The final days of quarantine flew by and one 12 hour car ride later, I was home for the holidays! This Christmas was focused on board games, cookies, Dungeons and Dragons, long walks and cooking. I’m grateful that I was able to test negative before the holidays and actually get to see my family this holiday season. Only two more weeks until 2021 is over and we are on to 2022!
final days of quarantine
Yummy food, Ticket to Ride championship and stir fry with my sugar cookies filled the final hours of our Covid lockdown. Grateful for these two Covid cuties who made my time in quarantine breeze by.
HOMEWARD BOUND
After 10 days locked inside, we were ready for 10 more hours in a car. We heard on the news that the traffic would be up 300% because of Covid and the holidays, so we decided to start our journey at 4am. I’m so glad we were already on the road and heading out of the city by 4:20am. It was 100% the right move and we only hit traffic a few times on the drive down. We powered through the first hour to get through Manhattan and Jersey before stopping at Starbies for our first treat of the day. We saw the sunrise over Baltimore and made it all the way past D.C. before hour 5 was up. The 10 hour trip was full of Taylor Swift sing a longs, Adele ballads and of course… on demand Covid testing. We were so lucky to have the Cue Health molecular Covid testing machine for this quarantine. We were able to avoid the long lines across Manhattan and continue to test negative on our car ride down the coast before seeing our family.
SNUGGLES WITH SULLEY
Reunited with this lovable giant. Sulley is a Sheepadoodle and he was named after Sulley from Monsters Inc. He is my parents puppy and he loves to cuddle and follow me around the house every time I’m home. I have zero complaints about it because I absolutely love every second with Sulley.
COOKING IN THE KITCHEN
This year for Christmas Eve dinner we decided to make a bunch of appetizers and play poker all night. My favorite app that I made up this year was “Southern Sushi” which was mushrooms and asparagus wrapped in puff pastry sheets. I also made steamed veggie dumplings and gyoza from scratch, which were delicious with Thai chili sauce. Alongside our savory feast, we also saved room for a cookie competition. The cookie list consisted of oatmeal gumdrop, lemon cookies, milk and dark chocolate peanut butter, peppermint meringue, pecan pie and Taylor Swift sugar cookies.
TEXAS HOLD EM
It ain’t the holidays without a little hold em. I ended up having to throw in some German candy and Dad swept the table, but it’s his birthday on Christmas… so we let him win.
SING A LONG SONGS
My favorite family tradition with Finn is spending all our free time covering songs. Finn can pick up any instrument and play it, but we normally stick to the classic guitar and vocals combo. This year Finn got a Folklore songbook for Christmas, so a majority of our songs were focused on the lovely T.Swift. Some of my favorite quotes from Taylor are:
They told me all of my cages were mental So I got wasted like all my potential
This Is Me Trying
Distance, timing, breakdown, fighting, silence, the train runs off its tracks
Sad Beautiful Tragic
My love was as cruel as the cities I lived in Everyone looked worse in the light
Daylight
There are so many lines that I’ve crossed unforgiven
I’ll tell you the truth, but never goodbye
DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS
This year we started a new holiday tradition, Joe taught the whole family how to play Dungeons and Dragons. I have always wanted to play and Joe was super helpful at describing all of the game details. My character was a Water Genasi, Ranger Level 5 and my sub class was Beast Master Conclave with a Giant Frog Beast of the Sea. It’s wild to me that the sentence I just wrote actually makes sense. My character was a Far Traveler from Berghain and had green skin with blue eyes. Our campaign’s mission was to travel through the woods and remove a Troll that was spotted in the middle of the woods. After 4 hours of rolling dice and taking notes, we were successful and the troll was slayed!
