Posts Tagged ‘Christmas lights’
Feeling Festive
Last night, Cyndie brought out an overstuffed three-ring binder that had me wondering why so many extra pages couldn’t be consolidated into a more manageable collection. When she said the word “recipes,” I understood. Why would you ever reduce the number of recipes in a collection?
Why was she researching her recipes? The same reason I should probably dig up my “Dangerous Consumption Advisory.” The coming weekend will bring Cyndie’s annual Christmas cookie-baking-palooza event. There goes my diet again.
It is certainly beginning to feel festive with holiday spirit, and not just because our landscape scenery is beautifully snow-covered. Yesterday, we took in a matinee performance of “It’s A Wonderful Life” at the Phipps Center for the Arts in Hudson, with friends Ann (Herzog) and David Drewiske.
I won’t need to watch the traditional broadcast of the movie this year. I also don’t need to go see more holiday lights because Lakefront Park was aglow with a spectacular display.
It is feeling very much like Ho-Ho-Ho season is in full swing. It’s almost enough to make me ready to hear Christmas carols in repeating loops.
Almost.
Cyndie and I got an early Christmas present in the form of a call from a previous (very reliable) animal sitter who has returned to school at UWRF and is interested in some hours. We can always use a larger pool of sitters to choose from when we need coverage for times we want to be away from home.
We are usually fighting to squeeze some hours out of their packed schedules, so having one of them asking us for work opened up an opportunity to make new plans. A winter trip to the lake place might be in the offing. I think we left an unfinished jigsaw puzzle on the table last time we were up there.
Completing a jigsaw puzzle at the lake would be another version of feeling festive, after the Christmas activities have run their course. A getaway in the north woods in a cozy log home. You might recognize that festivities like that would suit me just fine.
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Holiday Outing
Christmas 2023 is now a memory. Let’s get on with celebrating the new year and start preparing for Valentine’s Day. But before we go, how about one more glance at our festive holiday outing at CHS Field in St. Paul?
We went to the GLOW Holiday Festival on Christmas eve eve with Barry and Carlos and our friends, Paul and Beth.
The rain held off long enough for us to walk among the lights, features, and several thousand other people without getting wet.
The event added much-needed holiday spirit in the absence of snow this year. There were so many photo-worthy spectacles and selfie-hungry couples and families, that much of the time was spent dodging becoming an incidental photo bomber or waiting for a turn to get photo-bombed.
We unexpectedly ran into our friends, the Williams family among the throngs of strangers while strolling the concourse. That increased the festive energy of our evening in a most wonderful way.
There was barely a line when we came upon Santa Claus, so posing with him became a must-do.
Confusion broke out when two overly excited youngsters spotted him and moved in as if pulled by an invisible force. Our group quickly encouraged the kids to go ahead of us while the parents, unaware, were trying to remind the kids about the good manners of waiting their turn.
As Cyndie and I stepped up for our chance to tell Santa what we wanted for Christmas, I leaned in and whispered in his ear, “They aren’t paying you enough for this.” It triggered the most wonderful knowing laugh from him that I felt as if my work was done for the night.
24 hours later, Cyndie and I were gathered with our kids, the Friswold family, and their relations at a party room of Friendship Village for the annual Friswold/Brolin Christmas Eve dinner. Christmas morning brought the Friswolds all together in Cyndie’s mom’s suite for breakfast and gift opening. In the evening, we met again, this time at Ben’s house for games and dinner.
I’m looking forward to a day after the holiday that should bring a return to our usual routine and an end to the over-saturation of Christmas music for a while. Maybe things will get so normal that we even receive some snow that covers the ground for more than a few days.
A guy can dream.
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Appropriately Festive
There was a lot of nesting going on in the days prior to Cyndie’s knee surgery, much of it cleaning nooks and crannies that haven’t received a similar level of intense attention since the days we first moved in. She wore a headlamp to better see the dust clinging to the seams of our tongue-in-groove paneling.
If she would be stuck convalescing in bed, it sure as heck wasn’t going to involve looking up to see the horror direct sunlight reveals this time of year. The low angle of the sun has a unique way of exposing gaps in hospital-level cleanliness.
At least the surroundings are currently as germ-free as the best of recovery rooms in your average hospital. Well, they were for a day, anyway, before a certain dog and cat made their way back in to scatter their hair and dander every which way.
After all the cleaning was done, Cyndie moved on to the Christmas decorations. As the days counted down to the appointed surgery, she accomplished the greatest of feats in making it look as festive as ever around here.
I even found boughs strung with lights staged by the barn!
There may be a pandemic out there squashing the best of our holiday gathering traditions this year, but you’d hardly notice from inside our home.
Merry Christmas Everyone!
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