To the kids’ disappointment, Sean went out by himself and got our Christmas trees the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Yes, trees, plural. We never have enough room for all the fun ornaments we have amassed over the years (and continue to collect), and so this year we figured we’d just go for it. Fear not, I assuaged their disappointment by letting them put up their little fake tree and decorate it while Sean was out.

Maya and Ian’s tree

We spent the weekend procuring the extra things we’d need to accommodate our extra tree: tree stand, more garland, more lights. We didn’t manage to find a second tree topper that was epic enough to stand up to this turd of a year, and having only one topper for the two trees seemed weird so we left them bare. Sean and “Santa” went a little overboard this year on keepsake ornaments, so we very nearly managed to fill two trees plus the kids’ little tree. The house was looking pretty festive, at least from the inside.

The trees were up, December had arrived, and the kids were so, so excited about all the Christmas things. We each chose our own Advent calendars. Ian’s was filled with fun unicorn and Christmas related items (barrettes, stickers, stampers), Maya’s was Harry Potter Lego, and Mom and Dad’s was full of beer. Because 2020.

Made it through the whole calendar!

We celebrated Sean’s birthday later in the week. Thanks to COVID-19, we’re still avoiding going to restaurants, so this year for his birthday, I instead ordered Imo’s. Neat, right? They don’t have Imo’s in Austin, but thanks to a service called Goldbelly, I was able to order frozen pizza, toasted ravioli, and provel bites from Imo’s and have them shipped to our door. The dry ice they were packed in was fun for the kids to observe, and the pizzas and toasted ravioli were a fun surprise for Sean. And of course, I made his favorite chocolate malt birthday cake to go with them. Plus, we have a new musical instrument in the house now! A bass! Because our house needed another guitar!

That weekend, we headed down south to see the drive-through Christmas light display at the Circuit of the Americas racetrack. After the hour and a half wait, during which Ian whined nonstop, and even Maya fussed a little toward the end, the kids were swept away by the big, beautiful light displays. In any other year, I’m not sure whether it would have been worth it, but since we weren’t seeing Santa or going to our usual music and lighting event at Mozart’s, this was what we had.

Our Christmas lights for the year.

The next day, we all masked up and headed into town with Flat Santa to take a few holiday photos, in hopes of scoring a good one for this year’s Christmas cards. The kids were fidgety and Sean, who had hurt his leg while on our beach vacation in late November was short on patience so it was tough to get good shots. Plus we were on high alert to our proximity to other people, so it was kind of stressful. But Sean did manage to trick the kids into a few cute photos.

That next week, we had our roof replaced. For two solid days, there was nothing but banging, pounding, scraping awfulness, while all four of us tried to do our jobs and attend meetings and school zooms and not go completely bat-crap crazy. With the old tree removed and the roof replaced though, we should be well positioned for winter storms and spring rains heading into the new year.

Our Suzuki Book 1 graduate!

The morning of December 12th was a big one for us. Maya played a solo piano concert as her Suzuki Book 1 graduation celebration. She played every song in her book with all her grandparents and Anna in attendance via Zoom, and she did great. We gave her flowers to further the celebration and her teacher sent her a lovely trophy to mark the occasion. To say we are proud of her would be an understatement.

The first time Sean used the term “fuck-it protocol,” we were lounging at a beach house and he was looking at fun art to hang on the walls. We have since used it liberally. Not enough Christmas tree to hold all our ornaments? Fuck it, we’ll buy two this year. Dad doesn’t get to go out for his birthday? Fuck it, we’ll order pizza on dry ice from several states away. Our trip to Moab got canceled and the kids won’t get to see snow this year? Fuck it, we’ll rent a snow machine.

70 degrees and snowy!

Our friend Holly has all the good ideas. Elephants, Beach trip, snow machine – all Holly. I’m good on execution, but I’m often lacking in ideas. When she suggested we invoke the fuck-it protocol and split the cost of an overpriced snow machine rental to have for the kids at our bubble family Christmas party, I’m not sure even an hour had passed before the rental had been secured.

Much like our two-family Halloween party, we had a two-family Christmas party. Chris, Holly, Ruby, and Herbie came to the house around mid-afternoon, and we loaded up the little plastic snowman snow machine with patented “snow juice” and played in the fake snow and the bright sunshine in our shorts and t-shirts. I accidented upon a box of fake snowballs that one of us had received during some sort of holiday game at the last Woods family Christmas. They were perfect. The kids belted around in the yard through the “snow” firing cotton snowballs at each other. The grown-ups hung out and drank and laughed at our lunatic children. We all did a secret Santa gift exchange. The kids used window paint to holiday up our windows (some of that paint may or may not still be up), built gingerbread houses, painted ornaments, and then had another round outside to play in the night snow. Sean made his Mamaw Sharp’s punch for the kids (which they devoured). We had cured meats, fancy cheese, nice bread, smoked salmon, and oddly, Dominos pizza on our holiday menu. There were veggies and fruit too, fear not. And some hummus and olives and pita chips. Maya decorated a bundt cake type thing with way too much fondant, and Holly brought a delicious assortment of homemade cookies. It was a really, really good spread, and we had lots of leftovers.

Our dude is 6!!!

