You Can't Cancel Presents - Christmas 2020

A year ago if someone had told me that by December of 2020 I would be homeschooling my kids, Brandon would be working with RV's, and we'd only be going to church twice a month I would have through you had us mixed up with some other family. 

And yet here we are. 

If someone had also told me that we'd spend Christmas Eve completely by ourselves then I really would have known that they had us mixed up with another family. 

We've never spent Christmas Eve on our own. 

Brandon's family hosts a Norwegian Christmas Eve Party every year without fail. We've only missed it twice. Once when we lived in Texas, and once when we lived in Alabama.  On those years we still celebrated with big parties of our own. In Texas we invited all our friends and neighbors over. In Alabama my whole family got together at our home in Alabama. 

Ever since we've moved to Idaho we always go to Utah for the Christmas Eve party and then drive back to Idaho to spend Christmas Morning at our own house. 

I figured that's how it would always be. But I obviously never thought about a pandemic. 

 In the early days of the Pandemic we all thought this would be over well before December. But as COVID cases continued to rise in the fall I began to consider the fact that Christmas and COVID would be happening simultaneously. I didn't see an scenario where it made sense for us to travel to Brandon's parents house for Christmas. 

The three hour drive - across state lines - didn't seem like something that we should plan to do. Too many things could go wrong. One of us could be sick. There could be strict stay at home orders. There could be travel restrictions. And even if all those things didn't happen, it just didn't seem like a good idea to gather in a large group in the middle of a pandemic. 

So I started to prepare ourselves for the fact that we were staying home for Christmas Eve. Derrick had been talking constantly about the party, so I started getting him used to the idea that we would be doing the party things at home. Brandon started buying food to make all his favorite Christmas foods. We even ordered Petit Fours from the Swiss Colony catalog so we could have those little cakes just like we would at his mom's house. Brandon's mom also shipped up the gifts that she would normally give the kids on Christmas Eve at her house. 

It was sad that we weren't planning to go anywhere, but as Christmas Eve got closer I actually was a little excited to be staying home this time. I was especially excited when I realized this was the first Christmas Eve since 2016 that I didn't have to pack for. Normally I'm doing a bunch of laundry to make sure that we have clean clothes for the party and clean pajamas for the kids to change into. Plus more clothes if we are going to be there a day or two early. This time I just had to remember to wash the kids pajamas before bedtime on Christmas Eve. 

That was nice. 

There were a few things to take care of in the days leading up to Christmas. 

I worked on Tuesday and got everything ready for me to basically check out for the next 10 days. I still hada few little responsibilities over the holidays, but the office itself was closing until the New Year so I didn't have much to worry about. I love working somewhere that is closed for Christmas. 

Derrick had speech therapy on Tuesday afternoon. He is doing so well in that. 

On Tuesday night we watched the Santa Clause2. I've been in the same room while that movie was playing so I was familiar with some of it, but it was mostly a new movie to me. I was actually plesantly surprised at how funny it was. 

We planned to finish up our Christmas Movie list with the Santa Clause 3 on Wednesday, but never got around to it. 

On Tuesday night I submitted the school supply order for our second semester with our homeschool program. Since we are still tied to the school district we get money for our school supplies. We didn't use all our money last semester so it rolled over to this one. And so we had quite a bit to play with. I was able to order a lot of fun things like a Piano Keyboard, piano music, guitar music, ukulele music, science supplies, and lots of visual encyclopedia books. It will be like 2nd Christmas when those things start arriving. 

I felt a little guilty about how much money/stuff we had to spend. But then I told myself this is like the paycheck Brandon and I get for teaching the kids this year. I divided the amount of money we had by how much Brandon and I make per hour at our real jobs. The money ended up paying for over 150 hours of our time. So I think that's a fair trade. 

Wednesday morning I had a zoom meeting with on of the ladies who works with the homeschool program. There have been some personnel changes and she wanted to get to know all the families and know what our concerns were. I felt it was a very beneficial meeting - especially in regard to how Derrick interacts with the curriculum. 

