What's Up Wednesday: December 2020

It's What's Up Wednesday, the December 2020 version. As always, I'm linking up with Shay at Mix and Match Mama and Sheaffer at Sheaffer Told Me To to talk about what we've been up to lately, although I think the official link up might not be happening until next week...

image from here

What we're eating this week... Cheese, cheese, and more cheese. We have a cheese Advent calendar and we've been splitting each cheese between all four of us. So many of them are so good! Oh my word. YUM!!! And then we splurged on some aged Balderson cheddar and some Guinness cheddar and I am basically in cheese heaven. And of course, we bought our favourite Christmas chocolates last week so we're eating those as well.

 Dave frying latkes outside as is our tradition!

And because we are finishing up celebrating Channukah, we've been eating latkes too! So yes, basically it's all the holiday foods around here :)

What I'm reminiscing about... Celebrating Christmas last year when my parents came to visit. We had a super fun turkey dinner on Christmas Day with some of our best friends and it was just so fun! Janice brought Christmas crackers (the kind you pop) and each one had a silly hat and a whistle and the "whistle choir" was so funny!!!

 

What I'm loving... We put flannel sheets on our bed a few weeks ago (a month ago now?) and I LOVE crawling into bed every night with my comfort bag and the coziness of the flannel sheets. Aaaaahhhh! I am excited to spend more time sleeping over the next few weeks as the kids and I are off for Winter Break.

   

What we've been up to... Celebrating Chanukah. We made a plan for each of the eight nights of Chanukah and it's been fun, thus far. We've opened gifts, gone to (a very short but kind of hilarious) menorah car parade, celebrated over Zoom, eaten latkes, and of course, lit the candles every night.

What I'm dreading... Same thing as last month. "Christmas without my parents :( And the holidays in general. I'm dreading not being able to get together with anybody. Boo."

 

What I'm working on... Trying to come up with ways to make the Winter Break (and the holidays) fun. We have a Winter Break list of fun things to do. So much will depend on the weather -- will it be cold enough to toboggan and ice skate or will be grey, rainy, and not really "let's spend a lot of time outside" weather? I'm trying to find lots of light shows which aren't too far from us so we can check those out. We'll see how many of them we get to.

What I'm excited about... My friend Allena wrote on her blog about Cranberry Tea. I asked for the recipe because it sounded so good, and you guys, it's only been a week and a half but we're drinking it every day. It has cinnamon in it and between the tea, and the Christmas potpourri (which also has cranberries and cinnamon in it), our house has been smelling so good! And there's nothing better than having a cup (or six!) of cranberry tea in the afternoons and evenings. The whole family is loving it. So I'm excited about cranberries and cinnamon -- it must be December :)

What I'm watching/reading... I haven't been watching as many Hallmark movies lately. We've been busy with other things. However, next week, once we're on Winter Break and I'm not working, we'll be watching a whole bunch more movies. I can't wait! My big plans are to eat cookies and watch Hallmark movies and I'm pretty excited about it actually :) Add a cup of cranberry tea and a fuzzy blanket and I'm pretty much set!

In terms of reading, I've discovered a new (to me) series. It's about a pair of cupcake bakers who solve mysteries. I've read four of the books thus far and am really enjoying it. This author also has a series set in a library so I'm looking forward to reading those books too.

image from here * image from here

What I'm listening to... I've been listening to Rachel practice her song for our church's Christmas Eve prelude, I've been listening to The Pentatonix Christmas CD, and I've been listening to Straight No Chaser's The Christmas Can-Can which makes me laugh every single time. (Listen to the last one here.)

 

What I'm wearing... It's matching family pajamas time everyone!!! Whooo hoooo!!!

What I'm doing this weekend... Friday is the last day of school/work until after the Winter Break. We're going to do a drive through light event on Friday night and we're "hosting" our church small group Channukah party over Zoom. And yes, you read that right -- every year we host a Channukah party for our small group from church and we all love it so much we decided to do it this year even though it has to be virtual. We'll be delivering Channukah care packages to each family on Sunday afternoon and hanging out (on Zoom) on Sunday night. Hopefully, we'll also get to do some sleeping in, some game playing, and some being lazy too :)

What I'm looking forward to next month... The January tulip invasion will begin. Every year our grocery store carries inexpensive bunches of tulips and I fill our house with them in January to remind me that yes, eventually, Spring is coming.

What else is new... I'm excited because the long term contract which I had been doing for work ended a few weeks ago and it has opened up some new opportunities for me. I picked a job up off the job board (a first come, first served website) that was originally supposed to be for just two days. On the first day, it got extended for another week and, this past Monday, they asked me to come back for the first three weeks in January too. I'm a substitute secretary/librarian for our school board and I'm excited to get some long term experience in the school office. I'm getting a chance to learn all sorts of new tasks which I'm thrilled about. And I'm happy to know where I'll be working for the first three weeks after Winter Break. So that's what's new for me.

A picture from my first day of work in December 2019. If you're curious to read more about my job, you can read my original post about it here.

So that's what up with me this December. What's up with all of you?