What a month December 2020 was! The girls and I did school for the first week and a half of December, but because of Brad's defense, travels to TN, and all the Christmas frivolity, we took the rest of December off. This was a good plan.
The last few days of our December lesson plans were spent doing enrichment, like studying St. Nicholas and the Dutch traditions. That was made more fun by the fact that we have good friends here in Durham who are Dutch! They made extras of their traditional St. Nicholas Day cookies for the girls' shoes (along with notes from Sinterklaas written in Dutch!):
Boots ready and waiting!
Claire left a letter for him.
Because of COVID, our usual church Advent activities were enjoyed at home, like the Cocoa and Carols singing service:
Following along in their Carols and Coloring books
Gaudete Sunday Sunday School
Wearing our fancy dresses on Sunday morning, even though we had nowhere to go.
Keeping elements of normal, like getting dressed on Sunday mornings, has been very helpful over the past year full of not-normal.
Because I started our married life by making our stockings...and then made Claire's when she was born...I unwittingly committed myself to making a whole half-dozen stockings by this point. Hallie's barely squeaked in on time!
Claire is the sweetest little soul. I snapped a couple pictures of a few of the MANY adorable things she did this Christmas season. I don't ever want to forget them:
Her Christmas list, which ends with "one happy family"
She made Christmas gifts for us all and wrapped them in boxes from the recycling bin, topped with some of her hair bows for decoration.
There was a lot of playing and finding ways to express creativity (largely using recyclables):
Brad really gives it his all when reading The Pout Pout Fish
One night, we got everyone in their jammies and went to watch a couple of Christmas-lights-set-to-music displays near our house. The girls were BEYOND THRILLED! They were so sweet, thanking us endlessly for such a fun night.
And, as always, lots of snuggles were had along the way:
Clearly I take a lot of pictures of these two.
When the baby chooses you as her spot, you stay put and Be the Spot.
I can't handle how sweet this picture is.
Our December was really quite wonderful. Full of actual wonder for the girls, as Christmas tends to be. Around September, I found myself really looking forward to Christmas, and it took SO much self-restraint not to get out all of the Christmas decorations in October. I'm thankful that the Christmas season was so fun and sweet for our family, which was a nice way to end a rather long year.
No comments:
Post a Comment