The weather was cold again, but it was sunny so I had the kids go to the park. They had fun running around even though it was 30 degrees.  Here's Charlotte showing off an ice "hat" she'd found. 

Here's another look at the ice. 

The kids spent a lot of the days leading up to Christmas playing with the toys they already own. They discovered that their LOL dolls change color under water. 

 

Lydia's Babydoll Rose was played with for the first time in a while. Lydia made her a new mobile. 

Brandon was hoping for a half day on Wednesday, but they ended up having a surprise client show up in the afternoon that took the rest of the day. Brandon didn't get home until 7:10.  One of the kids asked me if we would have been driving down to Utah that night. I said we probably would have and I was glad that we hadn't been impatiently waiting for Brandon to get of work. 

Like I said, we'd been planning to watch the Santa Clause 3, but the kids were having fun playing so we just hung out all evening. Brandon and the kids cleaned up the family room. I put on music that my Dad sent me of the Mormon Youth Chorus singing Christmas songs. These songs were the Christmas Soundtrack of my childhood so it felt really Christmasy to be listening to those. The kids never really got grumpy so we let them stay up. It was definitely past 9:00 and might have been 10:00 by the time they went to bed. 

Then Brandon and I went out to the garage to finish wrapping presents. We had a fun time talking while we did that. 

All day I'd had a little bit of a cough and it seemed to be getting worse in the evening. This was another reason I was glad we'd already made the decision to stay in Idaho. That cough would have thrown all our plans into question if we'd still been planning to go to Brandon's parents house. 

I still had the cough when I woke up on Christmas Eve Day, but I felt okay. I planned to go into my office to check the mail and take any payments to the bank. Charlotte wanted Mommy time so she came with me at 10:00 when I went to the office. Well there wasn't any new mail, so we didn't stay there long. She still wanted some time with me so we just drove in a big circle around the whole city. We had a fun time talking. Then we went home. 

The kids and I had delivered all our neighbor gifts, but there were still some people on Brandon's list that we needed to drop gifts off to. So after lunch we all got in the car and delivered the gifts to the last 6 people. Then we drov out to Buhl to drop off another gift. Brandon fixed an RV for a man that lives all alone. They got to be good friends because Brandon had to go out there several days in a row. Brandon knew the man would be all alone for Christmas so he wanted to take him something. He'd put together a little gift for him. 

When we got to the RV I wasn't felling great. I still had the cough and I was starting to feel achy. I told Brandon I didn't want to meet his friend because I didn't want to get him sick. So just Brandon and Lydia took the gift in. 

When we were done there we went to the Buhl city park. I was in a lot of pain by this point. All I wanted to do was lay down. Sitting on a part bench sounded like torcher so I stayed in the car while Brandon went to the playground with the kids. 

We drove back home and I felt like I was going to dissolve into a puddle of pain. On the way back home we told the kids they needed to take baths or showers when we got back to the house. As soon as we got home I went straight to my room to lay down. Charlotte and Lydia' were trying to explain that they needed to use my bathroom to shower and that they were concerned about privacy since I was in my room. I told them it didn't matter, I would probably be asleep in 2 minutes anyway. I was asleep before they even bought their towels in. When I did wake up again they were both done with their showers. 

I'd taken a bunch of ibuprofen before falling asleep so I felt well enough to get out of bed, but I still hurt a lot. I went out into the kitchen and found Brandon hard at work with Christmas food prep. 

He asked me to do the dishes. Normally I would do that without any problem, but this time the thought of standing at the sink sounded too painful. The dishes had to be done though. So Brandon asked the kids to do it.  They weren't exactly thrilled about that. I came up with the idea of having them each take a turn doing 5 dishes.  That worked really well. I was able to supervise that from my chair. The kids have been doing dinner dishes for almost 4 years so after a little bit of obligatory grumbling they were actually really good about the dishes.  Each of them got into the groove and washed more than 5 when it was their turn.  

The kids were also helpful with other things I asked them to do.  Lydia and Veronica ran downstairs to move a load of laundry. And they brought up an earlier load of washcloths for me to fold. Derrick would climb up in the storage cupboard and get the boxes of fancy dishes down for me. 

