Another Christmas at New Year's

We were not home for a minute December 30th before the "plastic wall" came down and we were podded back up with my parents. Terah didn't want to let go of her grandma for quite some time. While we were all glad to have enabled the holidays gatherings that our quarantine made possible, it sure felt good to have the easy flow between our households again. 

We had decided to do our Christmas celebration with my parents on the 31st and the 1st. It felt very strange to not have Kali there, and on multiple occasions various ones of us miscounted our numbers. It's not the same without her!! But knowing she's enjoying herself immensely where she is, makes it worth it. And we are not suffering too horribly. :) 

Each day we did brunch downstairs and dinner upstairs and had a lot of fun in between. We even had lifesaver candle name tags (from my childhood) at our evening meals.

We enjoyed doing the tradition again where each person gets to choose an activity that we all do together (about 1/2 hour in length, but most of ours went over). It ranged from writing letters to a dearly loved one far away to playing hide and seek with tiny pottery vases Jason had made to sharing songs that are meaningful to us and why to going for a walk/explore outside. It was a very fun mix of things..We have two activities we are saving for Kali's return. We are most definitely spreading out the holiday season and will do one more gathering this weekend following her return. 

The little vase game was made up by Terah and was surprisingly fun. Who knew how well a tiny brown pottery vase could be camouflaged on a shelf. It was very fun to be the person hiding them and see people staring right at one and not seeing it. If I pondered that for any length of time, it seems there would have to be some kind of metaphor applicable to life more broadly in that...

The girls and I also helped my mom sort clothes one day. Terah and Alida definitely kept the mood playful and were very eager to try on various things. Alida can fit the dress my mom wore for my wedding. :) My parents continue the job, now that all their stuff is in one location, of sorting and paring down (again) and finding places for everything (followed by attempting to remember what those places are). 

We fake rang in the New Year with my parents upstairs so they could go to bed at a reasonable hour, and then we came downstairs to continue watching our newest obsession - we are officially ready now for season 3 of Ted Lasso! We did another round of ringing in the New Year at midnight!

Here's to another year of living and loving and learning side by side. There's room there beside my dad to imagine Kali (I'm not even going to attempt something as sophisticated as photoshopping her in somehow)! I'm thoroughly enjoying reading Anne of Green Gables out loud with Alida at night. It's a good time to work on the powers of our imagination (if we want to keep pace with Anne anyway)... So far no fiasco's with the computer so I think I'll go do the next stage on my cheddar cheese and see if I can knock out one more post before shifting to cleaning and de-decorating from Christmas! Terah's now playing The First Noel on the piano, which she has almost mastered, and Alida is still making the kitchen smell of cinnamon pastry!