Speed Christmas

This Christmas has been a strange one.  It has certainly not gone as planned, but rather, has been celebrated in random bursts.  It started the day after Thanksgiving, with the girls in an extreme hurry to start celebrating.  Couple that with the my desire to make sure that we got everything in this season despite Merrick's surgery and you have a recipe that had us doing lots of celebrating prior to December even starting.

Fast forward to this last week. With Merrick's surgery in the rearview mirror and with school out for the holidays, I had intended on spending this past week doing all things Christmas.  Turns out that was not how things would play out.  Instead, I tested positive for Covid on Monday morning and spent the week quarantined in the basement.  Truth be told, I'm not really sure what went on upstairs while I was in the basement, but I do know it involved a lot of TV and not much of the festivities I had planned.  While in the basement, I did at least get all my wrapping done, and even had enough extra time to DIY bows for each present.

Friday, I emerged from the basement and we hit the ground running.  Friday we spend most of the day baking.  We made tons of sugar cookies, peppermint cookies, and homemade Reese's.  That evening we packaged and delivered goodies.

Yesterday, we continued to pack in all fun we could stand.  We made Christmas ornaments.  We made and decorated gingerbread houses. We finished our goody deliveries.  We capped off the night with a drive to see Christmas lights and arrived home to find a letter for the girls from Santa.

Today is Christmas Eve and we are supposed to be getting together with all my family, but we hit the breaks instead as my niece, Isabel, and both of my parents tested positive for Covid yesterday.  In true Strange Christmas fashion, we have put a pin in our celebrations and will have pretend Christmas on New Year's Eve.  We will then have Clifford Family cousin Christmas in late January, when we go to AZ for a basketball tournament.

It's certainly not the Christmas we planned, but I think it will definitely be one to remember.