Thanks to the kids help Brandon was able to finish making all the food. They saved the day. And wow, was there a lot of food. Brandon had been making treats since Sunday. 

Here's our treat table. There's fresh pineapple, two types of fudge, a pumpkin roll, a crackers and cheese tray, chocolate chip cookies, almond cookies, peanut butter cookies, ginger snaps, chocolate covered pretzel sticks (the kids and I made those on Tuesday), and a whole pumpkin pie!

Then there was the  dinner food table. There was a veggie tray, mashed potatoes, meat cakes, and chicken noodle soup because the kids had all said they didn't want the traditional meat cakes.  We also pulled out the fancy drink containers and had cranberry juice and 7 up in one side and water in the other. 

But that's not all, there was also red and green jello somewhere, eggnog, and a huge bowl of ricecrem sitting in the fridge. 

Brandon told me this was a scaled down menu, but I wasn't so sure about that. 

The kids changed into their traditional clothes. The girls still fit the skirts Jacque made for them a few years ago. 

I tried to get a good picture of them, but these were the best I got. 

Derrick was wearing Mukluk socks. He normally hates wearing socks in the house and usually only wears these for about 5 minutes, but he left them on for about 3 hours this year. We'd made a list of all the Christmas Eve things we'd do and wearing the socks was on the list so I think he took it really seriously this year. 

We'd moved the couch to the side of the room, and took it off the risers its normally on. That made it feel much more casual. We brought out the bench to use as a table again. 

Marcia was being super annoying and trying to get into all our food. When we ate in the Livingroom for Christmas Under the Tree we'd put her out in the garage, but we were feeling a little more inclusive this night. We'd bought her an antler as a Christmas Present so we decided to give it to her early. She sat down with that and left us alone the rest of the night. 

Here's Brandon finally getting to sit down to eat. 

Charlotte wanted to take a funny picture with her cup of juice. 

Brandon took a picture of us eating. The ibuprofen had finally kicked in and I wasn't hurting as badly. I was able to sit on the floor without too much pain.

We started out with the dinner food. Before we let the kids have free reign on the dessert table we got out the box of petit four cakes. We each picked out two to eat.

These are the cutest little cake that have such delicate layers. Charlotte, Lydia, and Veronica had no memories of these cakes. But as soon as Derrick saw them he said, "I LOVE these." I think he might be the reason the girls have no memory of the cakes. 

We ate and talked for a while. We throught about reading the Christmas Story again, but that seemed like too much work. I moved up to the couch and enjoyed being on the comfortable cushions. Eventually it was time to dance around the tree. Brandon and Charlotte carefully pulled it out to the center of the room. My little Precious Moments Peace Angel was dangling right by Charlotte's ear. We joked it was saying, "Peace, Peace, Peace." Over and over again in her ear and making her angry. 

With the tree in the middle of the room we were ready to hold hands and dance around it. This is always so fun. 

Of course we would have loved to do this with extended family, but it was just as special to do it with our little family. 

Here's Brandon.

Derrick looks grumpy in this picture but he was really very excited. He's never actually done this before, usually he's content to watch. 

I love this one with Veronica's outstretched hand. 

Brandon led us all through singing the Norwegian song about getting ready for Sunday. Then we moved the tree back. 

We wanted to play a game and decided to do a really simple version of pictionary. The kids could draw whatever Christmas themed thing they wanted and we'd guess what it was. I was guessing really well so they told me I had to wait 30 seconds before answering. 

Finally it was time for the part that Derrick had been looking forward to for months. It was time to open presents from Bestemor. Back in October we'd made a list of presents for her and included links to the exact things. She wasn't going to be able to do much inperson shopping so we made it as easy as possible to do online shopping.  Derrick had picked out a watch and had spent DAYS staring at it online. So he was so excited to open his present. The other kids were excited, but he was the most. 

When he opened the package he jumped up and down and yelled, "Yes, Yes, Yes! My WATCH!"  He wanted it on right away and had so much fun trying out all the buttons and telling us the time the rest of the night. (He's really stoic looking in this picture, but I promise the kid was over the moon about this watch.)

