We didn't jump on the puzzle craze as early or as often as everyone else....but we did do two over the course of the shutdown year. This second one was about the death of me with all of those Lego faces being so similar. It was so hard! We finally borrowed a card table so I could get it off the kitchen table and allow us to eat in peace. (And note to myself, we haven't had a dining room table in a year because the dining room was converted to my home office....)
With our three final home projects, we have now replaced every floor covering, painted every wall and ceiling and updated every room in the house in some way in the nearly 12 years we have lived here. I think the front door is the only thing left.
These final projects were all upstairs. We had all of the baseboards and door casings replaced with 4 inch white trim and had all of the doors painted white. This was done by our same neighbor the trim carpenter and his painter partner who did our first floor crown molding, trim and doors three years ago. Then the carpet guys came and replaced all of the bedroom carpets. This was quite an exercise in staging, as the carpet guys couldn't come until the baseboards were installed. And the trim team couldn't come while they were doing updates on their own homes. The real treat besides hiding in the basement to work for two weeks was that the doors (by our choice) were all painted offsite and returned after the carpet installation. So for two weeks the only doors we had were the hallway bathroom (which was already previously updated) and the master bedroom. They waited for that one until the last second, so we were only without it for 5 of the days.
And around all of this another neighbor who specializes in bathroom renovation, gutted and installed a new master bath! The floor plan and overall dimensions are the same, but he took out the soffit and widened the shower to the full wall depth. So the shower is bigger and everything is bright and white and clean! Luckily we had a long weekend and nowhere we could go thanks to COVID to put the house back together once everyone was out.
As with most years, January and February are colder and snowier than December. We've had snow on the ground since the New Year. School started back the first week of January, but apparently 6th graders are too cool to play in the snow at recess. Or at least they're too cool to take snow boots and snow pants, so they just stand around on the slab ruining their school shoes.
When we go to Disney for Christmas, we have our stockings but don't take gifts along. We got home from Florida late Sunday night and the adults had work on Monday - including a late night project for me - and Tuesday, so we finally celebrated at home on Tuesday night. The fun part was that the snow started that day and we had a White Christmas!
Arrival day
Our first day was the best weather forecast for the week, so our first stop was there for fun and lunch. Stormalong Bay is by far the best pool at Disney! We found a nice trio of chairs on a cement island in the middle of the lazy river that was perfect to keep our distance. The only disappointment was food service was super slow and quality was much lower than normal due to everything being in convenience store type ready made containers versus grill items. Oh well....my margarita was delicious and they serve John's favorite Florida beer there.
Our park reservations for the second day were at Hollywood Studios, and once again, I had quick fingers at 6:59 a.m. (while, again, the rest of my family was asleep) to get our Rise of the Resistance reservation. We rode the Skyliner to the park for a leisurely-ish start to to the day. Since this was my 4th or 5th ride, I decided to try to get some photos versus my usual just ride and enjoy. I thought a few of them turned our really well.
Christmas Day
William has named one of the birds at the front of the park, Jerry. Now, that's his name for a lot of wild animals (like the chipmunk that lived on our porch one year), but we love to stop and visit this little enclosure each time we are at AK and see how Jerry's doing!
Eventually all good things must come to an end. We spent our last few hours over at Epcot, since it was so close to the hotel. We slept in and got lax about line monitoring since crowds had been low. Apparently everyone had arrived overnight because Epcot was a zoo! We rode two rides, had two snacks and then left for the airport. That Lego box was bigger than his suitcase!
It was a lovely holiday. As with the trip in November, the only uncomfortable parts were the crowded planes. And for that reason, we'll plan to drive when we can travel again in early 2021. But we had no regrets of creating holiday family traditions at Disney.
