TIME - 2020

 We keep a reusable wall calendar that holds 3 months of time on it.

There are only 3 more days left on it to fill the calendar and only 1 day until the end of 2020.

I've been watching this calendar fill up with crossed off days since early September.

I remember putting this up when school had just barely started and feeling like it would take forever to fill.  Yet, here we are already - a full last quarter of the year.

It's been quite the year with COVID raging, the election drama, and the 

Black Lives Matter Movement taking root throughout the country.  

I would not say this year has been easy.

I would not say this year has been free from worry.

But it has been full of time.  We've had plenty more time due to the school schedule changing.

I've been home from school more - either teaching from home,

or getting home earlier due to the changed schedule.

Anders has been learning completely from home.

Kuba is home 3 school days a week 

And Anna is always working from home.
So, all in all, it's been a home kinda year.  
Perhaps that is the word of the year for me,

H O M E,

We've come together so well honestly,

all of us finding our way among each other.

Kuba has been busy drawing his own set of Pokemon.
He's up to 53 cards right now.  He keeps himself super organized all in a navy blue folder.

His pokemon inventions are clever and imaginative.
He's also been completely swept up in the fun of doing Pokemon battles,

and all of us have probably played more Pokemon games this year than walks outside with the dog.

We do the dog walk daily.

Anders has been super busy with his online learning platform for high school - VTVLC.

He's organized, eager to do the right thing, and has been impressive to say the least.

I know it's stressful for him, because the program is rigorous and he has so many classes.

But he only has 2 more weeks and he's finished Semester 1. 

Amazing really.   I want to throw him a party when he finishes. 

Friends are still in our picture this year, but looming around the edges versus in the forefront.

The pandemic has insisted that we have space.

So space between friends we have.

Kuba sees friends only outside, skiing, sledding, playing.

Anders too, walks with his friend Charlie, and then sees his other friends when they go to sports practice, first rowing and now nordic skiing.  The both meet up with their friends on computer though.

They play games together - which they completely love.

Anders in particular plays all sorts of games with his friends on line.  

We recently bought them a new gaming computer/laptop just so they could have a better way to play.  

I think that was a good decision during the pandemic.

Anna and I have done an amazing job keeping contact with our family friends.

We've created lots of ways to connect.

We have had zoom happy hours, pie and cookie swaps, jaunts outside like meeting up for a fox hunt, 

and lots of sharing via social media and texts.  
In some ways the connection is stronger because it has had to be more intentional.  

I do feel a stronger sense of both home and connection to others.
A paradox for sure.

There's so much more to say about the year, but for now, this is the post I could muster.  

I'll be posting again about 2020.  

 

Us

We've been able to get out a bit during this holiday - 

walking over fields or through woods, or driving in a car and jumping out to take a photograph in front of a beautiful barn or church.  Just all of us together.  
Walking.  Being. Breathing.

 

Home for the Holidays - Christmas 2020

Due to the global pandemic, we celebrated at home this year with our immediate Burlington family, Grandma, Aunt Sandy, Jamie, AJ, Zoe, Barbro and Dave.  On Christmas eve we had a Polish Christmas meal with the Klima clan, and on Christmas Day we had a Swedish meal with the Thelemarck Clan.

Aunt Sandy, Jamie, Grandma, Zoe and the boys made the pierogi and ushki. Sandy made the mushroom soup this year, which was delicious.  I made a deep dark chocolate flourless cake that we ate with peppermint ice cream. Our second ethnic meal was roasted ham, Swedish meatballs, red cabbage, and potatoes. We missed Jansan's Temptation this year and the rest of the Thelemarcks. 

Our house was beautiful, and so was our table.  Anna and I had so much fun decorating and making the house sing. It really was special even though it was such a tiny holiday celebration. I love that we both love the holiday so much. I think our favorite moments and parts of the holiday were the games that we played.

Spinning tops and Battling Tops, Pokemon, and all of the other assorted games the boys got for Christmas from relatives.  We were homebodies throughout the weeks off. We had 2 full weeks away from school due to the Pandemic, which honestly was such a gift this year. 

Merry Christmas!

This was us at our Christmas dinner.  We were toasting to the holiday and I decided to snap some photos of us as we sat across the table from one another.  

 

Making P I E R O G I

It was a family affair right before Christmas.

My sister and my niece came to make pierogi at my moms.

My boys went out to help.
They made pierogi and uski and also watched the Grinch.  

It's these days and moments I feel most grateful for.
These are the real gifts of the holidays.

 

T O P S

One of the highlights of this year has been our top collection.

I added the vintage game - Battling Tops to the mix this year and 

boy is that game just as fun as I remembered.  

