When Courtney and I went to run errands, we found the front windshield completely covered in ice. It wasn't thick ice but it was a new experience for her to scrape windows. I take it for granted that I grew up scraping a lot of windshields but she didn't know how to do it. I had to talk her through it. She did a great job but was a bit put out that she had to scrape windows at all!
This is how it started out:
We get snow about every year but it usually isn't too much. This time it was just enough to cover the roads for a while and then it all melted by the afternoon. But it was fun to have some while it lasted. It snowed for quite a while (which you can tell by the change of clothes for Courtney). It was also very cold which made it stay for longer than I would have expected.
It's 2021 and I hope it will be a much better year than 2020 turned out to be. Although I remember being happy to see 2019 leave but now I can't remember why.
We are not party animals in our house so we watched the Ball drop in Times Square with the East Coast and then Bryan and I went to bed. Courtney stayed up to watch the last of 2020 disappear and welcome 2021 but we were too tired.
Although, we did stay up until after midnight the next night, go figure!
You can't see them too well, but in the picture below are 2 dead mice! One is black above the center and the other is in the middle on top of the green logo. Anyway, they are dead and that's the way we like mice.
I went to Lowe's and bought some mouse traps along with some bait that they guaranteed would be irresistible to mice. Bryan grabbed the ladder, climbed in the attic, and set 8 traps to see what we could catch. The next day he climbed back up in the attic and found that we had caught/killed 2 mice. The other traps were untouched.
We did discover something fascinating/gross about mice. The first trap Bryan found didn't have any of the bait left in it but it had a dead mouse. The second trap had all the bait and a dead mouse. The conclusion we drew was that the first mouse was caught and killed so the second mouse ate the rest of the bait and then went in search of more food and got himself caught.
So the saying is true: The second mouse gets the cheese!
But the second mouse shouldn't have gotten greedy and he would have been alive longer.
Anyway, we have checked the traps a few times since then and there aren't any more mice so we think there were only 2 and we got them. Bryan also set traps in the basement but we hadn't gotten anything in those. We are hoping our house is mouse-free now!
Courtney mentioned that this year didn't feel like Christmas. I think part of it is because Ethan isn't here. But she mentioned that she would really like a white Christmas. We had thought about going someplace for Christmas, to get a change of scenery, but we didn't want to mess with Covid stuff so we decided to stay home. But Bryan and I wanted to do something special for Courtney and make it fun.
We came up with the idea of making it snow in our house (not real snow, but fake stuff). I did some research and we decided to make snow that hung from our ceiling. We spent a couple of days making the strings of snow. We used a piece of 12-foot fishing line. We threaded white pompoms and cotton balls on clear thread which we then tied to the fishing line. I had gone to the library and used their die cut machine to cut out snowflakes. We attached those, using tape, to the clear thread but then Bryan realized it was tangling the lines up so we decided to put those on after the fishing line was strung on the ceiling.
We set an alarm and woke up at midnight to put everything together. We strung some Christmas icicle lights from the coffer in our living room (thanks to the new outlet up there) so they would dangle over the lip into the room. Then we strung the fishing line across the ceiling.
I also bought bags of pillow filling and we put that around like it was snow. I think it turned out really fun.
Christmas morning Courtney was up at 6 am to go out and look at what Santa had brought her. I was so excited to see her face and hear her delight at seeing the snow coming down from the ceiling. This is what we got...
So disappointing. She was too short to notice that things were hanging over her head and she was so focused on what was on the couch that she didn't look up. Oh well, when she did see it she was impressed.
Christmas morning went well. Courtney got a Minky Couture blanket from Santa. She was really excited about that one. She got a shower curtain, towels, candy, books, and some other things. It was a fun morning.
Ethan had made us some glass fingertip bowls with an inactive member in his area. The member shipped them to us and we got to open them. I was really impressed by them.
At 7 am Ethan called. We got to talk to him and then he opened his Christmas presents with us on the video call with him. He said it was weird to be the only one opening gifts but it was fun to watch. He was spoiled by members in his ward and by people from our ward and family. I was grateful that people thought of him and tried to help make his day special.
After talking to him for a while we let him to go open gifts with his companion and go to an activity with his Zone.
It was a different type of Christmas, but it was a good one.
I found a recipe online for "construction grade gingerbread houses." Apparently, the gingerbread that you make to eat isn't strong enough to construct a good house. So they have some that is construction grade which you can sand down so it has smooth surfaces. Crazy stuff.
Anyway, I got the recipe and make a couple of houses. I cut the pieces out, cooked them, and let them dry for a couple of days. Then I made royal icing (really thick royal icing) and put the houses together. The key, I read on one website, was to have the icing be between both walls. In other words, don't put the icing on the piece and then push the two pieces flush together. Make sure that there is icing between the pieces. Then you let them sit for a couple of days to harden.
It actually worked out great. They were solid. I did have a bit of a gap in the roof of one of the houses. But this is only our first year really doing gingerbread houses seriously so we will get more practice next year.
We bought candy and then went to town.
