Christmas time 2020 looked a little different this year. The pandemic sure rocked our world the entire year of 2020 and all the uncertainties of everything was something we had never had to deal with. COVID numbers had started to get better over the summer but after Thanksgiving the numbers started to increase very fast. We were headed into a possible lock down again. Having the month of Christmas at home was actually a breath of fresh air to be honest. December is usually so busy with all the parties, school activities and events that keep us out of our home so it was nice to have a month of being at home all together doing things that mater most.
Our Christmas card....
Also we got to start our chocolate calendars that day.
Having the kids home 24/7 has been wonderful! I love that we can just do spur of the moment crafts.
I was wondering how they would do visits with Santa this year. Well they put Santa behind some plexiglass and we got to go see him.
After Santa we went to dinner at Red Robbins. There were rumors that restaurants were going to have to shut down outside dinning again so we were excited to fit in one last night out to dinner.
With the number of COVID cases raising lock downs were starting to go in effect and parties and gatherings were being canceled. I was so worried that we wouldn't be able to have our annual parties this year. Spencer and I decided that we could do our kids annual gingerbread house parties if we did them sooner than later. We decided to not do our couples white elephant or the ornament party this year just to be careful it was so sad to make those choices. We were so excited to let the kids have theirs though. We did them on the same day Friday December 4th but at different times.
First up Carter's party....
Carter invited Ander, Noah and Wesley...
They had a blast.
The party made it's way into the game room.
They made keepsake ornaments and there houses. It was a lot of fun!
Then it was Aubrey's turn....
She invited Sophie, Mia and Presley. We let her have a sleep over so her party went all night long. They also decorated houses, made an ornament, gift exchange, pizza, tik tok videos, hot tub, movie, and a sleep over. It was a fun night.
We also had our first fire in the fireplace that night....
Saturday December 5th we went to the park. We love our new location!
We had some extra gingerbread houses so I had fun.
Since we are doing homeschool right now we have time to do more things so I thought it would be fun to learn about Hanukkah this year. I ordered all the supplies.
Spencer and I's Christmas gift to each other was our new house this year and a new Keiser Exercise bike. We are so in love with it!
It's great to have Spencer work from home because he takes lots of breaks to do jobs around the house. He is almost done with his wall...
We don't have the best before picture of the super long front room that was here before but we did take this one when we were touring the house....
and here is the after....
Still need to organize our office but here is the view on the other side...
This was seriously one of the best ideas Spencer has ever had! We basically made our house a six bedroom house. We love the two different spaces!
For our neighbor and friend gifts this year I found this cute tag and went with it.....
I turned our home into a gnome workshop! I had the kids helping me too....
They came out really cute and I was so excited to pass them out to all our new neighbors, teachers and friends.
Thursday December 10th at sun set was the first night of Hanukkah.
We had fun lighting the first candle, watching and reading about Hanukkah. Our favorite part was learning how to play dreidel
and I won the first night!
Along with the gnomes we also had notepads and chocolate for the teacher gifts.
Aubrey's favorite teacher of her 6 teachers is Mrs. Martinez her core teacher. I arranged for us to get to meet her outside of her classroom and give her the Christmas gift Aubrey made . This was very special for Aubrey to get to see her in person. We had the office distribute the other chocolates in all her teachers boxes.
Then we went to get a treat..
Friday December 11th we did a traditional Hanukkah dinner. I made a brisket, brussel sprouts, apple sauce and we all made latkes (potato pancake). We had a great time cooking all together..
That day grandma came to stay with us for a week. It was so fun to have her out. We played lots of games, watched lots of movies and ate lots of yummy food.
The kids loved Hanukkah because they got 8 nights of gifts!
We taught Grandma how to play dreidel.
Aubrey won that night!
The beautiful trees around our new house are unreal! I felt like I was walking in a postcard!
and I think we found the worlds largest leaf...
More Hanukkah gifts..
