Last year, I occasionally blogged about how we were spending our socially distant pandemic days as a way to remember the time and how we spent it. I decided to do the same thing for our Christmas vacation because Phil took the week off of work and for the first time since moving to Pennsylvania, we didn’t go home at all for Christmas or New Year’s.
I’ve broken it down into categories to make it easier for you to follow along, and I didn’t record everything (because no one needs to know how long the kids played video games or how many times I washed dishes).
Movies we watched
On Christmas Eve, we kicked off our break with a family tradition, White Christmas, and to make it more interesting for our son who claimed he would be bored, we tracked all the instances of smoking in the movie (because the movie’s rating mentions smoking). Spoiler alert: it’s not a few times.
Earlier that same day, I watched While You Were Sleeping, which I consider another must-watch of the holiday season.
On Christmas Day, after presents and video calls, we watched Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Phil and Corban had seen this in theaters last Christmas (was it ONLY last year??) but Isabelle and I hadn’t seen it yet. Our work here is done.
In keeping with our Saturday night tradition, we watched another Marvel movie: The Avengers: Age of Ultron. We are slowly working our way through the Marvel universe in order, and man, did I forget how weird this one is.
Tuesday night, we watched Soul, the new Disney/Pixar movie, and friends, this is the movie we needed for 2020.
New Year’s Eve was our movie marathon day. Each member of the family got to pick a movie to watch. Isabelle chose Hamilton, which took up our entire morning and for that we are not sorry. Phil chose Eddie the Eagle about a British ski jumper in 1988 Calgary Olympics. It’s a feel-good story (and yes we are enjoying our Disney Plus membership gifted to us by a family member). I chose Jurassic Park (the original classic one) and Corban chose Home Alone 2. (We watched Home Alone the weekend before our break started.) That took us until 11 p.m.
During the week, Phil and I finished Series 11 of Doctor Who, which we had checked out of the library.
Food We Ate
If you know us, you know that food is a big deal, and we were not leaving our week-at-home eating to chance. We carefully planned out our dinner meals and extra treats so that we could stock up at the store and not have to think about what we were having every day. (We use a Google doc to keep ourselves organized. Nerd alert!)
For Christmas Eve, we wanted something that felt like comfort food, so we made chicken pot pie (or chicken pie as it’s known in Lancaster; the kind that’s made with a pie crust, not with pasta in a pot; food names are weird). We ate cookies our neighbor dropped off and drank eggnog with the movie, which is part of the White Christmas watching tradition.
Breakfast on Christmas morning was cinnamon rolls from a can (we have not tried homemade yet because of time but think we may have to), tropical fruit, sausages and hot drinks.
We grazed on a variety of meats, cheeses, olives and crackers for lunch while dinner cooked in the oven. For years, Phil has wanted to make porchetta, a recipe he saw in a Michael Symon cookbook. It requires a fresh ham, which he ordered from a local butcher, and it was bigger than we expected. Still, we pressed on with the prep and cooking, and it was delicious! With the porchetta we had cornbread stuffing (a new recipe we tried from Bon Appetit magazine) and a shaved Brussels sprouts salad (another Chef Symon recipe) and sourdough bread (not homemade) with Irish butter. I drank a beer. Phil had whisky. Our dessert was Jello poke cake.
On Saturdays, our son chooses the menu from a rotation of meals he has approved. This week it was a mac and cheese casserole that usually contains hot dogs, but we convinced him to include some of the leftover porchetta meat. Mixed frozen vegetables on the side.
Sunday was our hike day (more on that later) and one of the culinary adventures we wanted to have during our Christmas break was MREs. Phil ordered a random bundle of them online and we took them on our hike. The promise of a hot meal sustained us as we hiked in the sub-30-degree temps, but the air temperature may have been too cold for the heating chemical to work properly. Still, we had a picnic at an outcropping next to a lake in December–a fun memory! Some of the MRE contents included: teriyaki beef sticks (which come from nearby Lebanon, PA), bread with cheese sauce, trail mix, crackers with chocolate peanut butter sauce, a chocolate toaster pastry, chocolate pudding, southwestern chicken burrito bowl, beef ravioli, tortellini with tomato sauce, southwestern beef and beans.
For dinner, we had pierogis (from frozen), chicken tenders (from frozen) and raw broccoli (must have a vegetable!).
On Monday for lunch, Phil made grilled cheese sandwiches out of the sourdough and leftover porchetta, and this was my first grilled cheese that used mayonnaise instead of butter on the outside of the sandwich. It was not a mistake!
