, the party chose to stay and help with the plant monsters and zombies.
Despite him telling them that he could bring them to the castle. The reason was quite simple: they realized that they did not have the level they should have right now. The rest of the session was them going through the ruins, fighting some monsters. However, they quickly got bored of the small monsters in Thundertree; they did not offer a challenge, especially when they came in different turns, so I offered to rework the encounters a bit for the next session.

Session 6: I am raising actual monsters

To make Thundertree more interesting, I kept the zombies and spiders but removed the twig blights. Instead, I used a weakened stat block of a bigger plant monster. It was not relevant; players skipped it.

They went through the rest of the ruins and finally found the house with the members of the Cult of the Dragon. Yasea quickly identified them as such, and because I described their house as barricaded and told them that they were using the fireplace to keep warm during the night, they sneaked up to the house in the night and closed both the chimney and every gap where air might get in. No need for a fight if you can just gas them out.

The next morning they opened the doors and the chimney to see the result of their work: dead cult members. After going through their belongings, they quickly saw that the cult was not a serious threat. Otherwise, they just explored the rest of Thundertree and, when they felt like they were done, got back to Reidoth to get to Cragmaw Castle. We ended the session in front of it.

Session 7: Klarg returns

Cragmaw Castle started with the party being very hesitant about how and where to get in. Partially because I made the mistake of telling them that the front gate was closed. It’s not; I just genuinely convinced myself that it was. They found a back entrance and very carefully entered. Ascella was sent as a scout in the form of a mouse, I think.
They almost headed straight to King Grol, but thankfully took a bit of a detour. They went through the chapel, killed some goblins and the grick, sneaked through some hallways, and finally found their way to the guard barracks.
Originally, two hobgoblins were supposed to be here, but I took some creative liberty to bring back my beloved bugbear, Klarg along with a random Hobgoblin.
He is livid after his camp was deemed a failure after the players manipulated him, took his prisoner, and made him kill Yeemik. However, he did not get smarter.

So he was manipulated again, telling him that he should be king instead of Groll and, of course, that they will help him. After all, he is just so smart and special; they just have to.
Klarg, encouraged by the party, killed the hobgoblin who tried to sneak away to warn Groll, and the group moved to his office. The fight took a while, mostly because Klarg could not hit the wolf for the life of him; the doppelganger was unable to do much damage but had a ton of hit points, and Groll hit quite well. Still, the party was outnumbering them and managed to down the doppelganger and the wolf. They gave Klarg the honor of killing the former King Groll. So long live King Klarg, I guess?. They went back to Phandalin afterwards.

Session 7: Rushing through the Wave Echo Cave

In Phandalin, I decided to give them some consequences for leaving the Redbrands like that.
Halia Thornton, a member of the Zhentarim, called for reinforcements from Neverwinter to remove the bandits themselves. Since then, she threw out the former townmaster, Harbin Wester, who did not defend Phandalin against the Redbrands, and Sildar, who was from the same organization as Glassstaff. Glassstaff led the Redbrands and actually Iarno Albrek, the member of the Lords Alliance that Sildar was searching for. Since then, she has placed guards, and the prices in the shops have doubled.
The party has enough gold. Or at least, Bal has. He has taken his role as a dragonborn very seriously and started hoarding gold like a dragon would.

With Gundren in tow, they moved to the Wave Echo cave, found his dead brother and left Gundren behind to grieve.

If you are one of the players: Please stop reading here until we finish the Wave Echo Cave. Otherwise, you will be spoiled.

The party decided to just move along the left wall. If you have the layout in mind, you might see the problem: They are absolutely rushing to the boss. We have stopped before the room the Black Spider awaits them, but this was a bit of a doozy. I don’t know if they want to explore the cave further after they got Gundren's brother out, but if they don't, it will be a short last session. The doppelganger that stages the hostage situation is already dead too.
We will see how it goes, I guess.