 

In and Out

We decided to find a wild tree this year from the Vermont State forest.  It was a bit like finding a needle in the haystack, but once we found a location, finding the tree was painless. We got a sweet and scrappy little tree that has lots of air space and breathing room for the ornaments.  In other words, it's a bit sparse.   It's now settling in and we'll decorate later tonight or tomorrow.  I think this will be a very sweet tree.  

 

Holiday Decorations

I totally  had fun this year decorating the front of the house for the holiday. 

I spray painted sticks a creamy white to match our trim, added some sparkly bling to the tips of the white sticks that echoed the color of our door and porch and trimmed it all in some festive greenery.  
I love it.  

 

Thanksgiving Covid Style

The pandemic has impacted everything this year, and Thanksgiving is no exception.

We had a family dinner with Grandma and Sandy.  We still decorated and set a gorgeous table, 

made lots of food, and did our very best to make it a special day.

 

Rowing 2020

Due to Covid, Anders rowing season was short and simple. He had only 2 races that we could spectate.  One was on Lake Champlain and one was on Otter Creek down in Vergennes.  Here he is in his boat with his team mates, as well as an after race snapshot of his pals.   

 

 

Pandemic Collage Portraits

 

Biden Harris for the Win

After hearing the news of a Biden win on Saturday afternoon, November 7, our whole family hit the street.  With pots and pans banging, trumpets blaring and shouting everywhere, the street came alive.  With friends we spontaneously paraded downtown and rallied with hundreds of other folks cheering, beeping, shouting and congratulating each other for the win.  There is nothing that could have made us happier. That evening we created an outdoor pizza dinner with our friends down at the Intervale. We made ten pizza's in the pizza oven and celebrated all over again with cake and sparklers! Hoorah for the end of traumatic and unkind era.  May peace and love and democracy prevail.

 

T H I R T E E N

Thirteen

This boy - this magical, imaginative, passionate being is now 13.

Happy Birthday to Kuba.  

This year Kuba had a birthday filled with games - infinity ball, bingo, charades. Thirteen might be a milestone, but bringing along favorite games is just a plain old awesome idea.  

Kuba, you are without a shadow of a doubt the most wonderfully creative human we know.

May your year be shiny, like you.    

We hope it's delightfully and spectacularly open to you and your brilliant soul.  

Halloween 2020

This year it was just Kuba who dressed up in costume and went trick-or-treating.

He was a ballot box for the Trump-Biden election.

He wore a ballot box that had a spot for either candidate that folks could put candy in.

Nobody voted for Trump.  It was a clear win and a treasure trove of candy.

Anders on the other had, had a movie night/sleepover in the barn with his friends. 
They hunkered down for 2 movies.  It was cold, but they were prepared with tons of sleeping bags and blankets. It was like camping out, but in the barn. They were not short on candy either.

 

Pumpkins

We tried hard to carve all of our pumpkins this year.
We bought extra large ones just to do so.

But the large ones never made it to completion.

The boys cut off the top and cleaned them out.

Then we left them inside to finish but never got that far.

They completely molded and turned to pumpkin mush before halloween.

Luckily - Anna and I finished ours so we still got to experience the beauty of a jack-0-lantern.

This night we also had pizza made in our pizza oven.

 

Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

This summer in the garden, we were graced with so many different kinds of flowers.  Our yard was full.  Zinnia's, sunflowers, and a bunch I can't even name - but they sure were pretty.  I've been filling vases for 5 months. The amount of joy I find in just cutting and filling a vase with color is pretty darn huge.  Even Anders got into it a little bit this summer, and made this ring of tiny vases to fill the table.  Absolutely one of the things I will miss the most about summer, just walking outside with a pair of garden snippers and a vase.  

 

Pandemic Meet

Kuba had his first cross country meet last weekend, despite the pandemic. The only teams running were the 2 Burlington middle schools so there wasn't a huge crowd.  Also, the coaches separated the kids into two heats.  They all ran with navy blue face masks on that said Edmunds Cross Country and the spacing helped keep them apart.    Kuba did pretty well.   He came in at the top of the second heat with a time of 16 minutes for 1.8 miles. It took a little convincing to get him to join this year, but I am so happy he did.  

 

Yippee Ki Yay Yippie Ki Yi

Despite the pandemic, Kuba remains steadfast in his love of theater.

He just finished a new performance called The Frontier Express.  All of the actors wore cowboy boots, cowboy hats, and bandanas as face masks.  It was a little bit hard to hear, but, nevertheless, it was live and on stage.   He played Buck - the good cowboy who saves the day!

Yippee Ki Yay!