Christmas
This Christmas was similar to last year with us staying home and staying safe. While permissions were allowed to have ten people inside together we opted to play it safe with Easton only one dose vaccinated and the Omicron new variant spreading at rapid speed. Ontario reported a record breaking 10, 412 new Covid-19 cases on Christmas day. The highest single day new cases since the beginning of the pandemic. This is alarming. The seven day rolling average of new cases now stands at 6746 up from 2542 only a week ago. So, packages were shipped, and phone calls and video calls were made to spread Christmas cheer. This year we decided that we would spread out the long calls onto different days and just do quicker calls with all the people on Christmas day. Last year we spent most of our day on calls and the day felt too full, so this year we spent 2 hours making all the calls and booked other days to call everyone for longer present opening video calls. This was so much better.
So... more details about Christmas...
We ordered a tree again from the grocery store and they put it in the back of our van. The kids notice that the tree is smaller again but totally understand our choices. This allowed for less contact with people. We still order groceries online and have them put in our trunk to take home as well. Again for safety. In any case, we put the tree on the east side of the great room this year as Easton is home again doing virtual school and we thought rather than disrupt his set up we would try something new. While the tree is lovely in any location, I prefer it on the south west side of the great room. So maybe next year it will be back there. We will see.
On Christmas Eve, we watched the Cat in the Hat Christmas special as we always do and we sewed new things on our stockings. The kids are much more patient with sewing now and every year they get a little stronger at this skill plus they love looking back at things they have added in years past. We started earlier in the day this year, just as the sun went down, around 4:45pm. This was also a good idea. The stress of getting everything done was so much less with this extra time given to ourselves. This year we truly were so much better at pandemic Christmas and timing things.
Christmas morning was quite musical, Easton got a harmonica and Hadley got a clarinet. She remembered some things from before the pandemic when she was learning this instrument in class, and she missed it. It was so lovely to hear them being so musical. It was the sound of happiness. There were so many gifts to note as being appreciated by all. To note just a few: Brian and I got each other smart watches, the kids got bean bag chairs, Hadley got a professional microphone for her editing and a snow cone maker, and a fancy fan. Easton got a chicken coop that he has been asking for since early fall. We will assemble later and get chickens in the spring. He also got a metal detector. Seriously, we enjoyed a beautiful Christmas with stockings opened at 8 am, followed by a full breakfast, and then gift opening until after 11am. There are so many things to enjoy for weeks to come.
We enjoyed all the smells of Christmas as a full turkey dinner cooked to fill the air with a beautiful aroma of yum! Turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberries, green beans, dressing and dinner rolls with a nice glass of wine.
It was a beautiful day! I am happy.