As expected, our week leading up to Christmas was quiet. Because I’m a planner, I wrote out a daily agenda on our family whiteboard. Each day had a featured activity to capture the Christmas spirit. Monday: Christmas movies/books. Tuesday: driving to look at Christmas lights. Wednesday: Christmas cookies. Christmas Eve: opening the first round of presents from my family. Christmas Day: opening our family presents and gifts from Jeremy’s side of the family. We also Zoomed with the whole Scott crew to celebrate together. Yesterday was our traditional day after Christmas shopping adventure. It was a festive week from start to finish!
It was interesting to be home for Christmas with no travel plans. Usually, we are racing from place to place so our kids open their gifts, but rarely do they get to play with much more than one item before the rest of the gifts are tucked away. The thing I noticed most about being home was the kids opened EVERYTHING on Christmas day. All the toys, crafts, kits, games, etc. where opened to play with. The boys hopped from activity to activity all. day. long. I thought Christmas would be this quiet, relaxing day, but actually it was non-stop package opening, adding batteries, assisting with crafts, and assembling toys. The boys had a ton of fun and their contagious joy made it a Christmas to remember.
We have certain family members who do Christmas cash instead of gifts, so with that in mind, our family tradition is to go shopping the day after Christmas. Also, Jeremy and I don’t do gifts for each other. We buy what we like on our shopping day and enjoy spending time together. It’s as close to “Treat Yourself” from Parks and Rec as we can get. While the boys happily spent their Christmas cash on more toys, I went for a home theme this year. I had items I wanted to replace around the house. My shopping included new tongs, kitchen knives, glasses, bath mats, hangers, and storage totes. Jeremy opted for the online route this year.
Storage cubes from IKEA were also a top priority on our shopping trip. I’m a huge believer in every item having a home – especially when it’s tucked away in a storage bin. After Jeremy skillfully assembled the new storage cubes, I spent hours sorting and finding homes for all the new treasures. I will admit that this process felt odd at times. The boys and I did some purging, but we kept most of our toy collections. I’m still in the process of figuring out what preschool toys to keep for company (and feeling the tension that we’ve had almost no indoor company this year). Also, with all the extra time at home these days, we often cycle through older toys that become cool again after a long absence. I’m sure as the world moves toward “normal” in 2021, it will become clearer what items to keep and donate.
With less than one week left to 2020, I am contemplating what 2021 holds. Our current set of COVID restrictions are set expire on January 4th. Until I know what it is allowed, it is hard to make plans for January. I’ve spent so much time and energy on making sure that Christmas was special for my family, I’m a little unsure of what life after Christmas looks like. We have one more week of vacation left. While we have no set plans, a house project has been proposed and a suggestion has been made to go find snow. We will have to see what adventures lay ahead as we close 2020.
Amy Scott's Thoughts 