Christmas 2023

It’s time to break away from my post-Christmas sloth-like existence and document the holiday here on my blog/life journal.

My mom gifted us a new inflatable for our festive lawn – and it is the biggest one yet! He’s a 10 foot tall Santa with a dog on a leash! So cute! She insisted we could open him up as soon as he arrived so he could join the inflatable crew out in the yard. But boy does it catch a breeze! Jeff ended up with practically a noose around Santa’s neck, tied to the porch, to keep him in place!

Last year we had a super cold Christmas, dipping into the -40’s and -50’s. Not this year! El Niño has kept the Yukon relatively dry and mild, but unlike almost everyone else I know, we did have a white Christmas! It’s been in the -30’s a few times, but nothing too cold.

Inside the house, the decorations this year were the same as recent years. We still love this pencil tree – a skinny fake Christmas tree that comes with lights – nice and safe near the wood stove and doesn’t take up much room. I’d love to have a real tree again some year, but it isn’t really practical I suppose. Jeff thinks next year he’s going to cut down a big spruce and decorate it with lights and put it outside on the lawn. He was hoping to do that this year, but his truck was transported down to Whitehorse on a flat bed truck for repairs and I don’t think my truck is large enough for the size of tree he’s imagining! (Unfortunately all of the truck parts he needs are still not available to finally fix his truck, so it is sitting in the city, just waiting, poor thing.)

Our sweet Sally cat is really starting to show her age (15). She has lost most (all?) of her hearing. She hollers at times, and her fur is drier and mats form easily. But she is still as sweet and loveable as always. She’s been pet by more people this year than ever, since she doesn’t hear them coming so she doesn’t know to run and hide.

Not all of our gifts arrived in time for the holidays. Two of Jeff’s gifts that I ordered from a Canadian company in November still haven’t shipped! Much to my frustration, the company is seemingly too short staffed to even answer my email inquiring about the order. I’ve been super tempted to do a credit card chargeback but I’m really hoping they’ll come around!

On the last Friday before Christmas, I joined Jeff at his morning Christmas party at work. I don’t have anything similar at my workplace, since I don’t have a co-worker within a days drive of me. Maybe not even two days!

For the first time ever, when I finished work on Friday December 22, I put my laptop away and cleared my monitor and cables off my desk entirely!

The week before, I had been in my friend Glennie’s This and That shop and noticed one of her top shelves was packed full of jigsaw puzzles. I love making a puzzle at Christmas! I haven’t done one in about 6 years so I got giddy, almost knocked all sorts of breakable vases and glass knickknacks on to the floor with my bulky winter coat, giving Glennie and Elaine from the post office near-heart attacks, while trying to reach and grab a puzzle. I settled on a 1,000 piece puzzle with a picture of many bowls of candy. Looked like fun!

I set up my iPad on its new keyboard stand, and prepped for binging some tv and movies over the holidays while I put together the puzzle!

This Christmas, I binged two shows: Ted Lasso, and The Gilded Age. Ted Lasso was a standout winner. I was hoping The Gilded Age would recreate some of the magic of Downton Abbey that I binged a few Christmas ago, but it was no comparison. It seemed like a series of so many missed opportunities like someone didn’t put their whole heart into creating it. The characters weren’t memorable, and the storylines were blah. I didn’t enjoy the casting. I read it was recently renewed for a third season, so I guess someone liked it. And who am I kidding? I’ll probably watch the new season when it is released too. The dresses are the most incredible part of this series.

So here is where I spent many hours, putting together this puzzle. I finished it at 2am on December 29, only to discover the last piece missing (again!!). But I found it the next morning, upside down, on the floor near the window!

As a nice touch, this puzzle came with a handy poster for reference, rather than having to rely on the picture on the box. I used it every step of the way!

This puzzle was much more time-consuming than I had planned, but really, what else did I have to do. The days around Christmas seem to be the best days of the year for just putting life on pause. It’s the darkest time of the year, nothing needs to be accomplished, feasting is easy because the house is full of festive food. All my routines are on pause. Last night I stayed up until 3:40am just because I could?

I suppose, truthfully, I haven’t done *nothing*. We signed up for several pre-Christmas volunteer shifts at the animal shelter. Even one on Christmas morning! Our little shelter relies heavily on volunteers from the community. There is a morning shift and an evening shift available for volunteer sign-ups every day. Both shifts involve feeding the animals a meal and letting the dogs outside, getting them some exercise, and playing with the cats and kittens.

Jeff and I share the work while we’re there. He tends to take the dogs outside into their assigned play areas while I scoop all the various litter boxes and get all the cats fed.

I also had a great night at my friend Janet’s making a gingerbread-like house out of pop tarts! (That’s one of her outdoor trees picture above! It is so beautiful!)

Janet had all the necessary building materials ready for us (icing and candy), and Tarie and I followed her instructions to assemble our own houses.

