Today is New Year’s Eve, so I thought I should get a Christmas update posted before we roll over into a whole new year. This year Christmas was a calm, quiet one. Covid-free. Thankfully.
We had delicious food and plenty of down time. Eve and her buddy went swimming at the hotel pool with Rose, Joyce, and Grandpa Tom. We played a round of Lex’s new Catan game. We watched a movie and did some reading. Holidays are more interesting and less chaotic as the average age in the household increases. Less childhood energy, but lovely in it’s own way. Merry Christmas y’all.
We had a pretty awesome snow storm on Friday. Started Thursday night. Snow day Friday. It snowed all Friday and into Saturday morning. Thick, heavy, wet snow. It was beautiful, but also took down TONS of trees!! Our power flickered a few times on Friday, then went out Friday night around 10:30. Our awesome Tesla Powerwall battery system kept us up and running for the rest of the night (when normal people would have just gone to bed) and all the way until noon the next day. Then it died. Sad. The internet went out sometime overnight as well. We roughed it, like in the olden days, with no video games, no Google Suite (the kids tried to do their homework), and eventually no lights. It was fun for awhile. Eve complained about being bored, then found something to do.
She’s shoveling! All on her own! I didn’t even ask her to do it. She’s also wearing the sweet new sweatshirt that Champlain College sent to Lex (and all other applicants).
Eve and I were going to go grocery shopping, but we got a mass text alert saying power was out in all of West Leb. Lex had to work so he spent some time deliberating about what to do, finally deciding to just go to work since there was nothing else to do here anyway. The power in West Leb came back mid-afternoon, so Eve and I spent some time shopping and enjoying our weekly Starbucks treats.
Home again, still no power, so we broke out all the candles we could find. Eve was in heaven! :) She and I played Uno for a long time, by candle light. Lex was at work and B’Lake talked to his girlfriend all afternoon. Good thing our cell phone batteries held out! :)
Candles, candles, everywhere. I fixed that green one post haste!
Uno by candle light.
Dog walks with the lantern. Eve was thrilled!
Lex got off work at 7pm, so we met him in West Leb for dinner at a restaurant. I was going to have him bring home take-out for us, then realized it would be more fun to eat with lights and heat. :) Halfway through dinner I got an alert that the power was back on. Yay!!
We got home and everyone retreated to their own devices. Lex and Eve realized at 10pm that they had homework due, so they are working on that now. Late night Saturday night homework. Sure to be successful. :)
When you’re stuck on your math homework but you have two math-happy big brothers eager to help.
The blog this year might be pretty Lex heavy. :) Enjoy!
Lex and B’Lake had their winter concert tonight.
The dress code is always “black on black” with kids in jazz band instructed to wear a “touch of blue.” I gave Lex an early Christmas present with a cool (IMHO) blue/gray Lego tie. He liked it well enough to wear it, which is all I can ask for. :)
Every year they honor the seniors who have been part of the music department for all four years. The band director made a really nice speech tonight about how this year’s seniors entered high school in 2019 when everything was easy breezy, then they proceeded to face every variation of band and choir imaginable. Singing/playing outdoors in the winters, performing with masks, social distancing, recording performances, live streaming, etc. Yet they stuck with it. She acknowledged how easy it would have been to quit when band/choir no longer looked/sounded the same and took a lot more work, but this year’s seniors stuck with it. It was a sweet and touching statement. Then she announced that all of these 4-yr seniors would get a snazzy fleecy zip-up!
Here is the jazz band’s final song, with many solos, including B’Lake on the flute and Lex on the vibes!
I picked Eve and Simon up from work and brought them to the concert. On the way out it was snowing and they started heel clicking. They were both doing really good heel clicks, so we thought it would be fun to get a picture of them clicking together. It didn’t go so well, but we had fun anyway. :)
