We didn’t even spend a week in Disney World this year and December was STILL more busy than I can even begin to describe. I feel like we packed nearly every minute with one activity or another. And even after making the choice to send out Happy New Year cards instead of Merry Christmas cards, as of today, I still haven’t gotten around to it.

Maya had joined an after school choir group, and one of the things they did was some Christmas caroling. This started with a little performance for the Balcones Woods community. Maya and her choir-mates sang through holiday songs from around the world. She seemed to be enjoying the singing, but probably the cookies afterward were her favorite part. They had plans to sing elsewhere, but I think the weather limited them to caroling around their school.

Mrs Claus had to take a selfie

We spent Sean’s actual birthday in Marble Falls, checking out the town and the lights and getting in our visit with Santa Claus. The town was nice enough, but if you aren’t a big shopper, it seemed like there wasn’t much to do. We had lunch at Bear King Brewing and sampled their seasonal Milkyway beer – a chocolate marshmallow stout that the adults really enjoyed. We wandered over to Ms Lollipop’s to tell the kids “no” a lot when they wanted to buy all the random and super-fun looking toys, and to have really delicious ice cream with Santa and Mrs Claus.

Walkway of Lights at Marble Falls

We whiled away the time till dark, and then took a spin around the Walkway of Lights. Partway through, the kids got to see Santa and Mrs. Claus again and had a moment to discuss with them what they might like for Christmas. They also learned that Santa would enjoy chocolate chip cookies this year.

Pedernales Electric Coop lights in Johnson City

We enjoyed the light display well enough, but I did a little looking and it seemed that if we went only 20 minutes out of our way, we could see the Christmas lights and Pedernales Electric Coop in Johnson City “on our way home.” I don’t think anyone regrets this decision. They coat their trees in myriad white and blue lights and the effect is honestly magical. Even our sour-faced kids who just wanted to go home couldn’t help but ooo and aaaah at it. It was very crowded and a little hard to catch decent photos, but that didn’t dampen our collective spirit at all.

Happy birthday, Dad!

The next day we celebrated Sean’s birthday. We baked him his favorite chocolate malt cake, made pot roast (one of his favorites), and presented him with gifts and hugs.

Most of what Maya’s choir group was working on was a performance of a musical called Press Start. The kids had to audition for the parts they got and while Maya didn’t get the role she originally wanted, she did manage to get one of the speaking parts. The musical takes place in the world of video games, perfect for our little screen junky. She wound up being a robot dog called K9, and while she was initially upset about the assignment, she came around pretty quickly and did her best to fill the role. She especially liked the songs, though I think she did a wonderful job delivering her lines as well. She tells us she’d like to participate in more musicals.

K9, the robot dog – I sewed that tail onto the robot costume – life is weird sometimes

Through most of the semester, they’d been having weekly practices, but leading up to performance night, they had a two-hour practice on Saturday followed by nightly one-hour practices after school. It was intense. It paid off though – the kids did great! They performed the show twice at school, once for the younger kids, once for the older kids. And then that evening, they did it again for all the parents. Whew! Everyone worked so hard.

The following weekend, Ian and Maya both had recitals. After the closure of the Monarch Suzuki Academy, they are now at two different music schools, so we went to two separate recitals. Maya’s was at a downtown church. As is her habit, she was really excited till she got there and then the nerves hit her. Plus, because she’s one of the older kids, her performance is toward the end of the recital, so she had plenty of time for the apprehension to build before she finally got to play. Luckily, after a rough initial start, she pulled it together and played beautifully, as always.

Ian’s recital was the next day at a local coffee shop. For the first time ever, he’d be playing on a real stage and he’d have to have a microphone by his guitar so that everyone could hear what he was playing. When it was his turn, Ian also did a wonderful job. His guitar teacher accompanied with him and they stayed beautifully in sync through the performance. But Ian’s favorite part was that microphone. He was so excited.

Ian’s gingerbread treehouse

I had to jet off to Denver for a few days for work the following week. While I was gone, Sean hooked one of his full size guitars up to an amplifier and let Ian play. He was ecstatic – they sent me a video. Ian doesn’t just wanna play – he wants to play LOUD. Also while I was gone, Sean bravely took both the kids to get their COVID boosters – just in time for all the holiday travel!