Dinner was an assortment of canned soups of the Campbell’s and Progresso varieties. (Part of our intention for food was to do things we don’t normally do, and canned soups is not a regular part of our diet.)
Tuesday and Wednesday featured a lot of local takeout.
For lunch on Tuesday, we had açaí bowls from Oola Bowls, a stand at Central Market. We followed that up with salad. Tuesday was like a cleanse day for us except there were still a lot of cookies and other leftovers in the house.
On Wednesday, the boys wanted to get McRibs from McDonald’s and I avoid the golden arches as much as possible, so the girls ordered crepes from Rachel’s Creperie. (Son and I had crepes the week of Thanksgiving and daughter did not get to participate, so this was a double win for me.)
After watching a taste-testing episode of Mexican food a few weeks ago, we were hungry for authentic Mexican food. We ordered from Cocina Mexicana (enchiladas verdes for me-yum! There were also tamales, and chile rellanos and nachos and chorizo fries.)
New Year’s Eve was another feasting sort of day. We started with monkey bread for breakfast. Leftovers for lunch. For dinner, we had sweet and sour meatballs, crab rangoon dip, other chips and dips, veggies, Christmas cookies, more meat and cheese. I drank a beer long before midnight. The kids toasted with sparkling grape juice. Phil had Scotch. I was on to water by then.
Activities We Did
Besides watching movies and eating food, we did some other things during our break.
I put together a puzzle, with some help.
We video called with family, multiple times.
On Saturday, we spent most of the day cleaning and organizing the kitchen, the mud room and the mud room closet. I cannot tell you how amazing it feels to have these rooms functional and uncluttered. I even got rid of some coffee mugs and some pans we don’t use.
Sunday was our hiking day. We went to Muddy Run Park in southern Lancaster County and took the Lakeside Trail, which was adverted as “rugged walking.” The sign was not wrong. When we started, the ground was still a bit frozen but as the day went on, it loosened up a bit. All of us were on the ground at one point or another during the hike. We were cold and tired and bruised a little by the time we got home, but the fresh air did us good.
We returned to cleaning on Monday, this time an area of the living room where the kids keep their legos and various other toys and projects. This, too, took up a large part of our day, but it, too, is satisfying. We’re still waiting on a shelving unit we ordered to complete the project, but cleaning was a big checkmark on the to-do list.
Before cleaning I went to the library.
That night, we drove around looking at Christmas lights. This house on Longfellow Drive in Lancaster is an annual favorite. They raise money for Make-A-Wish and this picture does not even do justice to the amount of lights and holiday cheer that are on and around this house.
Tuesday was Christmas cookie day. Isabelle and I made the sugar cookie dough for Grandma’s cookies and then tried our hands at twisty candy cane cookies. Both required a lot of time and effort but it was worth it in the end.
We played a game of Icons: Women Who Play to Win. Highly recommend this card game. We did some online shopping so the kids could spend their Christmas money/gift cards.
On Wednesday, I had to run to Target because we were nearly out of toilet paper and I needed some mailing supplies. I bought myself a 2021 planner because I’m feeling optimistic.
After lunch I helped Phil put his new seat cover in the truck. Isabelle and I frosted the sugar cookies. And I attended a webinar on social media use. I prepped cookies and packages for mailing.
Our post-dinner entertainment was two rounds of the Exploding Kittens card game, another Christmas gift. Another recommendation.
Isabelle and I braved the post office on the morning of New Year’s Eve and it actually went better than expected. We were in and out in less than 10 minutes. I talked to one of my grandmas on the phone. In the afternoon, I went to visit a friend who is recovering from surgery. (We wore masks the whole time and stayed six feet apart.)
Books We Read
And what would a vacation be without reading? No vacation at all for our little family unit.
Corban and I finished The Tale of Despereaux on Christmas Eve Eve. I loved every bit of it. I finished the eighth Phryne Fisher mystery, Urn Burial, a few days after Christmas and started reading Clanlands: Whisky, Warfare and a Scottish Adventure Like No Other. Phil got two books for Christmas and he’s alternating between them: Birding at the Bridge, which talks about birds at the Brooklyn Bridge, two of his favorite things; and The Rise: Black Cooks and the Soul of American Food, a cookbook. He reads some cookbooks like actual books and I admire him for that. Isabelle plowed through a bunch of books in the I,Q series.
Additionally, there was the usual bits of housework, some resting and napping, some fighting and irritation between people, dishes and laundry and lots of video game playing because the boy child got a new gaming system for birthday/Christmas from everyone.
As with Thanksgiving, it may not have been the holiday we wanted, but it turned out just fine.
And now back to our regularly scheduled schedules. Happy New Year!
