Happy New Year

 I think we all heard the collective sigh as the world ushered in a New Year. 

Of course our optimism is already waning given the events of January 6th and the escalating pandemic situation. 

But nevermind. It's early days and we haven't even sworn in the new guy, so maybe there's hope. 

We had our own ceremonial building of the White House - Lego, that is.  The old one suddenly threw itself off the shelf and broke into a million pieces one day.  

Definitely not foreshadowing or anything. 

Fortunately, one boy received the new, improved Lego model for Christmas.  And now the old one has been relegated to a bottom shelf while the new one sits proudly next to the Capitol building. 

Our winter break included more Lego building, game playing, movie watching, video games, reading and more game playing.  

I always feel a little sad when it's time to put away the Christmas tree and decorations.  This year our Christmas looked and felt a little different. Usually there's homeschool co-op Christmas activities, a week or two full of dog guests, Midnight Mass and visits with extended family. 

I will admit that I enjoyed a less "busy" Christmas season - it was bittersweet really.  But as I've mentioned before, I've been trying to focus on the silver linings of this whole Pandemic Situation. It made my heart happy to have all my boys home, safe and healthy. We still celebrated midnight Mass together, just streaming in our living room. When the youngest boy just couldn't stay awake any longer, we just carried him up to bed. 

So that was a plus. 

We even spent time before Mass all singing Christmas carols together. I have no video evidence of this, so as not to potentially embarrass boys, but you'll just have to trust me that it was a beautiful, magical Christmas Eve with all my boys singing together. 

Another silver lining was getting to spend time with Nana and Papa. For the past few years, they have spent Christmas in California and while I know they missed making that trip this year, we were grateful for having the time with them.

We also discovered what a Card Shark the six year-old can be. 

We were also fortunate to have some dog guests recently. Jordy is a young, always happy Springer Spaniel who just adores people. And other dogs. And just life in general. 

Cinnamon and Sammy are a tiny, fluffy duo who fully embody the meaning of the term "lap dog." 

This past week we began to start thinking about potentially beginning a new semester of school. I like to ease into such things, so we focused on just some basics - like reacquainting themselves with their math curriculum and maybe reading a book or something. 

Both of the college students in this house will start back next week and are set to have very full, busy and hopefully productive spring semesters. The rest of us will start back this week - as much as we've all enjoyed the break, it's time to get back to some sort of routine. 

Before their brains turn completely to mush. 

The 10 year-old got to build his own computer over the break and is looking forward to using that for some of his school work.  It took the brain power of all the boys to trouble shoot some problems and complete the task, so I guess they used their brains for more than just video games after all. 

I hope you had a Merry Christmas and find health and happiness in the new year! 

~ Dori