Veronica had asked for a pretend phone. I had spent a lot of time looking for one that was just pretend and didn't have any sort of electronics. That was harder to find than you think. Even most toy phones for babies had working buttons. I finally found one, but it was princess themed and pink. I didn't think she would want it, but she looked at the picture and said it was exactly what she wanted. 

Still Jacque and I were really worried. I'm not sure Veronica has ever liked anything pink in her life so we both expected her to be disappointed by this gift. But she LOVED it. It came with a phone/wallet holder. There were lots of little fake credit cards to put into pockets. And there was a pretend car key. Veronica spent the rest of the night pretending to find her car in a parking lot and taking pretend selfies with Charlotte and Lydia. 

Lydia had asked for a pretend Lizard that we'd seen at Target one time. She was really excited for her gift. When we put batteries into it the lizard moved all over the floor. I'm glad I'd asked the kids for present ideas because I never would have guessed that Lydia would want a present like this. 

Charlotte asked for a stuffed animal of a snowy owl. She named it Hedwig and spend the rest of the evening pretending to make the owl fly. (The owl also kept trying to eat the lizard.) Charlotte said she slept with the owl. 

The kids stayed up until 9:00 (Derrick counted down the last five minutes with his watch.)  Then they got into pajamas and climbed into bed. Brandon and I cleaned up the living room and kitchen. When we were certain that the kids were asleep we started getting things ready. 

I was a little bummed that I was missing out on Midnight Mass at the local Catholic church. Last year Midnight Mass had been one of the spiritual highpoints of the year. I'd been looking forward to going again this year. I'd changed my mind about it several times. As COVID rates kept climbing I felt it was unfair of me to attend Mass for a religion I didn't even belong to. I didn't want to take the seat of a practicing Catholic or bring in germs just to satisfy my want for religious tourism.

But I really couldn't deny my desire to got to Mass. After such a tough year I wanted that feeling of peace and love that I felt last year as soon as I'd walked into the chapel. 

I thought I'd found a good solution when I realized the church provided live streams of mass. I could just watch it from home and get some of the Christmas feeling. But the only English speaking boardcast was at 6:00 PM. That was the time we'd be having our party. 

So I was planning to go to the church in person for Midnight Mass. But my stupid cough and body aches cancelled that plan. I didn't know if I had COVID, but I certainly wasn't going to risk it. 

So I stayed home with Brandon and helped get everything ready. But I felt like I was missing out on something special. It's been a while since COVID cancelled something at the last minute for me. I don't like that feeling. 

As I laid out presents I realized we had quite a few gifts for the kids. My unofficial motto lately has been "You Can't Cancel Presents." In a year when so many things had to get cancelled or not planned at all, we've replaced experiences with tangible gifts. And that's been just fine. We finished putting out gifts around 1:30 - and I noted this is the time I would have been coming home from Mass. 

We got ready for bed and I took some alka seltzer cold medicine. I was hoping it would work some magic and help me feel better on Christmas Day. 

Neither Brandon or I was sleepy so we turned on Netflix and watched the Christmas Claymation episode of Community. That episode it so funny, but also has a moment that really resonates with me. The episode explores the meaning of Christmas from a mostly secular view. One character says that Christmas represents that even the darkest days of the year can be filled with light. I think that's one of my favorite parts of Christmas. 

I still wasn't sleepy so Brandon turned on the movie Airplane hoping that would knock me out. But instead I got into the movie and kept laughing at it.  Finally I drifted off to sleep. Brandon got up to take care of one last present surprise. 

He made it to bed at 3:00. 

Half an hour later one of the kids came in our room and yelled, "It's Christmas!"

All four of them were awake. I'm not sure who woke up first, but they'd spread the news that Santa had been there. They all were lookingat the unwrapped toys and exclaiming with excitement over how many presents there were. Brandon went into the Livingroom and told them it was 3:30 in the morning and that was WAY too early for Christmas. Mercifully they all went back to bed. Brandon told them they could try again at 6:00.

They ended up sleeping until 7:30. Once again someone yelled, "It's Christmas!" But this time we got up and assembled in the living room. 