More craft time...
and dance party....
Carter drew this in class one day and I just had to frame it! It's amazing!!!
Grandma loved our new house!! She really loved the movie room....
Aubrey did get to have a young women's zoom Christmas party. They did a fun craft...
and had the cutest cookies delivered....
Aubrey kills me with all her selfies!
Buddy did lots of fun surprises throughout the month...
The last day of school was December 16th. It felt so weird not having school parties or anything exciting so I decided to throw a spur of the moment surprise party for the kids. During their zooms that morning I ran around town getting fun things and I wrote up a invitation and slipped it under their doors. They had no idea it was so fun!
First surprise McDonald's lunch...
Then I brought snow to Merced....
Then a craft...
and another craft...
Then we played a few games. It was a lot of fun!
That night Carter had his boy scout Christmas zoom party....
Thursday December 17th we did one last fun thing with Grandma before she had to leave we made some more gingerbread houses.
Aubrey got a surprise gift from her math teacher...
The kids and I made some fun Christmas cookies...
The kids really wanted to get Christmas gifts for their friends and door bell ditch them. It was a lot of fun. With our huge room master bedroom we were able to make a wrapping station...
We had so much fun doing all our Christmas traditions at home but we were missing some of the fun stuff that we do out of the home like shopping, our San Francisco trip, ice skating and just being out seeing Christmas. I had the idea to take the kids to Christmas Tree Lane in Fresno. This is a drive through event so I knew it would be open. The last time Spencer and I did this our house was robbed in 2007 while we were there so it always made us nervous to do it again. We were a little nervous to do it but knew that the kids would enjoy it and that now we have alarms and the ring so we should be good. We bundled up and even took the dogs and headed down to Fresno on Monday December 21st.
Since all the restaurant are closed for dinning we were excited to get our favorite fast food chick fil a and enjoy it in the car.
Christmas Tree Lane was super cool. It was crowded but it seemed to keep moving. We loved all the lights, music and being together. It was a really fun evening.
Not sure why we didn't have our stockings up all of December but we decided it was time to hang them.
The friend gift giving started a chain effect and both kids got so many fun gifts on our door steps the days leading p to Christmas.
Tuesday December 22nd The kids and I were heading up to Sonora for the night so we did some shopping for dad. He loves Magic the Gathering so we had to go downtown Merced. They did a great job decorating. Our little town sure is cute!
The kids and I had a nice drive up to Sonora. When we got there Carter got to try out Gaga's new car game. It was super cool.
We drove up the mountain a little to see the cool star that was happening I forgot what it was called but it only happens like once in a million years. It was cool.
Carter teaching nana a game on the Switch.
Papa and Carter playing pool
Aubrey and Titi making fudge.
That night we had a slumber party at Titi's. It was so much fun.
Wednesday December 23rd we had our annual girls cookie making day. We thought it would be fun to wear our ugly sweaters...
Papa came and picked Carter up for a guys day...
and Nana came to Titi's for cookie making and lunch...
We had so much fun laughing and telling stories all together.
The boys had a lot of fun out in nature that day....
and playing more virtual reality...
It was a nice mini trip.
When we got home Buddy had done a candy cane hunt for the kids....
Thursday December 24th was super bitter sweet. For one thing it always feels like Christmas Eve just sneaks up on you and then the realization that Christmas is almost over hits. But the worst part of Christmas Eve this year is we had to postpone the Supinger party. We were actually suppose to host it this year which was very exciting!!! We could not wait but with all the COVID cases happening and things shutting down all around us the whole family came to the conclusion that it was best to wait and celebrate all together at a later date. With grandma being 85 and the family so large 25+ people all from different counties it didn't seem like having a party was the best idea. We also worried about what our neighbors would think if we had 5-6 cars parked in our front yard. It just didn't make since. I was a wreck and felt horrible. Another deciding factor was that we had plans to be with my family on Christmas if we went ahead and had Christmas Eve here that would put my family at risk too. Since we have seen my family a lot through out COVID they were basically our "COVID bubble" and they are only one other household it made since to see them but not the Supingers. Spencer really took one for the team and allowed that but I felt horrible. I just hate that this virus has made us have to make these difficult decisions. Once the decision was made we had to live with and tried our best to make Christmas Eve a good one. You would have thought we would have done our big gingerbread house since we were home so much but we hadn't yet so that was a perfect activity for our family that day.
