2020 weeks 43 - 47: the missing month

 Some of the moments captured between our anniversary and the trip to Disney:

Planting hyacinth bulbs

Girl Scout meeting at the park (they can't meet indoors)

One of a handful of in-person school days

Zach's science assignment

Scout camping weekend

Drive-thru trunk-or-treat at school

Frank got a new computer

Charlotte and a friendly neighborhood cat

her trying to give it commands was hilarious

Girl Scouts

not sure what this is

Girl Scouts

Zach spent much time learning to play Yu-Gi-Oh

my old sewing machine was not up to the mask-making challenge...

...thank goodness for Amazon prime shipping

what school at home looks like

counting down the days until we leave

We're on our way!

2020 New Year's Eve

I took this photo of Jen and her parents on the beach in Galicia, Spain, in 1998.

December 31st was a strange, long day. We went to the funeral for Jen's dad mid-morning, went out to lunch, and then realized we had about 11 more hours to fill before the day was over. It was the perfect time for Jen, Joanie, and I to binge season 2 of Virgin River, drink coffee, then have a late fondue dinner and game of Ticket to Ride. About 11:30 we got on Skype with Frank and the kids, who were showing me the NYE excitement on Animal Crossing, then we added Lisa to the call. The holiday was bittersweet with the funeral, but I was happy to spend time with friends and still celebrate with my gang back home as we rolled into 2021.

2020 Week 52: Christmas day

On Christmas day, we woke up to snow and excited kids. They were so happy to open gifts that they cooperated with Frank taking a bunch of photos of them while I was moving Charlotte's new doll house from our room to hers. Then as they were sorting gifts to the couch I set up the camera on interval timer as I have done in the past. It works really well. Zach was excited about his Yu-Gi-Oh game mat, Gabe was happy to have his Amazon Echo, and Charlotte was over the moon about every single thing she got. She almost didn't realize that she'd not opened anything from Mommy and Daddy until we mentioned it. After opening gifts it was time to Skype family. I think this year we had fewer gifts we had to wrangle out of packaging and put together, aside from the doll house, so that made for more time relaxing and watching the kids play with gifts. We were in pajamas all day I think. We used the dough to make gluten free crescent rolls, which I thought were just so-so but Charlotte loved. After that we had a weekend of doing pretty much nothing!

(Me trying out a new wide angle lens)

2020 week 52: Leading up to Christmas

The week of Christmas was relatively calm (if I'm remembering correctly). Ally and her reindeer friend, Red, hopped around to a few new places, and they set up a crafting station for the kids to use up some leftover supplies from years past. School was still remote, and the work was very minimal. On Christmas Eve we made some gluten free dough for the next day, the kids sprinkled reindeer food (leftover from another year's school party consisting of oatmeal and glitter), and Gabe organized the cookie and carrots table with decor and a note for Santa.