Pieces of Christmas Week

Grace and Jasmin working on a video for a present - daily. hourly. still. On Christmas Eve. They joined with some friends to put together a Christmas video. It's going to be good, but it has meant they went from being really busy finishing school to really busy finishing this project.

Zoom calls as a family to family far away. Less of a celebration theme this year, as Omicron is ripping through Canada and has scrapped many travel and get together party plans. Still, it is good to see each other and share news. And next week we'll have happier news to share once we've got presents to talk about. 😏

A Physiotherapy appointment, in which I learn how to stand up. Apparently I've been doing that wrong for a long time, compensating for a weakened right side. I got odd looks from kids and husband alike, when I showed them what I can't do 😄 It was a particularly useful session, explaining many quirks and movement limitations of mine.

Fudge monster sort-of disasters.  We attempted make cute fudge monsters because Jasmin (who has all sorts of nicknames for Aiden) sometimes calls Aiden fudge monster, and uses it as a frustration exclamation.  The fudge didn't work so well in our climate, and remained pliable even after freezing for a few hours. And the icing refused to squeeze prettily out of the icing bag. And I couldn't find edible googly eyes. But... they taste good...and look sufficiently monster-like... Just not very cute. And definitely not like Jasmin's quick sketch imagining them!

Lots of Lego imagination games. Aiden and his friend are thoroughly enjoying their uninterrupted days of play. After some encouragement, Lego has again taken their fancy for play - once the allotted computer play time is used up, of course! Now the rest of us have to stretch our tolerance for a living room that is covered in Lego creations and the dangers of loose Lego though...

Jasmin and I finally got to the flower market! So we redid the balcony garden, adding more splashes of color and replacing the plants that we lost to various insect and disease invasions.

Neighbourhood caroling. This evening we walked through our neighbourhood and sang carols. Since caroling is not a thing here, we didn't stop and sing at houses, but just walked and sang. We thought it really ought to be a thing to carol here, where open windows and courtyard dinners create many more chances of people hearing you sing!  And then, since we had songs in our songbook left when we got back home, we walked and sang through the halls of our building as well. All in all we walked and sang for just over an hour! We went to bed a little hoarse (except Grace who can sing forever 😉)

Shared feast leftovers. Some friends of ours hosted a catered party and gifted us with the leftovers! What with an evening fogging (for which we eat out to stay away until the chemical smell fades) and other food gifts, I've had a break from cooking full meals even!