Santa had left a whole bunch of unwrapped Barbie furniture on some large boxes. It came with a note that the toys should be shared by all three girls. There was also a marble tower for the kids to share. "Mrs Claus" had had quite a bit of fun setting up that tower. 

The alka seltzer cold medicine had worked wonders for me. My cough was barely a wheeze and I had no body aches. I should have taken that medicine earlier. I was so glad I was feeling better and could really enjoy Christmas Day. I settled down into a comfortable spot on the couch. Brandon had brought in our new headboard from the garage late the night before. It was set up behind me. 

The kids had a blast opening presents. Charlotte said, "I didn't think there would be this many." I told her that she and all the kids had been so good to handle all of the stress from this last year. They'd definitely earned all these gifts. 

Some of the gift were practical. Each of the kids got a new pillow. Lydia had specifically asked for one, and Santa had noticed they all should probably have a high quality pillow. They were all excited about those. All the kids also got new plush blankets. They were always stealing mine so I figured it was time they had their own. 

Charlotte made Brandon a Kermit the frog sock puppet, because she liked when he did the voice. It was so cute. 

Veronica got a lot of fun toys, but her favorite gift was a bag of "gems" that she'd picked out at Joanns with me. One of the kids gave her a bunch of little containers from the dollar store and Veronica spent a lot of time sorting the gems into the containers by color. 

I didn't take a lot of pictures while we opened presents because I like to just enjoy the moments as they happen. But it was a wonderful time watching the kids get gifts they had been hoping for. Derrick got his oval Hot Wheels track that he had been obsessing over for weeks. All three girls got cute little Calico Critter Families. There were craft supplies and movies. Brandon gave me so many thoughtful gifts like a music stand and a tuner. 

I was especially proud of my gifts for Brandon. Usually I really struggle with what to buy him. This year I went into Sportsmans Wearhouse for a specific knife. I never found the knife, but I found so many other good gifts. I found Brandon a solid leather belt, a cast iron skillet, and several little survival items like a pocket saw. I will go to that store every year from now on. I also bought him a cake decorating kit at Hobby Lobby because he is a man of many talents. Oh and all the router bits that he'd bought for working on the bed also counted as Christmas presents. 

We finished opening presents at 9:00. Then it was time to play with everything. It was like a toy store had appeared in our living room. The kids would play with one set of toys for a while and then move onto another set. 

Derrick set up his Hot Wheels track. Brandon had to help a little bit, but Derrick did most of it. Derrick has watched a lot of Hot Wheels videos on youtube and he plays with hotwheels at speech therapy so he was quite ready for this. I saw a side of him that I've never seen before - he was abl to do some engineering. Charlotte and Lydia had each bought him long hotwheels tracks at the dollar store. Derrick figured out how to add those to his track to make it longer. Veronica also got a small Hotwheels loop. (Pro tip, buy the youngest sibling something that goes with the older siblings toys so they can feel included.) Derrick kept coming up with ways to attach Veronica's loop to the other hotwheels tracks. I've never seen him create like that before. 

Brandon helped Veronica with her lego set. She had a little frozen themed set with a little Anna and Olaf.

Then he helped Derrick with his space shuttle set. Derrick was so good to follow along with every step. Usually Derrick doesn't care much about Legos, but he had a good time doing them with Brandon. When the set was done we joked that he flew it to the "Sis Star System." Veronica's Olaf greeted Derrick's Spaceman and the spaceman freaked out. It was funny. 

Charlotte and Lydia also got Lego sets. They did theirs on their own. Oh and notice the boards that everyon is using? Brandon made those for all the kids. He has a craft board that they kids were always borrowing to hav a hard surface to draw or build on. So Brandon made one for each kid. These were a huge hit and were used all morning long for legos, puzzels, and other play. 

Here's Derrick with his rocket. I really don't know how I got so many pictures of him not smiling. This kid was in heaven all day.

The morning was so nice. Once again we'd planned  to have a big breakfast and once again we realized we were all so full from the party that we really didn't need anything. We did make the kids eat cereal before they could have the candy in their stockings, but that was about the only food guidance we had for the day. I had rice crem for breakfast. This is how the livingroom looked most of the day. 

