I tried to make December simple by doing all the Christmas shopping beforehand, but it turned out that it wasn’t simple at all! This year, Christmas was on the weekend so school went right up to Friday beforehand – and I was scheduled to fly out to Korea for a work trip that week. I would return back home the day before Christmas Eve, but miss out on the last week where we have to hand out gifts to teachers & etc. That meant that I had one less week to prepare everything and had to make sure all the gifts were organized, and cards written (by the kids, which takes a lot longer).

Next, the weather was really cold (-10 every morning + wind chill) so it was a pain to actually get the kids to school (at least they weren’t allowed to play outside). There was also one week which started with a winter storm (10cm) that dropped on a Sunday night. The main roads were clear for rush hour, but not the side streets. Then on the Thursday of that week, there was a surprise blizzard (how does the weather forecast miss this stuff) that dropped another 10cm right before evening rush hour (at least I was able to pick up the kids). Finally there was supposed to be another 10cm on the weekend, but that only ended up being about 2cm. In any case that was a lot of snow to shovel and guarantees a White Christmas.

The week after that, a stomach virus started making the rounds. First Jovian got it, then 5 days later (long incubation!), I got it. Apollo followed a day after me, and then Pauline got it 2-3 days after him. That almost overlapped with Christmas! Both Jovian and Apollo stayed home or had to picked up earlier a couple of times which made the scheduling hectic. At least through all this, my Korea trip got cancelled/postponed, so I was able to take care of the kids.

When the holidays hit, it started getting warmer. We did our usual dinners and family stuff. It was actually pretty light because I took the week between Xmas and New Years off and there weren’t THAT many dinners, so we did a lot of cleaning up around the house. Did some minor Boxing Day shopping (online) and then welcomed in the new year at home.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: recap, winter