The first day of Christmas break was on the winter solstice: Wednesday, December 21st. But before we reached that happy day, we had two days of Normal School Routine to crawl through. Monday was incredibly busy with errands, appointments, and obligations. I barely sat down at all, all day long. It was also cold cold cold. 20° at most in the middle of the day. My face ached for the first quarter of my run in the morning, and going in and out of cars and buildings all day made my body clench up, even with all of my wool apparel. Amber had her annual doctor checkup in the middle of the day, so we had a brief hour together before I took her back to school.
Then came the errands: Dollar Tree for stocking stuffers, Walmart for funeral meal supplies, Les Schwab for air in the van tires, and the post office to pick up a package that for an inexplicable reason would not be delivered, even though other packages were delivered to our house all week long. I ended the long, tiring day with 3 hours of work at a funeral meal at the church. Most of that time was spent chatting with friends in the kitchen while we waited for the people to eat, but it was still a night time outing and I was socially fried when I got home after 8pm that night.
"One more day till Christmas break!" I told myself.
Tuesday, December 20th was happy 16th anniversary to us! Sweet 16! Jeff and I both forgot that it was our anniversary until after Jeff left for work. I remembered right before school started, and called Jeff really quick to say happy anniversary before his first period class started. We both laughed at how completely we had forgotten. I mean, we knew it was coming and had thought of it a few times throughout the month, but on the actual day it didn't enter our brains right away.
I wore triple layers top and bottom and two pairs of gloves on my Tuesday run, and it kept me warm, but was so cumbersome. It was like running through mud with all those clothes on! Double workout. Tuesday was the last day of the week that the outdoor conditions were good enough for running. After that frigid run, I took the rest of the week off to avoid breaking myself on the messy combination of wind chill, snow, ice, and sleet that swirled through our valley. During the school day on Tuesday, I did my best to soak up the silence, tidiness, and solitude of my empty house before the two week break brought in the noise, messes, and bodies. I love my family but I am also an introvert!
Jeff ended up cancelling swim practice on Tuesday due to his post Covid fatigue, which made it difficult for him to even finish out the school day in his classroom. Jay, Rose, and Jeff were all home for the beginning of Christmas break by 3pm that afternoon. Amber arrived home a little while later and the break was officially on!
We had leftover lasagna (from the funeral I helped at the previous day) for dinner on our anniversary (grim but yummy), and then Jeff drove the girls to their late night (instead of a sleepover) primary girls Christmas movie activity while I attended my family art club zoom meeting. Once the girls were at their activity, we allowed Jay a late night video game fest while Jeff and I had an at home date. We told Jay that even though we would technically be in the house, we were going on a date, so Jay should act like we were gone. He agreed, and didn't disturb us once.
Jeff was still super fatigued from his post-Covid recovery process, but we still managed to enjoy each other's company on our anniversary and it was a sweet happy lovely brief date at home. We ate some Christmas cookies while watching the delightful Mary Tyler Moore Show on our little 14 year old TV. (Our newer TV stopped working, but the first-ever TV that we bought still works great!) We gave each other foot rubs while we watched, like we do on most nights. It wasn't much, it wasn't even out of the ordinary, but it was what we wanted to do and what we could both handle that evening. The date-vibe of the evening was the fact that zero children came in to ask/tell us things like they normally do while we watch our show.
Wednesday (December 21st) was a day out and about. Jeff had a doctor appointment to get help with his post Covid fatigue. I went with him for moral support and we left with a prescription for the same steroid that pulled him out of this same rut back in April: dexamethasone. After the appointment, we picked up the kids from home and drove the 20 minutes to Grandview to visit the grandparents and pick up our traditional Christmas Eve tamales from Garcia's restaurant. When we arrived at Jeff's parents' house, we stumbled upon a cookie plate assembling extravaganza! Grampa Dan invited the kids to go caroling and cookie-delivering with their cousins and grandparents, so Jeff and I went home by ourselves.
On our way home, we learned that Garcia's was OUT of tamales and didn't plan on making any more. We ended up getting tamales from Fiesta Foods in Sunnyside instead. Not as good as Garcia's, but good enough. Our last stop was the pharmacy for Jeff's prescription. Then home, sweet home, where we suddenly found ourselves alone together for close to four hours--a bonus post-anniversary date. We lit two candles and ate tamales together. It felt so rare and fun and date-ish to eat dinner alone together, although Jeff was feeling completely wiped out from our long afternoon out and about.
Our friends (who always invite us to go caroling every Christmas) came caroling to US on Thursday night! It was so sweet I almost cried. We weren't up for caroling because of Jeff's fatigue, so they came to us instead!
On Thursday, the wind chill was -6 degrees. I stayed inside all day and got ready for Christmas. I wrapped 10 gifts and completely finished all of the gift wrapping. I didn't put everything out under the tree, but I did get it all wrapped. I wrapped a lot of air: everything is in large boxes. 90% of the gifts I got my family all fit in one box, but I wrapped each one in its own mid-sized Amazon box, so there would be a festive heap of gifts under the tree on Christmas.
Jeff took his first steroid pill of his ten day round on Thursday morning. He was dizzy for half the day before he started feeling more stable, and even after just one dose, he already started to feel his energy improving. Yay! The kids got more in the Christmas spirit by decorating the pre-built gingerbread house kit that I found at Costco. Jay helped a little at the beginning and then Rose and Amber worked on it for at least an hour. Their focus was quite pressive. We kept the oven on for several hours on Thursday and the kids rolled and baked several pans of cookies from the batches of dough we made the previous weekend: Jay made 2 pans of chocolate snowtops, and Rose and Amber each made a pan of gingersnaps. It was lovely to leave the cookie-ing to the kids. We watched A Muppet Family Christmas together after dinner--one of our favorite classic Christmas movies.
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