What a blessing to spend a relaxing Christmas with my true loves! This break gave us the perfect combo of lazy days, outings, fun with friends, drummers drumming, golden rings and turtle doves (just kidding about those last 3). This post will chronicle our very own 12 (or maybe 15) Days of Christmas.
On the first day of Christmas Vacation we caught up with Jeff, Amy, Jonathan, Grace and Benjamin. Amy always plans some creative way for the kids to get involved in the after-dinner treat making.
On the second day of Christmas Vacation we stayed in our jammies ALL DAY and drank hot chocolate and started reading aloud the next Harry Potter book.
On the third day of Christmas Vacation we did our traditional Christmas Eve present giving, timed to happen right along with our family in Chicago. Many generous and perfect gifts were opened (American Girl Doll RV, telescope, kitchen gadgets, sewing machine, hiking boots, special commemorative, hand-painted Cubs baseball, tickets to an Escape Room, LEGOS, etc.), but the gift Dave and I were most excited to give was for the girls-- these jerseys for their favorite Cubs and Blackhawk players.
On the fifth day of Christmas Vacation we took a little drive to see this You Tube sensation house with an impressive dancing light display-- this year with a Harry Potter theme!
On the sixth day of Christmas Vacation we all got haircuts and crossed the thing the girls were most excited about off the to-do list: seeing the movie Sing in the theater. (No pictures, though, sorry)
On the seventh day of Christmas Vacation, we partied with our church VM family. We stuffed ourselves with warm Olie Bollen. We (just Dave actually) did some skeet shooting over the pasture. We froze hanging off the back of Grandpa Ed's fire truck, whizzing down the back country roads singing Christmas carols. We had several hours to fellowship with some of our favorite people.
On the eighth day of Christmas Vacation, I was honestly getting a little weary of my true loves' fighting and mess making, so I whisked them out of the house to burn some energy. We brought our roller blades to a nearby indoor roller rink for their open skate time, and it was AWESOME!
On the ninth day of Christmas Vacation we took our one big outing to the coast to explore the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve. The miles of tide pools and ocean wildlife that we discovered here were so cool and such a Christmas Break highlight, they are actually going to require their own post, which I will write next.
On the tenth day of Christmas Vacation we celebrated our birthday boy, who turned the big 4-0 this year! I tried to talk him into a party or a trip to Mexico or something special to commemorate this milestone of age, but he assured me all he wanted in this busy season was our annual double date with good friends Phil and Jetta. So I set that up and we loved watching Passengers with them and talking for hours over Mexican food. The girls and I also baked him a Boeter Koek and designed a "Chose Your Own Adventure" 40th birthday present.
On the eleventh day of Christmas Vacation, we once again rang in the New Year with a crowd of church friends at Phil and Jetta's house. We revisited a NYE theme that was a favorite from years ago-- dancing! We rigged up the Wii to the projector and Just Danced the night away. New this year was the addition of the cool laser light thingy Dave got for Christmas. We projected that onto the ceiling and walls, making the atmosphere so fun! It was dark and I was so busy dancing, this is actually the only picture I took.
On the twelfth day of Christmas Vacation we recovered from New Year's Eve and had a lovely down day at home, decorating a giant box a present came in and watching movies together as a family.
On the thirteenth day of Christmas Vacation, we had our good friends Sara, Arend, Anja and Anika over for pizza and games. It's always a good time catching up with this sweet family and this get together was much overdue. We love watching the friendship between the 4 girls grow too, even though there is an age difference, they play so creatively together.
On the fourteenth day of Christmas Vacation, we started preparing for life back in the routine of school and work. We took down the decorations. We thoroughly cleaned the house. We grocery shopped for school lunch foods. We plugged in the Chrome Book for charging. I wrote 35 thank you notes for all the generous gifts my students gave me.
And on the fifteenth (and LAST) day of Christmas Vacation, we planned one more family date, back to the beloved roller rink, this time with Dave. It was fun to see that tons of other people we knew had this same idea for the last day of break. We saw 4 other school families there! Two of them had kids in my classes! Skating around the rink, holding hands with some of my little students was actually the perfect way to start getting excited about seeing them all the next day at school.
So, as you can see it was a very full, but very wonderful and relaxing, break, packed with a wide variety of activities and fun! The only thing we may have been missing was an actual partridge in a pear tree!
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