Preppin' For Christmas

It's amazing what you will do during a pandemic to spend time with friends. Easier than a cotton swab up the nose is spitting into a vial so your scientist friend can go back to her lab to test your saliva for Covid. This is exactly what our wine group did so that we could spend an evening in a garage with the door open in December drinking wine and celebrating our ongoing friendship. It was all worth it to spend time together. Unfortunately we don't have a picture of the actual night, most likely because Sarah didn't want to take her hands out from under the heated blanket.

This year the chocolate dipping extravaganza was truly a family affair. Kelly, Sarah, Claire, and Reese all worked hard to dip as many treats as possible. Ella showed up after work and Callie came in after soccer. Both arrived just in time for the tasting of the finished products, which is the most important part of the day. And even though school was still virtual, they packed up treat boxes for the girls' teachers so they could drop them at each school's main office. The day was fun, as always. 

In the spirit of keeping traditions alive during the pandemic, but most importantly, keeping it real, we also had to decide what to do for our annual Christmas card. Sarah knew she wanted the card to acknowledge the reality in which we were all living, and her final idea was brilliant. The front of the card had a close up of the four us looking as put together as one could look without a proper haircut, and the back of the card displayed the image below which showed what was happening to all of us off camera. We were pretty proud of it, though John made a point of getting his hair cut shortly thereafter.

The pandemic would again limit our travel for the holidays and Christmas would be spent in Lexington. And despite past success at Costco, John insisted that we go back to the more expensive place where you can actually see what your tree will look like before you get it home. No grab bag Christmas tree this year.

Years from now we will all be explaining how we were smiling behind our masks in pictures like the one above. 

But the real (non-spiritual) preparation for the Christmas season involved newspaper, numbers, and a whole lot of packing tape. This year Reese helped John make the tape ball and it was massive. We were ready for the fun to begin.