Christmas Break

 Christmas break wasn't what we anticipated, but it was actually a glorious break! Covid hit daycare (or rather, daycare families), so daycare had to close and the minis and I went into quarantine mode. Thankfully, most are still healthy, but daycare is still closed until January 7, which means the minis and I have had to come up with things to do. Luckily, I'm experienced in this being at home thing, so we had a lot of fun. I took time to rest, watch movies, write, plan, day dream, do puzzles, bake, and even a couple of hikes through the snow.

We had a nice four day Christmas week (read about that here), so by Monday, getting out of the house was  MUST. Of course, we also knew we shouldn't be around others, so we packed up the car with a little potty (no shame, I totally used that thing too), food, water, and drove to Pine Lake State Park in Eldora, Iowa. We did a trail along the Iowa River and skipped the Lake loop, since there were a few cars in that parking lot at the trail head. We had the Hogsback and Wildcat trails completely to ourselves. 

Then the next day, 9 inches of snow. It was the perfect snow day though: movies on the couch, laying in bed watching it snow, hot chocolate, chili, and playing outside as it snowed. The mini's early gifts of snow boards and tubes have gotten so much use already!

Zeus heard movies on the couch and climbed on top of me to snuggle!

Mid-week cookies, while the minis did a day of homeschool. I didn't want to begin new lessons, so we did some for-fun (but still educational) worksheets, art class, a walk for gym class, reading, math challenges. I love how much they love to learn!

Our families got us numerous puzzles and games for the winter months. We wound up doing and playing them all in the week between Christmas and New Years. I guess we'll be using some of our gift cards to buy new puzzles!