Christmas 2020

It's possible the Christmas letter reminded scores of folks to check the blog and here I am not making posts in a timely manner. Also! I published this last night, and it appeared to work fine on the desktop, but I was unable to see the photos on my phone. When I got back on this morning, there the pictures were on the desktop, but still not the phone. I'm not sure what the problem was, but I downloaded them all and re-uploaded them so hopefully you can see them. 

Sam's folks came on Christmas Eve with a bounty of gifts. It was so frigid all they could really do was take a quick picture and then leave, despite the festive outfits. 

The kids opened a special gift from them Christmas Eve night, which were wooden boxes that Papaw had made and Grandma Mary burned their names into, filled with treasures. 

We watched Christmas Eve service on the TV. The kids seemed marginally more interested than they are in the regular Sunday service on the TV. Maybe because we lit candles and sang carols and their dad was featured in a video, or perhaps because it was somewhat shorter. 

Sam's video: 

Spark was unbothered by the fuss and tree and surplus of gifts: 

Sam and I were up at least an hour and a half before the kids. 

Blurry family photo with the tripod and timer: 

Weren't they so patient? And didn't they get a truly ridiculous number of presents? The very large bag for Leah is just various stuffed animals that had been in storage in the basement since this summer. 

Leah's aunt and uncle in New Mexico sent this wonderfully large, soft elephant that she temporarily gave the unfortunate name of "Trump-o" to. You can see James is reading one of the books he got behind her. 

Amelie reading one of her book gifts in the middle of opening as well: 

Sam made cinnamon rolls and bacon for breakfast and we had Christmas Pizza for supper. (This reminds me that one year he accidentally put cumin instead of cinnamon in & then this year, I thought I'd grabbed the gold sprinkles to sprinkle on top of the gingerbread house but instead I had grabbed ... the oregano. I was able to blow most/all of the flakes off and didn't tell the kids, who didn't seem to notice.) 

We zoomed with my side of the family for Bingo in the afternoon: 

I found some sparklers from this summer and put them in the kids' stockings. They turned out to be a little bit of a dud but they enjoyed them nonetheless. 

I really should have taken a video of the kids opening their gifts - there was joyful shrieking for part of it, and I don't even remember which gift(s?) that all the commotion was over. They took quite a long time, as they wanted to stop and play and/or read everything as soon as it was unwrapped. 

Since I had to re-publish the post, I added two more pictures. One of Leah's gifts (I'm not sure who from - maybe Nana Jana?) was a snowman craft, which we made and hung up on the door. The kids got lots of art supplies and games, which we've been using on the break. Leah and I are the two most interested in the mosaic sticker puzzles, but there has been lots of Clue and Battleship and Sega Genesis mini.) 

And Amelie in her Christmas PJ's - this was back on "holiday sweater" day at school. 

Christmas Decorations

We made our annual pilgrimage to Ace Hardware on the day after Thanksgiving to pick out a a tree.

I think this is as good as we're going to get photo-wise.

 

 

Here's Sam loading it all up to drive very slowly home:

James refused to wear a coat (I think this was why he wasn't in the other photos - he'd already retreated to the warmth of the van & taken off his mask), though he did go in the store at the beginning & get a gumball. It was cold!

Leah looks very guilty about playing with the tree! This didn't last long, as her new favorite activity is rearranging the ornaments.  We also got a wreath, but they didn't have or maybe had already run out of sprigs of mistletoe. 

And here's what it looked like decorated (at first - I redid the garland/ribbon after Leah had rearranged the tree one too many times.) We've had this dove topper for a few years - I think it's a bit too heavy for a real tree. 

The mantle & nutcrackers.

And then we watched the Peanuts Christmas special.

I feel compelled to share with the blog readership the (quite festive!) festivus pole at my mom's house.

We cut paper snowflakes to put up in the window. Amelie cut one & Leah provided artistic direction. Here she is with the haul:

I was trying to make a star and I somewhat inadvertently made a chalice in one of them! I was very pleased!

But when I tried to do another one on purpose, it didn't quite come out as well. 

Someone at church has been delivering chalice rocks to people's stoops and the kids found this one - I'm thinking about leaving it with these others: 

The kids were VERY interested in the candles:

Pandemic Thanksgiving

 I figured I better post something about Thanksgiving before Christmas, so here goes. (Also if anyone was reminded to come check out the blog by our Christmas letter, they might be surprised to see no updates! Oops!)

Not much to report for Thanksgiving other than we decided to keep our germs to ourselves and stay home. 

All we did for prep work the day before was to make turkey handprint artwork and plan out the cooking times for the oven. Since it was just us, we decided to have a special meal but nothing too over the top. There were 3 kinds of tartlets. Sam made 1 1/2 pie crusts and we halved the recipes for 3 pies. He made pumpkin and pecan and I made this delicious chocolate pie.

Here we are with our various handprint turkeys. My neighbor left the flowers for us and a coworker at the library gave us the small decorative gourds.

Here's my plate. Sam brined an 11-pound turkey and then bought a package of extra legs so that everyone could have a leg. I think we could have used one more side dish! Ha! Even though this made a great big meal and we sat down and had it twice. The sweet potatoes were baked with mini-marshmallows but I scooped mine from the middle since I think they're sweet enough already & of course my favorite Thanksgiving side is corn pudding, the only 'casserole' Sam will eat.

Updated with the actual recipe from my Grandma Doris: 

 The big drama of the day was that Spark snatched an unattended leftover turkey bone and ate the entire thing and then had to be fed soft food and monitored for the next 72 hours due to the danger of poultry bone shards. He doesn't look like he feels bad at all (photo taken immediately after the thievery): 

We watched the Peanuts Thanksgiving Special.

First Snow

We got snow two weeks ago (October 26th). It just missed the record for earliest recorded snow with accumulation in Columbia, which KOMU tells me was on October 23rd back in 2017. I was wondering if the kids might have a snow day right when they'd just gotten to go back to school - and if they do end up having a snow day, will they get the day off or will they just have to work remotely via Zoom??

 I was so tickled when I pulled in the driveway after work and saw a snowman in the front yard. 

 

Can you see that Leah made a little snowman out on the deck, too?

Our yard looked the least snowy on Monday since James rolled it all up for his snowman, but then it looked the most snowy by Tuesday and Wednesday since everyone's else had melted.

Apple Tree

Sam and the kids picked apples on September 5th. The squirrels got a big bounty this year, but we had plenty to make pie and several jars of apple butter. Leah's a big fan of an apple butter sandwich. 

The new tree we planted is still not producing - I keep thinking any year now. Here's old faithful: 

And the kids doing their bit: 

 

 

And more of Sam's budding iPhone nature photography hobby: 

 It's just the one small tree, despite the plethora of photographs 😆

Here's the haul:

Plus several artistic photos by Sam.

And the kids:

 Last but not least,  the pie. I used the apple cookie cutter for extra crust decorations, but Amelie thought they looked like pumpkins.