December Vol 2 and Happy New Year!

Well we made it through 2020 by the skin of our teeth.  But not without much celebrating of Christmas.

Christmas break is equal parts bouncing off the walls and vibrating from anticipation and sheer boredom, so we did a craft. 

They turned out so cute and each so... um... unique!  :)

Good times.  Although, they were pretty sure we needed to do a craft every day of break, which was not going to happen.  :P

Christmas Eve was the big Koch Christmas- the evening entertainment was charades.

This skit was Emmy's idea.... can you guess what they're acting out?  😂

 

Everybody is excited about Christmas morning stockings! 

And since Church was a half hour later than it has been, it didn't feel like we were super rushed, though I don't think we were any too early.  My old coat again... I love this coat. 

After lunch we did presents! 

There was great rejoicing.

I had taken the girls to Dollar Tree to shop for each other... Cadence gave everybody presents that she would enjoy, which was hilarious.

Pretend food like her favorite restaurant- McD's. 

Miri got a broom from Cadence that she carried around all day.

So.  Specific Lego sets were out of stock pretty fast this year and I happened to find a set I thought Emmy would love on EBAY.... it had been opened and there was no guarantee it was complete but for the price I thought I'd risk it.

Sadly it was missing quite a few pieces and someone was a little bit disappointed.  We ordered all of the missing pieces and are waiting impatiently for them to arrive, when they do, this will be a pretty cool pool set.  It has a bathroom (Just like SummerFunWaterPark!), which they love. (I don't quite understand the Lego bathroom appeal...)

Cecily got a Dig it Up Cats kit- it's twelve balls of yarn made out of clay/plaster that you chip away at to discover the plastic cat figurine inside.  Haha.  Sounds thrilling right? Hooray for Christmas toy catalogs.

Emmy complained one day that "I never get to sew, and you get to sew whenever you want to!" Ha.  Well I can tie knots in my own thread and can buy my own fabric, so there.  But I figured it was maybe time to get them their own sewing kits so I don't have to share my stuff.  They still steal my fabric to make random things that may not get saved forever....  Oh, and Bob got me a kid sized dress form (why, I do not know, haha) that the girls dressed up in Cecily's clothes.

Bob and I spent the 26th with the grownups in his family and the girls got to play at the farm.  When they came home they had to try out Emmy's new ballet video. Because: there's no way we're doing actual ballet lessons, but a video when they feel like it is not unreasonable.  So pleased. :D

I was itching to try out my new crepe pan, pay no attention to the mess I make whilst making crepes.

Next up was kid Christmas... Miri was a bit clingy all day.

And the girls all got dart guns. Woot.

Emmy got a AG doll bed that stacks into a bunk bed with Cecily's doll bed.  So fun, and it frees up floor space. :)

New Years Eve was quiet.  They were sure they needed to stay up until midnight, and they all made it; however, we missed actual midnight because we were all searching for a lost blanky. *sigh*  

We woke up to ice on New Years Day.  Woot.  It caused a bunch of damage at the local substation, yay for facebook, there were even pictures of parts of it on fire.  So we lost power around 11:30 and got to spend the day in the dark. We took down the Christmas decorations and tried to dust in the dimness, used up the battery charge in all of the electronics, played with glow sticks for not long enough, and then got super bored.   

Even with candles and all of our camping lanterns going it was just really dark all day long.  We ate PB and Honey for lunch so we didn't have to open the fridge and cooked supper (canned spaghetti... ick) in the garage on the camp stove.  Thankfully it wasn't windy and our house wasn't super cold.

After supper it was just dark and the girls weren't tired yet so I pulled out the box of my old paper dolls for them to look through.  Even Miri had fun putting clothes on the 'bay-bees.' Good old fashioned fun by candlelight.  Lantern light.

I have an alcohol burner and stand, as all good chemists do, but sadly I had no alcohol to burn in it.  So Bob and I tried to use a candle under the stand to heat up some water for cocoa.... there was really nothing else to do.  haha.  Poor spoiled us.  It got warm, but not really hot.  Warm is really all the girls need for cocoa, so overall it was a success. 

They kept pushing the estimated power restoration time back later, and there were one or two false starts that ended with the muffled booms of transformers blowing across town, but we eventually got power back around 11.  Hooray!  It was starting to get chilly- thankfully it wasn't very cold to start with and not windy so the house only went from 68 to about 61 degrees.  

They were itching to explore the icy wonderland in the morning.

Icicles everywhere!

And the most perfect rolling and packing snow!

The queen presided from her sled while enjoying an icicle. :P 

Matt stopped by and helped them build a snowman.

Meet Chilly!

We got more snow overnight.  It was so pretty, but the ice and then snow made even more tree branches fail.  Woot. We went to morning church and then headed out to our last family Christmas in Gridley so we got to see a lot of snowy landscape on our way over.  Renee always finds such cool things for the girls- they did not get to bed very early that night because they had to finish building this cutout dollhouse.

But, all good things must come to an end and we were back to school bright and early Monday morning.  They were all impatiently waiting to go outside after school to play in the new snow!

We have a few big branches down and there are a lot of really big branches completely coated in ice and snow still up in the trees that make me really nervous; I've really only let them play in a very small section of yard.  I happened to be looking in the right direction when a tree in the lane suddenly dropped a big limb: the crack, the swish as it passed other branches, the muffled 'thwump' as it hit the ground and the tinkling crash as the ice coating and the wood shattered into a million shards... slightly unnerving.  

Oh, and it's been really foggy too! Freezing fog. When I took the girls to school this morning the trees were covered in delicate spiky ice crystals!  It was so pretty.  I'm really ready for it to melt though, the poor trees... and now I sound like my Dad.  I'll be planting a forest of my own if I don't watch out. 

Blessings.