Merry Christmas!

 This has been a nice Christmas.  I invited Thea over for Christmas eve dinner because I knew she didn't have plans and felt terrible that she'd have to spend Christmas alone.  I figured covid wasn't worth making a poor woman be alone on Christmas.  I'm glad we invited her because it was really nice to have her join us.  We had a big dinner thanks to Kelly and acted out the nativity scene (Bella was shepherd, Christian was sheep, Kelly was Joseph and narrator, Thea was inn keeper, I was Mary, Benjamin was wiseman, and Peter was baby Jesus for a second year).  Peter was squirmy in his role as Jesus at first, but I said, "Peter, can you just sit still with me for a little while?" and he did!  I never thought that would work, but he sat completely still from that point on until I told him he could get up.  Then we read the classic poem A Visit From St. Nicholas by Clement Moore and listened to part of the Christmas sermon from Ward Presbyterian that I'd heard on Sunday and really liked, and then we all played Family Feud together.  It was a lot of fun.

Christmas morning the kids woke us up at 7am excited as could be to open presents.  Benjamin got socks, underwear, jeans, sweatshirts, a fitbit watch, candy, money, and blue light glasses.  Bella got chalk pastels, charcoal pencils, an Xacto knife, a sleeping bag, a blanket, a pocket knife, sweatshirt, card game, candy, and money.  Christian got Addidas flip flops, church pants, pocket knife, board game, dot to dot books, candy and money.  Everyone was very happy.  After presents we had our traditional ham, cheese, and egg on croissants and went out to play in the snow.  We shoveled our driveway and Barb's driveway and made snow angels.  Christian wanted to play tic-tac-toe in the snow, so we crawled all over our yard drawing game after game in the freshly fallen snow.  Sadly it was too powdery to build anything out of it.

Since then we've mostly been busy playing board games and card games, taking care of all the neighbor's pets while they're on vacation (daily visits to 3 homes - 2 cats, 1 dog), playing Christmas songs on the piano, and Kelly has been enamored with the marble set we got for Peter.  Peter loves the marbles and loves watching them roll, but it's Kelly who has spent a lot of time building.  Sadly, this set is terribly flimsy and Peter is constantly knocking Kelly's beautiful creations to the ground as he places the marbles into the tubes.  I'm frustrated by the cheap construction of such an expensive set.  Kelly doesn't seem to mind, though.  He's loved spending time with Peter building and when they break, it's just an excuse to build it again.  We've also been watching Christmas movies such as Elf, Noelle, The Santa Clause, Christmas Chronicles,  Home Alone, and The Grinch and reading Christmas books, such as The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson and The Last Holiday Concert by Andrew Clements.

The biggest Christmas surprise this year was an offer by Kelly's parents to use their time share next week.  They aren't going and don't want it to go to waste, so we're off to Cancun, Mexico on Saturday.  We debated back and forth about the wisdom of traveling during a pandemic, but how do you pass up a free resort stay in Mexico??  Airfare is 1/2 price right now and the kids have online school so they wouldn't be missing anything.  Plus, we'll just be on the beach and in our private condo as isolated as we are here in Michigan, so we're going.  I'm nervous and excited.  It'll be fun but oh so much preparation and work to make it all happen with a 1 year old!  Warm weather, here we come.