Maya’s sugar cookie beach house

I know parents who bake lovely gingerbread and build beautiful handmade gingerbread houses out of that. We buy our kits from Target and let the kids do whatever they’re going to do. This year, Ian made a tree house and Maya made this kind of midcentury modern beach house. The kits aren’t expensive. The kids love them. And I don’t have to care if they sit around and dry out because I didn’t spend any time baking their constituent parts. Winning all the way around.

Maya’s pinecone ornaments

We decided to make pine cone ornaments this year for grandparent gifts. Did you know that, if there are no pinecones near you, you can purchase them from Amazon?? Anyhow, Maya and Ian had fun painting and assembling their various ornaments. Maya has also, after meeting Ryan the wire artist in Key West, has been dabbling in making wire art of her own. She made a few ornaments from wire to give as well.

Ian’s pinecone ornaments

Sean bought the kids cute Christmas doughnuts one weekend, because we needed more sugar like a hole in the head. They were adorable and the kids really liked them and if I didn’t know it before, I definitely know now that I’ve sadly aged out of being able to enjoy doughnuts for breakfast. My body just doesn’t want to deal with the sugar bomb first thing in the morning, I guess.

Ian is epic, no doubt

We celebrated Ian’s 8th birthday at a place called Urban Air. The kids can jump on trampolines, ride zip lines, play in ball pits, and on and on and on. This is exactly Ian’s kind of thing. I was worried attendance would be light since it was right before Christmas, but as the positive RSVPs started rolling in, I started to worry the room wouldn’t hold all the kids!

Snake cake

Ian wanted a snake cake and a reptile themed birthday party. I think this may have weirded out a few participants, but generally the kids seemed to have a lot of fun. Those kids played hard and hopefully slept well for their parents that evening.

We discussed with Trinket, our Elf on the Shelf, who must have passed along word to Santa, that we’d be leaving town to see our families over the holidays and would like to celebrate our Texas Christmas a little early. The kids woke up on the 22nd to a pile of gifts under the tree. Among all the goodies this year, we’re trying out a couple of “experiences, not stuff” options to see how they play out.

It might get loud

Mr Play-it-loud received his very own (not quite full size) electric guitar. Sean has moved an amplifier into his room and now he regularly jacks in and plays Thunderstruck at top volume. He tells us he has to turn it up loud so he can hear the distortion – a pedal or two may be in this kid’s future.

Commence outpouring of printed photos … now!

Maya received a photo printer, which she’s made liberal use of since receiving it. She’s forever asking us to print various photos for her, and we mean to, but never quite seem to get around to it. Now she doesn’t have to wait for us! The next step will be her learning to be a leeeeetle more selective about what she prints.

The kids had a day to play with their new stuff before we had to head out of town. We woke up on the 23rd to a fierce cold. It was a whopping 13 degrees outside, and that just doesn’t happen that often in central Texas.

We had a weird travel holiday. Months ago – last summer, I think – we had booked our flights from Austin to Memphis (to do the three-legged trip we’ve done in the past would have been prohibitively expensive). The trip there had maybe a 1.5 hour layover in Houston. Not long after we booked it, they had to change the second leg of the flight such that we now had a three hour layover and would arrive much later than anticipated in Memphis. We tried to finagle earlier flights, but we never managed it.

Then, a day or two before we were scheduled to fly out, they canceled the first leg of our trip. Sigh. Luckily, there was a later flight from Austin to Houston that would still get us there in time for our connection. This all went smoothly on travel day, believe it or not. Flights weren’t delayed. We made our connection. Got our luggage. All was hunky dory till we walked up to the rental car counter and found that it was dead-assed closed. Evidently they closed at 10p, and it was more like 10:30 or so when we arrived. We waited in line for three other car rental places and all told us they were low on inventory and couldn’t do same day rentals.

Because of our late arrival, we had already booked a hotel in the Memphis area to sleep in that night – thank goodness. We took an Uber to that hotel and first thing in the morning, Sean called our closed rental car place to try to make alternate arrangements. The nice lady set him up with a new reservation which, regrettably, was going to be more expensive. After eating a quick hotel breakfast, we Ubered back to the airport again to fetch our rental car. Sean discovered that this morning’s reservation wasn’t in their system, and at any rate they weren’t honoring same day reservations anyway. Luckily, they still had his original reservation in the system from the night before, so we were able to secure our rental car and at our original rate.

That poor car had been ridden hard. We learned later that it was a black car. This wasn’t at all apparent at the time, coated with dirt and snowmelt sludge as it was. But, our luggage fit in the trunk and there was a full tank of gas, so finally, we were on our way.