It came out AMAZING
The rest of the day was watching movies and hanging out. We got KFC for dinner, I know very fancy! It actually was really fun because I remember having KFC when I was a kid at my grandparents when all the adults would eat shrimp louies for dinner.
After dinner we watched another movie and then read the Night Before Christmas.
Put out cookies...
Also on Christmas Eve the kids get to touch Buddy so that is always fun.
Friday December 25th Christmas day!!!
It was so fun waking up at our new house and having Christmas!! Santa was very good to us this year and we made lots of fun new memories Christmas morning.
For the kids final gift from us we had them go on a scavenger hunt around the house. They love that and it's always fun seeing them work together to solve the clues.
Carter's last gift was an RC car that he really wanted. It's super cool and can go over 40mph.
Aubrey's last gift was a super comfy chair and a blank with her favorite actor Tom Holland.
They loved everything! After gift opening we played with lots of our new stuff.
Aubrey got some fresh new roller skates..
Carter loving his RC Car...
We also played a new game dad got..
and I fit in a cycle work out on our new cycle...
After our fun morning we got ready for family to come over. We were so excited to get to host Christmas in our new house and even more excited that everyone was staying the night!
When the family arrived it looked like Santa had come back!
After visiting for a little bit we went into gift opening. We did a secret Santa again this year which is so awesome. Spencer had Titi and I had Nana. Nana had me and gaga had Spencer. And the kids just get spoiled by all. We had so much fun!!!
On top of all our fun gifts Nana and Papa also gave us all a pillow with our favorite things on them. It was super cute!
After gift opening we had an amazing dinner...
We sure love our family so much!!
After dinner we all got into our pj's and played games it was so much fun!
We laughed so hard playing charades...
Nana was a rock star at the candy cane game!
We also played the unwrapping game but I didn't get a picture since I was too busy playing haha!
Then we had Christmas cookies and ice cream for dessert. After dessert we all went in the movie room and saw the newest Wonder Women. It was really good. Then everyone got in bed. It felt so cool getting to have my entire family sleep over!!!
Saturday December 26th we all woke up and had breakfast together. Joan sent us the best sticky buns ever so we made those and some other yummy stuff...
Then everyone packed up and went home. It was sad to say good bye we had so much fun!
It's always so sad once Christmas is over. It is fun playing with all your new stuff though!
Aubrey in her new clothes..
Carter loves apple cider!
We pretty much just relaxed and vegged out the next few days. We did go on lots of walks...
Since Christmas was over we let the kids have a playdate with their friends. We went and picked up Mia and Wesley on our bikes and went to a fun bike park near our house.
We let them spend the night and we got McDonald's for dinner. They were in heaven!
The week between Christmas and New Year's Spencer decided to build our gym wall. He is always doing stuff! He really likes projects and he has gotten really good at building walls! He did this all in a couple days...
It's amazing having a full gym at our house! We love it.
Carter and I went on a little date day
and then before we knew it it was Thursday December 31st New Years Eve!
We stayed home, ordered takeout, watched movies, had a dance party, ate cream puffs and counted in the new year!
Well 2020 you sure were weird! We have hope that 2021 things will get better in the world. As I look back on 2020 though as strange as it was it still was a great year. We got to buy our dream home. We still got to go on a big family vacation. We became closer as a family. I got to try homeschool out. Spencer gets to work from home more. And most importantly we really realized what truly matters in life, being together as a family.
Happy New Year!!