The kids watched some of their movies and Brandon and I took a nap. For some reason our internet wasn't working, but I decided that was actually a gift so I didn't even bother trying to figure out what was wrong. 

We got the game Clue and I taught the kids how to play it. I didn't realize what a good game this is for little kids. Veronica could feel like she was playing because she could roll her dice, make guesses about the murder, and show cards when needed, but she didn't really have to do much strategizing. Charlotte and Lydia loved playing and Lydia ended up winning. (After everyone else had made incorrect guesses and all the cards were on the table, but hey a win is a win.)

Veronica moved on to sorting her gems into cups that matched the gem color. 

The kids had a ton of fun playing with the marble tower the way it was set up under the tree. But by the evening Derrick wanted me to help him change it. He wanted it set up exactly like one of the pictures. So we worked on that. I had a lot of fun doing that. This marble tower might have been a present for me. My family got one when I was 15. It was really supposed to be for my younger siblings, but I really liked that one too. 

The day was COMPLETELY stress free. We were done with Christmas prep and now we just had to enjoy it. We had plenty of food so no one had to cook. The kids had plenty to play with so no one was bored. No one even bothered getting dressed. It was so nice. 

Here's Brandon relaxing on the couch. 

More kids playing. 

Eventually I went downstairs to see what the kids had done with the Barbie furniture.  Here's one of the couches in Veronica's house. (You can see the pineapple top plant in the corner.) She specifically asked for a man barbie so she could have a doll family. She ended up with a mom and dad barbie and their son. 

Lydia had made a clay monkey for one of her "teenager barbies."

Charlotte gave a polly pocket set to one of her little girl barbies. (These gifts were totally wrapped and the girls acted out a whole Christmas morning with their dolls. But I'm not allowed to take pictures of them when they are pretending.)

Here's a new dog bed.

There are a lot of new thing here. the rocking chair is new, so is the baby bathtub and the hanging toy. 

Charlotte's dolls got a new couch and chair. 

And a new bunkbed, a crib, and a birdcage. 

Veronica's dolls also got a new bed. 

And she got two new babies. 

Here's the babies room and the new boy barbie.

Oh and I almost forgot another special present.  A drone.  Derrick has been asking for a drone from Walmart for a long time. I looked up the reviews about it and they weren't great. So I told Derrick that Santa would find him a good drone. And Santa delivered. The kids and Brandon love this drone. I think of it about the same way I think of helium balloons. They are really fun to get, but also kind of a huge liability that is just waiting to disappoint your kid. But so far the drone is still working even after crashing in the basement a bunch of times so I guess Santa did a good job finding a sturdy one. 

Oh and the kids also got new church shoes with the gift cards the ward dropped off. We'd been able to provide everything for our kids this year (for the first time since Brandon left the Army), but it was nice they thought of us. So I decided church shoes and tights would be a good use of the money. Veronica doesn't like dress shoes so I told her she could get some nice tennis shoes or sneakers to wear to church. These are what she picked out. 

Brandon and I like to make homemade gifts for each other so I made this cross stitch for him. It's a (cleaned up version) of a saying Brandon heard from one of his drill sergeants. We've laughed about it a lot over the years. When my sisters were making funny Cross stitch things this summer I knew I wanted to do this saying. I started it in early December and finished it the Tuesday before Christmas. 

Here's another present Brandon gave me. This is my FAVORITE Berenstain Bears book. I discovered it when we lived in Texas. The library in Copperas Cove had nearly every Berenstain Bear book and we read them all. This was my favorite one. It has the most beautiful pictures of the bears vacation to the seashore. And it doesn't have any sort of mishap or moral. It's just a beautiful book about a beautiful trip. I've looked for this book at other libraries and I've never found it since. The kids don't remember reading this book so I decided we had to own it. 

I choked up reading it to the kids. The artwork is so pretty. The art and the story reminded me so much of all of our beautiful trips to the beach. I'm hoping there are more trips like that in our future. 