The very next weekend, we celebrated Ian’s birthday. He wanted a unicorn themed birthday party, which, when you have in the past tried to theme things around octopuses and dragons, is kind of a relief. He wanted to be involved in his cake decorating, so I just purchased from Amazon a little decorating kit complete with flowers, eyelashes, and a shiny golden horn. As Ian specified, we made a round confetti cake with white icing, applied fondant circles around the outside in colors of his choosing, and loaded it up with the unicorn stuff and six tall, glitter-flecked candles. He was proud of his handiwork.

Celebrating!

Birthday dinner was restaurant ramen (which it turns out he didn’t like nearly so well as the stuff we buy from Costco). His grandparents “attended” via Zoom, and we all sang to Ian and watched him blow out the candles and open his presents. Poor Maya was assaulted by the smells of ramen and burning candles, neither of which she handles well, but she tried to be a good sister regardless.

Ian’s birthday was also the last day of school for the year, and I’m not sure who was more relieved, the kids or us. Virtual school plus full time jobs is an uphill slog that feels less like succeeding and more like managing degrees of failure. And it was nice to let the kids play and fight while we sort of got to work like normal-ish people for a week or two.

Sean thought the cat butt cookie cutter was hilarious. So did the kids. I found that it expressed the side of me I might like to show to this past 9 months.

The week leading up to Christmas still managed to be kinda crazy. We spent a few evenings baking different kinds of cookies – roll and cut cookies for the kids, Santa’s Whiskers for Sean (and Maya, apparently), and some peppermint cookies for me. Sean put together the goods for his “Rhum Arrange” which we will get to enjoy in sometime like six months. We spent several evenings wrapping mountains of gifts that we had ordered and that had been sent in by generous grandparents, great grandparents, aunts, and uncles. On Christmas Eve, Sean made his “traditional” shrimp scampi much to the delight of three-quarters of our household.

Maya was worried that Santa would be upset that we had hung up more stockings than there were people in our house. She had put a couple up for Hank and Nox, the two cats, but she thought Santa would think they were trying to trick him into giving them extra stuff. She explained it all to Trinket, their elf on the shelf, but just to be sure, she left Santa a letter as well. She left it out with the cookies that she and Ian had selected for Santa and the carrots they had left for the reindeer.

Happy Maya and Ian

The next morning, the kids were up at the crack of 7, so terrifically excited about the bounty under the trees. And their stockings were full, to boot! I had cinnamon rolls all ready to pop into the oven to bake and eat once the unwrapping had occurred. We spent some zoom time with Lolli and Pop and Aunt Darci, AP, and Steele. And later on we Zoomed again with Grammy and Grandpa. The big-deal gift this year was a Nintendo Switch for the kids. We whiled away some time in the afternoon playing Mario Kart and some of us may have napped. That evening, Ian helped Sean make some more of Mamaw Sharp’s punch, and I made some fancy crap dip pies that only the grown-ups were willing to eat.

Family selfie!

We had already been planning to take the week off between Christmas and New Year’s anyway for the Moab trip, so we just kept the time off and vacationed around the house instead. The day after Christmas, I made a big British meat pie that had been half on my mind since our trip to London years ago. The day after that, I participated in some hitchy Face-timing with my parents, my siblings, and their families back in Missouri. We all settled in to enjoying our gifts and working our way through all our rich-food leftovers. We celebrated as hard as we could, but it just wasn’t the same as seeing everyone. The kids in particular felt the absence – they really look forward to seeing their grandparents, and at this point, it’s now been a full year since they’ve seen any of them in person.

We were going to go hiking on the 28th but after fully prepping for hiking and picnicking, I went to load up the car and found that the battery had died. Instead, the kids and I “hiked” to a neighborhood park and played there until I felt that even with our masks on, it was starting to feel too crowded. I think we mostly spent the rest of the week slowly trying to undo the mess the house had become with all the celebrating, relaxing, and playing with the kids. On New Year’s Eve, we let them stay up till midnight to ring in the new year with us. Maya made it, but I have photographic evidence that Ian may have drifted off around 11:30, though he heartily insists otherwise.

Stupid shirt didn’t even arrive in time for me to wear it on NYE.

The coronavirus case count and death toll have been gross to watch. I remember when I thought the first million US cases was shocking. That is now a distant memory. But on December 11th, Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine was approved for emergency use. A week later the Moderna COVID-19 was likewise approved for emergency use. It’ll be a long road for sure, but maybe there’s some relief in sight. And while I should probably save this for a later post, also momentous was the storming of the US capitol building on January 6th. After a year so radically changed by this stupid virus, to have 2021 start out with such a jarring event was almost too much to take in.

I know it’s already January 11th, but I thought I’d end this post with the December 31st, 2020 coronavirus numbers. Travis County – 11/29 38,045 cases and 483 deaths – 12/31 50,595 cases and 549 deaths. Texas – 11/29 1,225,118 cases and 21,843 deaths – 12/31 1,766,307 cases and 27,944 deaths. United States – 11/29 13,385,494 cases and 266,887 deaths – 12/31 19,968,087 cases and 345,737 deaths. The World – 11/29 62,829,641 cases and 1,461,049 deaths – 12/31 83,424,446 cases and 1,818,116 deaths.