We’ll Be Home For Christmas

Once our children had families of their own, we established a rotation of sorts so that we could have our whole family together every other Christmas. This worked especially well when grandchildren were young and travelling the almost 1000 kilometres between our households was a big undertaking. We did this for several years and then COVID hit and extreme weather hit and airline cancellations hit and to make a long story short we have not been able to get together with our whole family at Christmas for a while. But not for lack of trying…

*x#?&* COVID

As everyone knows, on the first Christmas in the throes of dealing with COVID, no one was going anywhere. We were all just trying to get through the nightmare. And, as we had learned over the previous months of shutdowns and stay-at-home orders, pivot and adapt was the name of the game. So gifts were shipped and Christmas Day get togethers were via FaceTime. It was a memorable Christmas for all the wrong reasons. But there was always next year. Right?

Fast forward to the next Christmas. We had our plane reservations made and it was looking good for travel… until it wasn’t. The third wave of COVID (or was it the fourth, I’ve lost track) arrived just in time for Christmas and we of the senior set were advised to stay home. And so we did. By now we were getting very good at ordering gifts from Amazon, talking via FaceTime, and we even managed to have a few family game nights via the internet. But it was not the same.

Third Time’s A Charm?

Our third try at getting together at Christmas was looking very promising – COVID was no longer restricting travel as it had previously and we were very hopeful this was going to be our year. But not so fast. Enter the snow storm of the century just a few days before Christmas. Flight delays were rampant but we were crossing our fingers that our daughter and her family were going to be able to fly to see us. Things looked good – they were all checked in and on their way to the airport when they were notified their flight was cancelled just as they pulled into the airport parking lot. Needless to say, they did not make it to our house and ended up spending Christmas Eve in a hotel. Not exactly the ho-ho-ho Christmas we had envisioned.

Let’s Turn Lemons into Lemonade

Conflicting schedules and commitments mean we are not able to be together this year either. But I suppose if there is a silver lining, it’s that we know we won’t be together and can plan accordingly rather than having hopes dashed at the last minute and a mad scramble to adapt. That said, my husband and I decided to turn lemons into lemonade and travel to have an early Christmas with each family. And even though we won’t all be together in one place, being able to sit down face-to-face and have Christmas dinner with each family, see all the kids reactions when they open their presents, and just be together, will be, as the commercial says, “priceless.”

And so December 25th this year will find us at home, but we will be just fine having already made Christmas memories with each family. And of course planning for an epic Christmas with everyone together next year.

We will be doing a new post every Monday so stay tuned for our next one entitled “It’s Not Easy Being Me.”