I think our Christmas festivities are complete now, and we have Dominic's birthday tomorrow, and then no plans for the remainder of lockdown. This year with not being able to do a lot of our regular traditions, we had the opportunity to create our own traditions with our little family. This is the first year we've done an Advent Calendar, stockings, gifts, and a special Christmas breakfast. I may have overcompensated feeling like I had to make up for the year of weirdness, but it was really a lot of fun and a great distraction for me. It made my heart feel good to make things special for the kids and us still when a lot of the special had been taken away for me.
This year on Christmas Eve, we did a Zoom chat with Bo Bo Moma. We were hoping to do a window visit, but Elim is on lockdown, so that wasn't a possibility. Zoom it is! The kids were absolutely thrilled to see her (and everyone else) on Zoom. They yelled Merry Christmas, showed her some toys, and smiled and were goofy. We held up signs and one said "Merry Christmas Oma! (Bo Bo Moma)". She apparently always gets a little more silly and animated when she reads Bo Bo Moma. It's clear she knew who we all were, but was still a little confused. She asked to see my belly, and made a comment about the kids being wild. Over all it was a nice way to visit given the circumstances.
I don't know what's gotten into me with my, "I don't like baking" attitude, but I decided this season to make a loaf of sourdough for our whole family, which is 8 loaves (including our own). When I was done with that, I decided, "Hey! I'll make homemade cinnamon buns for the first time ever as a special Christmas breakfast!" I think my "nesting" behaviour is taking a different angle this year. Normally it's painting or redoing a room (not that that hasn't crossed my mind too), but maybe I got all my painting out of our system when I painted our entire house white last year, and then our bedroom and powder room this year. Oh and we (Dave) painted the office this year too.
After Christmas Eve dinner (which was French fries and cesar salad... apparently I was so focused this season on ensuring everything was perfect, I completely forgot about the fact that we had to eat real food at some point...), we let the kids open their stockings, got changed into jammies, and watched the Christmas Eve service together. Dave filmed the whole thing, but didn't have to edit it this time which was a blessing. The whole Christmas Eve Service team did an amazing job. I got emotional watching the service about... well everything. I've been emotional in general lately. It was beautiful, I loved the music, the monologue at the beginning was very fitting, but most of all, I was sad that we weren't all there enjoying it in person. It was a perfect substitute for the regular Christmas Eve, but something about it made everything hit home again. I missed my family, I missed my church, I missed my friends, I missed normalcy. A good little cry and I was okay again haha. I'll have to re-watch to catch the sermon though, because sugar-high kids and trying to listen to a sermon do not go hand in hand.
After we finally got the kids to bed, Dave and I had a quiet evening with just the two of us. We ate some snacks, opened our gifts for each other (we haven't done gifts in a few years), played a game, and did some scratch & wins. I got every thing off my list this year which is so awesome! Some people think Christmas lists are boring, but I think they're genius. I got all things this year that I actually needed/wanted. Even people who bought off-list somehow hit the nail on the head. Dave got me a fruity smelly candle, a dough scraper for my sourdough, a teapot, and a curling wand :). I got him new kitchen scissors, sweatpants, a Nike Dri-fit compression shirt, and skipping ropes.
Our game of crib post-gifts and snacks was hilarious. We made it 3/4 of the way through the game and then this hand came up as we were counting points...
Before the game, we did our due diligence, and counted the deck to make sure there were 52 cards - perfect. There were! So we played. We had a good laugh about this, and then when I (inevitably) won the game, we decided to lay out the whole deck and found this to be what we were playing with. Haha!! How on earth did it take us that long to notice?!
