Twas the Week Before Christmas

The week leading up to Christmas is usually busy and full of final preparations, family gatherings, and last minute shopping.  This year, however, was quite the opposite.  The kids had the entire week off school.  When my running partner tested positive for COVID after we had run together, I found myself quarantining at home with my family.  Although the hospital policy allows you to work as long as you are asymptomatic, I chose to take my 2 days off work that week to err on the side of caution.  So our week leading up to Christmas was spent together...at home...much like the rest of our 2020.  It was a nice way to ease into our Christmas and we found some fun activities to fill our time.

Although I didn't get to wear my festive work shirt the week of Christmas, I did get to put it to use the week before.

We filled our days at home with play time, finishing up homemade Christmas gifts, doing Christmas cards, cleaning, and baking.  Here Adelie is acting out the Christmas story with our nativity set while Fuzzington watches.

We filled our evenings with family games, Christmas treats, and Christmas movies.

We enjoyed driving over to watch the Christmas light display at the Barn 3 one evening.  My kids love Christmas light displays and we found some new ones to add to our repertoire this Christmas season.

We made sugar cookies and gingerbread men.

And then the kids spent a long time decorating all the cookies we made.  We also made bread that the kids delivered to some neighbors and friends.

The kids wanted to sleep in a tent in the girls' room one night.  Although all 3 of them started the night in the tent, only the littlest made it until morning.  Staley woke up around 11:00 and went to sleep in Briggs' bed.  Adelie then woke up around 1:00 and ended up sleeping in Staley's bed.  Thankfully Briggs made it all night in the tent since we were out of beds as we had to move Adelie's bed to put up the tent.

And since Uma and Papa recently recovered from Covid, they were comfortable having us over for a little family time on Christmas Eve.

We enjoyed brunch, lots of family games, visiting, and play time.

We have sorely missed spending quality time with our families, so this was such a wonderful day to be together with Uma and Papa again.

My positive exposure made us rethink getting together with my family.  Instead of being together in person, we instead spent time virtually on Zoom to open gifts.  It was not typical.  It was not ideal.  But it was still Christmas with the family and we made it work.  The kids still loved seeing their cousins and got fun new things like binoculars, new pajamas, Lego sets, games, bug catchers, books, jewelry, craft supplies, Hatchimals, and clothes.

Instead of rushing into Christmas full-steam ahead, we had a week of ample time at home to ease in without any stress or pressure.  We enjoyed family time, had plenty of time to get all our preparations done, and were all ready to enjoy the big day when it arrived.