The kids were super well behaved all day so we didn't really think about a bed time. They finally went to bed around 10:00.

Brandon and I wanted to stay up and watch the Mandalorian, but then we remembered we didn't have internet. So we decided to just talk and play cards in our room. We were trying to play Kings Corner, but realized we were super tired. We were missing plays all over the place. We've never been that bad at King's Corner and that includes when we played it at the hospital while I was in labor with Derrick. So after two rounds we called it a night and went to bed. 

Christmas Day had been Friday so the next day was Saturday. This day was like Christmas Day part two. We still didn't have any responsibilities - nor did we want any. I played Bubble Shooter on my phone for like 4 hours just because I could. 

I did get around to figuring out the internet. I just had to unplug the router and then plug it back in. I needed the internet back up and running because we had plans to play Clue with my mom over Google Hangouts. I'd kept saying, "I wish my mom was here so we could play Clue." So I'd figured out how to have her play with us.  Brandon and her were on a team. Brandon could move the pieces for her and show her the cards. We had the laptop camera pointed at the board so she could see what was going on there. This ended up working out really well. Charlotte, Lydia, Veronica, and I all played with my mom. My mom ended up winning!  The game was everything I hoped it would be. 

Later in the day we also did a video call with Brandon's parents so the kids could show them their toys.We'd done a Marco Polo to Brandon's mom while they opened their presents from her, but the kids all made sure to thank her again. Actually the kids had been good about saying thank you the whole time. Derrick kept saying, "Thank you Santa" about all his toys. 

We considered having our big breakfast for dinner, but then just reheated the leftover Chicken Noodle Soup from Christmas Eve. 

Saturday wasn't all laziness though. I spent several hours giving my room a bit of a update. I'd also asked for a lamp and a rug for Christmas. It was so fun to set those up in my room. I took all the bedding and curtains out of the room and washed everything. Brandon helped me make the existing curtains look nice and we talked about what colors we'd want to update them with.  (The small curtains above the bed are actually a twin size sheet folded over a few times, and the larger green ones are from our first apartment so we are due for some new curtains.) A new bedspread would be nice eventually too. 

And here's another view of the bed. The lamp is going to be so great. Now I can read in bed without using the flashlight on my phone. And technically the headboard isn't done yet. Brandon still needs to sand and stain it, but right now I'm so happy to have a headboard again that I don't care. We've been talking abotu getting a new headboard for years so it's nice to finally have one.

And finally here is a view of the rug. I wanted something super soft. I already love standing on it when I get up in the morning. Lydia had fun writing her name with the nap. 

Today was Sunday and it was a lot like the other days. I did leave the house a few times today so that was different. We went to church and the girls were so happy to have new tights and shoes. (We still have to find shoes for Derrick.)

In the early afternoon I went for a walk and talked to my sister Lindsey on the phone while walking. That was really nice. 

But mostly it was more napping and eating and playing. So far toys have been a good substitute for actually going anywhere. 

For dinner we finally had the food we'd planned for breakfast on Christmas Day. It was kind of a signal that we have to return to partial reality soon. 

Brandon and I both have work tomorrow. Derrick has behavioral therapy and Veronica has physical therapy. So we have to be responsible again. But we can still sleep in and we don't have to do school so we are all still very happy about that.  

And we have fun plans for New Years Eve to look forward to.  

I want to leave you with a final thought. I can't remember exactly what day this happened.  Maybe Christmas Day, maybe Saturday. But I was sitting with Charlotte on this couch. We were talking about this year and how so many things got cancelled. We talked about how we've spent so much time together as a family - as just our family. And we talked about how its been really nice. The kids have built amazing friendships with eachother. They have been amazing playmates and are super close friends. We've always been a close family, but this pandemic brought us closer together than we ever expected. 

Charlotte said, "I think Santa knows how well we play together and that's why he gave us so many toys." And I said something like, "Yes because he knew you'd use the toys to keep playing together."

And somehow this whole unpredictable year was worth it because of that little moment. 

Anyway, I hope you had a Merry Christmas and are also looking forward to the New Year. Thanks for reading.