After trimming the pop tarts to the right dimensions, probably the most difficult job was getting the heavy roof to stay in place on top of the walls.

We tried pre-decorating the roof panels so we wouldn’t have to fiddle much after they were in place.

I tried at first to make a very professional-looking house. But that didn’t last too long. Within the first few moments, it was clear that mine was going to proudly look like it was designed and assembled by a 5-year-old (me). I even had a Coke bottle gummy for a chimney, a yellow gummy car, and sour keys for windows.

Janet’s house was looking so beautiful, but its stability was proving to be a problem. And these next pictures capture the moment so well!! Janet’s house crumbled into itself, leaving the most delicious pile of sweet rubble!

My house made it home with me, but then I devoured all the gumdrops and half the roof while it was still fresh. Mmmmmm sugarrrrrrrrrr.

This year we hosted a Christmas dinner on Christmas Day for a few of our friends. The holidays are different in a small remote town where you have so many circles of friends! You want to spend Christmas with everyone, but that isn’t so practical, especially when most people live in small houses. Who has the room!? So everyone just splits up into small groups of friends and/or family. For us, it’s been a slightly different group and house each year.

Our friend Alex provided the turkey a few days in advance. We shopped for the rest of the basic ingredients. Then Jeff made his Grandma’s banana cream pie, and I made two of my mom’s pumpkin pies.

We tortured Hank with his annual Santa hat photo and teased him that his annual bath was imminent (it still is, we just haven’t done it yet).

We had family video calls on Christmas morning. Including an emergency call or two when my mom took a trip to the hospital via ambulance when a recent change in her heart medication left her heart beating more than twice as fast as it should! Luckily it got sorted out, and she was able to rejoin Christmas a couple hours later, although it seems everyone at my sister’s house has had their share of sickness this holiday.

Before prepping Christmas dinner, Jeff and I opened our presents to each other. Jeff was excited about the jar of Bonnie Barber’s pickles I got for him at one of the local Christmas bazaars.

I also got him some new gloves, replaced a cookbook that went missing in one of our moves, and this neat Muffpot! It’s a metal container you can strap to the muffler on your snowmobile or ATV to prep a hot meal while you’re riding!

And I got a Rubik’s Cube! I’ve always wanted to learn how to solve one of these, so now I’m working on learning all the algorithms to make it happen. I’ve solved one side so far! Now I’m learning the patterns to match to make the rest of the magic happen!

Jeff heard me say that I loved this Lego flower bouquet on a YouTube video we were watching a while back, so he found it for me! It’s got 756 pieces! Oh my! That’ll be my next puzzle to tackle!

Jeff also got me an iPhone phone mount system from QuadLock – a new case which has a twist and snap connection on the back to securely attach to the selfie stick/tripod device! I’m eager to try it out to make some more videos!

He gave me a couple more pairs of Farm to Feet hiking socks too. They are sooooo comfortable.

Then it was time to start prepping for our guests!

I haven’t been very impressed with the buns I’ve made for the last few feasts. I remember my Grandma Stock always made those three-ball muffin tray ones, so I found a recipe and gave them a try!

But they really weren’t that good. I mean, they were fine, fresh buns. But they were a little dense. And that was with several hours of rising. And they are definitely not so pretty. Maybe I need to go back to one of the old Women’s Institute or 4H recipe books of my youth to find a time-tested, reliable recipe. Isn’t it crazy that we turn to the convenience of an Internet search engine for a recipe, from someone we don’t know, and then wade through the recipe’s dozens of ads and pop-ups and paragraphs of fluff to find the printable part with the actual recipe, rather than go to our cookbook shelf and flip to the index page to find a tested and reliable recipe, sometimes from someone we know?

We also had the usual carrots and mashed potatoes. I made cranberry sauce earlier in the day, and a cherry Jello! Jeff made and stuffed the turkey with homemade dressing. For any of the dressing that doesn’t fit in the turkey, we wrap it in tinfoil and put it in the turkey pan too – only I sprinkle raisins in this dressing because I love raisins! Our guests also brought some roasted potatoes, and peas, and Brussels sprouts to add to the Christmas feast!

Our living room only seats 3 plus a chair that Hank normally lounges on, so we covered it up and added some lawn chairs.

We had some cheese and crackers and chocolates and other snacks set out, but we didn’t snack long before diving into the main attraction!

We had some impromptu present exchanges between dinner and dessert.

Alex gifted me the board game Balderdash so after dessert we played a few rounds! I love this picture Ags took of us, if only she was in it too!!

Julie gave Jeff a new coffee system for Christmas. It is a Coffee Gator pour-over coffee – something easy he could use when camping too. He gave it a try on Boxing Day morning! He liked it! Thanks Julie!

And there goes another Christmas. Now to tidy up…