A laid back Christmas

It seems a little surreal experiencing Chrismas in an RV in warm weather without many connections, but here we are.

Two years ago, just before we came to California, the kids had a Christmas concert, we had several family events, a ward Christmas party, added to the chaos of preparing to move.  What a crazy experience!  One year ago we had our first Christmas in an RV and we went to Legoland with our soon-to-expire membership.

Yesterday?  Not much at all.  It was kind of nice.  We celebrate St. Nicholas day on December 6th, which is when Santa fills our stockings.  This year we were at Michael’s parents on the holiday and they were very generous with our children giving them lego sets and a few other toys.  We are still looking forward to Three Kings day when the wise men bring the children toys from Mom and Dad.  I suppose I’ll do some shopping for that event sooner than later, but I haven’t worried about it yet.  We celebrate Christmas by eating delicious food and honoring the Savior as well as learning a bit about the winter solstice and the history behind winter celebrations.

This year we didn’t go to any church or company parties.  No extended family Christmas events because we are far away.  Not even any last-minute Christmas shopping.  We just drank our egg nog and hung out at the campground.  There were several Christmas events we could have gone into town for but we didn’t.  There were pot-lucks and Christmas movies here at the campground that we didn’t go to.  We went and saw Santa at the youth lodge a few days ago and we went there again yesterday for a craft.

Also exciting for the big event- I did laundry.  Problem is, the card reader wasn’t working for whatever reason so I couldn’t refill the card to dry our clothes.  Luckily I had enough on the card to do one load, so I stuffed two large loads into the dryer and did what I could.  When I brought the clothes home we found that some of them were dry, but the rest spurred an earlier-than-expected debut of our new drying rack that we got for $15 at IKEA.  I was so excited when I saw that it fit between our bed and the closet in the back room, so we were able to hang all of our wet clothes up.  They were mostly dry anyway and being over our back heater vent helped them dry quickly.  When we were done, the rack folds up and fits nicely in our bathtub.  Also pictured in the bathtub is our dirty cloths hamper akin to this one.  Laundry is expensive and we are going to start supplementing the workload with the drying rack and handwashing.  Sometimes we’ll hand wash and dry at the campground laundry.  Sometimes we’ll wash at the facilities and dry at home, especially when it’s sunny.  Sometimes we’ll do it all at the facilities or do it all at home.  We have options.  And now I know I have the option to dry things inside and that’s a great feeling.

Anyway, Christmas yesterday was very nice.  Michael finished up the day reading the last chapter of Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone to the kids and I.  What a fun story!  I never got around to reading it earlier so it has been fun for Michael to share it with all of us.

The holidays aren’t over, and I hope they are great for you as you prepare for the new year.