Helen and Harry made an Octo-pie

We rolled into Alabama around lunchtime and the kids happily disembarked from our filthy car. They had rolled with the weird travel punches pretty well, but they were clearly relieved to finally be at Lolli and Pop’s house.

Ian and Gumball

We mostly hung out at the house. The kids played with Lolli and Pop’s newly acquired stray, Gumball. And when Gumball got sick of being pestered, the kids played with each other. Sean and I did some last minute shopping and later that evening some last minute wrapping.

Grandparent grandkid pileup

Christmas Day was filled with gift unwrapping and lots of eating and lots of relaxing. Ian had gotten a hoverboard as a gift and so we had to learn how to ride it (he picked up very quickly and now regularly rolls around the house). Maya snuggled with her Minecraft cat neck pillow (it purrs and meows). They both snuck WAY too much Christmas candy, leading to Maya to make some very questionable decisions, “I had too much sugar; I wasn’t thinking clearly!”

Maya and her purring cat pillow

The day after Christmas, we all loaded up and went to watch Avatar: The Way of Water in 3D at the IMAX theater. Despite making about 2 billion visits to the bathroom with the kids, we managed to follow the story well enough. I was left with a similar impression as I had after watching the first film: it’s very pretty to look at but the story is kinda meh. The kids seemed to love it though.

On the 27th, we made the trek up to Friedheim to see Grammy and Grandpa. The weather was warming up and the roads were nice and clear, so the trip was fairly painless. We arrived in early evening and the kids made a mad dash to the downstairs to play. It’s hard to be cooped up in a car all day, even with screen time to entertain you.

We woke up the next morning and set about wrapping all the things – thankfully, everything arrived on time! I won’t tell you how late in the game we made some of those purchases though.

Snow in Missouri!

We also woke up to see that there was still a good bit of snow lingering on the ground. I warned the kids that it had warmed up and the snow would be gone soon, but even at that, they only lasted a few minutes outside before coming back in where it was warm.

After present wrapping and snow playing, we went to visit Uncle Bimps and Aunt Kay. We haven’t seen them in quite a long while, certainly not since they moved away from what I still think of as Grandma’s house, though she’s been dead for 30 years. Their new place is nice, and we had a pleasant, if short, visit before heading back for the big Schmidt Christmas.

It’s hard work getting them to pose for photos when there are presents lingering nearby

Carol always sets out a huge array of finger foods, and now she supplements with soup and sandwiches from Subway. We all basically linger in the kitchen and eat all afternoon with brief stops for photographs, gift unwrapping, and game playing. There were mountains of gifts under that tree. The grownups do a gift exchange, but none of us can resist buying for all the nieces and nephews. I won’t say it was total chaos, but it was all I could do to keep track of which gifts belonged to Maya and which to Ian.

Imos!

The next day, we drove up to Cape to eat at Imos (which Sean and I love) and see about trying the kids out on bowling. The pizza and toasted ravioli were lovely, as always, but the dang bowling alley was hopping! We’d be an hour or two waiting around to maybe get a lane. We abandoned this plan and headed back to the house for more playing and lounging.

It was during this time in Missouri that Sean and I started paying enough attention to the news to realize that Southwest Airlines was having an epic holiday travel meltdown. Thousands of flights were canceled, luggage and passengers stranded all over the place. It was horrible. We had a flight scheduled for the 31st with Southwest, and were honestly sweating it a little by this point. After our travel shenanigans coming into Memphis and decided to reserve a one-way car rental from Memphis to Austin, just in case our flight did wind up getting canceled. It would suck, but at least we’d be able to get home. And after our earlier adventures, we knew darn well that same-day car rentals would likely be unavailable.

Getting festive at The Bayou

We got some more relaxing in. Got all our various gifts shipped to Austin. Managed to have a fantastic dinner at a place called The Bayou. And got alllllllll of our stuff packed up and ready to go. We’d have to wake up early on the 31st to make the drive back to Memphis in time to catch our flight to Austin.

Everything went smoothly. Our drive was uneventful. Our flight wasn’t canceled and managed to be delayed only a little. We rolled into Austin and collected our luggage and got back to our car with a minimum of fuss and after a crazy week at the end of a crazy month, finally made it home. We all agreed that we didn’t feel one little bit like making ourselves stay awake till midnight, and so it was that by probably 10:30, the entire house was dead asleep.