Christmas morning, we were up at 6 as usual (Dave actually may have been up at 5, I can't remember), and I got the cinnamon buns in the oven for our special breakfast. The littles were up at 7 and helped me make the icing (aka licked the beaters). After breakfast we invited them over to the tree and they opened their gifts from us. The vast majority of their gifts from us were either from Marketplace, or things we'd accumulated over the year and saved for Christmas. Emilia got some Play Mobil that I actually intended to give her for her birthday, for example. Emilia also got a sweeping/cleaning set (Marketplace), a Berenstain Bears 10-story book (Costco), and a Minnie Mouse microwave that actually makes sound, spins, and beeps... SO COOL! (also from Facebook).
Dominic got... some cars that we got for free from a neighbour like two years ago, a clock from the dollar store, a Star Wars book (Marketplace), and his La Ferrari Dave picked up from Costco like 5 months ago).
After some playing with toys we got a text from Aunty Sonya saying Santa had dropped a couple things at our front door. We waited until she got home, and then did a Zoom call with her so the kiddos could open their gifts with her. Emilia opened a floor puzzle and a Minnie Mouse Hot Wheels car, and a Minnie Mouse stuffy! (Later that day when they were opening gifts via Zoom with Rebecca, we found out she was also gifted the same Minnie Mouse stuffy!). Dominic was gifted a Hot Wheels garbage truck, and a Lego garbage truck! I'm so excited that Lego is making its way into our household! I love Lego.
We quickly dropped by my parents' place to bring them some cinnamon buns, and then back home to play for a bit and have nap/quiet time. After naptime, we had a little Zoom meeting with my Opa and Oma, just to say Merry Christmas, and so we could chat for a few. The kids were hamming it up again. Dom just loves to show everyone what he got for Christmas. After that call, there was a big Gerber family Zoom call which was total chaos and cacophony, but it was fun to see everyone's faces!
After this call I realized we don't have Christmas dinner. Everyone was rattling off their fancy dinner plans and we had nothing. Everything is closed so we couldn't even do takeout. Mom and Dad EVER SO GENEROUSLY dropped off some leftovers from their shortrib dinner for Dave and I to eat. Oh my gosh. So delicious. So much better than the bacon and eggs we were going to end up eating otherwise (sorry kids, they got stuck with that still haha).
I forgot to take pictures, but at 4:00 we had our Kimber kid Christmas gift opening. We Zoomed David's family and the kids took turns opening gifts with Rebecca. They opened some really cool gifts, and were way over excited and overstimulated! They're getting used to this Zoom thing though which makes it more fun and interactive haha. Emilia was gifted two Baby Yoda t-shirts, and Rebecca showed that she had matching ones, so that's super cute. (Emilia was very excited about the Yoda shirts because Dom always gets the Star Wars things, and now she has her own Star Wars something). We spent the rest of the evening before bedtime playing with new toys. Dom and I played Snakes & Ladders (minus the snakes and ladders since he's just learning, so pretty much... roll to 100) and he won, and then we built his other new Lego set which was a bulldozer and a wrecking ball.
At 7:30/8:00 it was time for the Kimber grown up Zoom Christmas! Lots of time spent on Zoom this day, but it's just a part of life now, and we're all used to it making it easier to connect. We exchanged gifts, and then played some online games. The gifts I received were hilarious, because they were off-list, but almost every single one of them happened to be something I/we needed. A couple candles (I used up my last candle a few weeks ago, so now I'm stocked back up for a while), gloves (I lost mine last week), a hummingbird feeder (ours broke a week go), a deck of Harry Potter cards (well, you saw our card situation from Christmas Eve!), scrunchies (I just started wearing scrunchies, but only have one), and I may be missing another one or two things, but it was hilarious and awesome.
Now it's Boxing Day, and we all came down to an overwhelming mess of toys and toys and toys and toys. Dave and I scrambled to get things semi-organized as it was clear it was too much stimulation for the kids as they jumped from one activity to the next every 35 seconds. We hopped online and spent $200 at IKEA ordering some storage solutions, and put some things away that didn't have to be out anymore. Once we got it to a manageable level the kids played nicely together for an hour. Quiet time was also more successful today because Dom had the clock in his room, and lots of new stuff to play with!
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