I tried to get in the spirit in advance, even took last week off for that. Had a nice family crafts day making decorations. But I accidentally missed my meds a couple days (maybe 3) and was on a mental/emotional rollercoaster that did not play well with the timing when it came to Christmas Eve and Christmas day.
Having spent the last year trying to declutter and get rid of ‘stuff’, we had agreed to do a minimal Christmas and go light on the presents. I didn’t do cards or stocking stuffers, and just one book and one other gift for each. They did not have quite the same idea of minimal. Anyway, we did the whole present opening thing, the Zoom visits, and then spent most of the rest of the weekend in separate rooms decompressing.
Had only one live visit - the one Covid-safe couple we know. (She’s immune-compromised and hasn’t been out since March and he works with Covid patients everyday and is very serious about precautions and testing.)
We did watch some Christmas movies (including Die Hard, of course), but I still haven’t gotten around to the two I wanted to watch.
Next year I think I’ll take the two weeks leading up to it. One’s not enough.
Honestly, I haven’t taken extended time around Christmas in years. Prior to this job, I was an IT contractor and this was the busiest time of year, with everyone wanting upgrades or large changes done while people were away. The habit carried over into my current job, except that now, since everyone’s away, I’m just doing work at my own pace, no pressure, incidents or meetings. I feel like this is the most productive time of the year work wise for me. No holiday spirit, but that’s never been a thing for me so, “can’t miss where you’ve never been.”
Taking vacation in February or March this coming year definitely seems to be in order though. I’ve definitely enjoyed my fall vacations the past couple of years too.
We (plus about 10 other people) have been going to a friend’s house for Christmas dinner for a decade or two. This time it was by Zoom. Not the same, but still nice to talk to everyone.
I had what felt like a pretty decent Christmas despite meeting with family on Skype instead of in person.
One silver lining has been that not going out anywhere meant we minimized our exposure to constant terrible Christmas music. In fact my spouse surprised me by playing some Christmas songs on her mountain dulcimer – normally she complains as much as I do about the deluge of sappy songs every winter.
For people who can and want to do a few hundred dollars on a kid (though you can spread the purchase out month by month):
The Crunchlab build boxes have been great for our kid. It’s a subscription thing where a new box comes every month with an engineering project. There are lots of these kinds of boxes. We had the the Kiwi ones a few times, which were ok.
The Crunchlab ones are nice because
The gadget always works.
The pieces always fit and they give you extras of the ones a kid is likely to misplace. I’m not sure how to express how important it is that everything actually fits. We don’t have to adjust or hack
The instructions are good and the video instructions really good
The accompanying video explaining whatever engineering principal is being explored that month are good. Well produced and fun to watch
Our kid has actually learned things from the kits and videos as well as having a blast putting the gadget together with her dad
Now, this is a big outlay of money. Paying annually, all at once, saves the most money and comes to $24.95 per box. Paying monthly is 27.95 per box. You can gift this to the kids in your life who don’t live with you.
The website is below. If you are interested, PM me and I can provide a referral link for $10 off.
Yeah, we decided to continue for another year because it really is awesome and encourages our kid’s passion for learning. We did have to adjust the present budget. We parents are getting very little for one another this year.
Before Mark’s boxes were out, we did KiwiCo. Found them to be good about 90-95% of the time. There’s usually a sale to try one/discount on subscriptions, which would be the price range I’d recommend.
We’ve done what’s now called Labs - Science, Labs - Engineering, and recently started Labs - Invention. They sent me an offer to try another for free that’s the one now called Kiwi Studio. it’s basically the art side. I meant to cancel the Labs one but somehow I missed it. This will be the last year of it, but the Studio one we will keep. All of them have been great hits. We got one with bad materials and they FedExed me a new box, even thought it was 2 months later (I had a bit of a backlog).
I’ll have to look into the KiwiCo selection. It’s been a few years and we were doing the little kids ones.
I remember them being ok. We had two boxes where things didn’t fit right and we had to make adjustments. It wasn’t a big deal, just that I’ve been impressed with the quality control on the Crunchlab boxes.
The KiwiCo didn’t generate the same excitement as the Crunchlab boxes. That could have just been our kid’s age at the time. The boxes for the littles are just less interesting than the older kids. The videos Mark Rober does are an added value. Our kid often watches those a few times and comes up with interesting questions
I do really like how you can purchase the KiwiCo ones based on the box you want instead of only through the subscription. Some of the Studio ones look nice. Good way to explore different art mediums without having to buy more stuff than you need for a single project.
@evadrepus mentioned KiwiCo. Might be the place for the 4 year old. The kits for that age look interesting and they always had good instructions. Pieces occasionally needed a bit of adjustment.
It’s basically a teacher’s paradise. When my little one was in that age range, most of the STEM type stuff I bought, I got there. Solid prices and they were purposely designed to teach and play. That would be my best recommendation, if you have one around you.
