North for the Holiday

December 22,  2022 to                                                     Most Recent Posts:
January 1st 2023                                                      Other Damage in Flagler
Reisterstown, Maryland                                          Gamble on the Riverside

I thought I was going to quickly stick this Holiday Post in and then go back to my Winter in Florida.   But things got in the way and it has taken me days to do this post.  You’ll see why later.

As most of you probably experienced, this December holiday season was a bitterly cold one nearly everywhere.  And thank goodness my airline tickets to go from Tampa International to BWI were not on Southwest.   I might not be back yet if they were.

I drove an hour to the Tampa airport where I had already arranged for 5 days of parking for $66 in their “economy garage” which is at least a mile from the American Airline gates.  Lucky I need the steps.

I had to print out that QR code thing in order to get in and out of the garage.  OR take a chance that it would show up on my phone when I needed it.  Of course that meant I had to be able to find this sheet of paper when I returned to Tampa 5 days later.

Still I am SO glad I printed the parking one out since the boarding QR codes on my phone only came up for the first leg of each flight and would not come up for the second so I had to have a ticket printed at the gate both times.   Is new technology really better??

The flights took all day long on Thursday the 22nd with a 3.5 hour layover in Atlanta.  There were no non stop flights that didn’t leave in the dark at 5am or come back in the dark at 11pm. 

Because of all the “stuff” going around, I wore a mask in the airport and in the airplane. 

While I waited, I saw the coat I wished I had worn given that the temperatures turned out to be in the single digits.  If she puts that hood on, she is covered from head to feet.

We have a family tradition of pastries on Christmas day so the only time I actually had to go outside was to walk from the house to the car and the car to the bakery.  That was quite enough.  We hadn’t gone very far when the sleet began and got harder and harder.  The defrost and windshield wipers could hardly keep up.  We made it to the bakery and by the time we finished with the difficult choices the sleet had stopped.

Very enticing window display.  And even better inside.

Will visions of sugar plums dance in his head?

Just look at the yummies.

Colin had gotten reindeer glasses at school on his last day and everyone loved them and wore them.  Celia wore them to the bakery.  Carrie wore them playing Uno.  I wore them just because.

Of course if you go to the bakery to get goodies for Christmas morning, you have to sample them when you get home.  Nobody enjoys a donut like a 4 year old.  Unless it is a six year old on Christmas morning.

We played lots of games the days before Christmas as it was WAY too cold to go outside.  Sorry and Uno were among the favorites.

 

Celia helped her daddy made Christmas Cookies.

At 12:15 with cookies in the oven the power went out and was out for 12 hours.  As their house is all electric, that meant that nothing worked.  No heat,  no water, no oven, no microwave, careful opening of the refrigerator and use of the bathroom.   We went out to dinner and went to bed.   Matthew had candles all over the house.  Not sure why I took no pictures of any of this.  We all slept in layers of clothing – I had on long underwear tops and bottoms, fleece pants, a sweatshirt, 2 pairs of sox and my blue fleecy coat.  It was 48 degrees inside when I woke up and the power had been on for 6 hours by that point.   But thankfully this was the 23rd not Christmas eve or day.

On Christmas Eve I posed by the tree in my elf outfit with the warning Better Not Pout.  Santa had not come yet.  Matthew had made Santa an extra large cookie as he has to keep up his strength to make all the deliveries.  The picture is deceptive.  This was a BIG cookie.  Bigger than my hand.

I had let Colin and Celia open one present from me on Christmas eve so they could wear the onsies to bed.   They posed before the tree on their way to bed.  Pretty excited!  I’d like to have footed pjs for myself.

Here’s the temperature on Christmas Eve.  Notice “feels like –11”.

The tree looked even lovelier on Christmas morning with the presents all around.

Celia looked carefully and found only crumbs on the cookie plate and no milk in the mug.  Nothing like the faces of children on Christmas morning.

Celia had gone shopping at her school’s “gift shop” and bought these fantastic earmuffs for her mommy.   I was seriously coveting them.   Matthew too was sporting fine holiday wear.  Snoopy is a family favorite.

I guess I was too busy watching as this picture of Colin opening a present seems to be the only one I took.

I got a wonderful pair of very nice sunglasses from the kids.

Christmas afternoon Carrie and Matthew hosted the entire Iwanowski family.  There were a total of 30 folks present.  I’m not going to try to name everyone in these pictures but Matthew’s Mother Joan is on the right hand side of the sofa in the picture below.

I took a video of the sounds of this many people having fun in one place but unfortunately the video didn’t come out.  Only the sound and I’m not bright enough to know how to publish a sound file alone.   So you don’t get to hear the sound track with voices on voices talking at once.  Really too bad.  It would add a lot to the pictures. 

Matthew’s father Bob is in the plaid shirt on the left end of the table beyond Carrie.

One of the traditional gifts from Matthew’s brother Mark to every single one of these people is 3 lottery tickets.  You scratch and he pays.  Of course he will get reimbursed when he takes the winners back to the store he purchased the tickets from.  Here’s Carrie working on hers and Celia’s and Colin’s.   I think together they won $140.

On Christmas Day it was 4 degrees and felt like –12. Needless to say no one was doing anything outside.

We spent the day after Christmas playing with Christmas gifts. 

Colin really liked the marble race I gave him,  You create the race in any way you want and the marbles run through.  Infinite possibilities for construction.

There were art projects and sewing projects.

And the next day it was time for me to leave.  The 5 days of Christmas were over.  Everybody had to go back to work and school.   Another full day of airplanes and layovers.  Thank goodness I wasn’t on southwest.

I was very careful to wear an N95  mask under my other mask both in the airport and on the plane going both directions.   So I was completely surprised to wake up on Wednesday morning the 28th, the day after I got home and find that I had some sort of dreaded disease complete with a fever of 101.5, diarrhea, a death rattle sounding cough and such fatigue that by the second day I couldn’t get out of bed.  I ate nothing but bananas and toast the entire time.   This crud has lasted now for another 5 days as though to try to erase my 5 days of Christmas. 

As I post this, I still have a fever of 99.5 and the cough and very low energy. 

I wish you all a Happy New Year and hope the new year brings me an end to this illness.

PS   It has been in the upper 70’s since I’ve returned from the frigid mid atlantic not that I’ve been outside for even 5 minutes.   Maybe today’s the day.