Wishing You a Warm Holiday Full of Wonder

Merry Christmas, from the coldest Christmas that Florida has seen in recent history! (Okay, it’s 80 today on Christmas Eve, but it’s going to be only 60 tomorrow.)

I’m writing this on Christmas Eve to gear myself up for the holiday. Later today I’ll reminisce with my son on the phone about our annual Epic Holiday Eve Hike, plus 20 years of reading ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas from the same beautifully illustrated children’s book. To write that I miss him is to barely scratch the surface.

Life is strange and wonderful. This time of year we often focus on the part of wonderful created by renewal, and I think we all could use some of that now.

Presents in a Small Space

Onward to the presents! LOL! When we were kids and lived across the woods from each other, my friend Karen and I would call each other early Christmas morning to talk about what presents we got. What entitled brats we were, ha! I’m continuing that tradition here because in some ways I’m still the same kid.

So, what do you do about presents when you don’t have room for one more thing? You replace what you have.

I haven’t been happy with the dishes I bought for the trailer originally (they’re melamine, which you can’t use in the microwave, and we’ve been using the microwave more than we expected). Everyone on the Airstream Interior Design Facebook group (yep, you read that right) said to get Corelle because they feel like real dishes but don’t break. However, Tracy hates how cheap Corelle feels.

So, my present from him is as much an act of kindness as it is a dish set. Tracy has agreed to use this Corelle even though he misses the previous dishes. I think that’s a smart gift. 🙂

Oh, and I’m the one who kept pushing for a grill, whereas Tracy was the one who had to sort through all the contents of the truck bed to make room for one, so our new grill is also a present for me. Pictures of cooking on the tiniest grill ever to come.

My gift to Tracy also has a long story (what a different post this is becoming than my planned short Christmas card to you guys).

People who camp and travel often display a map of the U.S. with stickers or magnets on each state they’ve been to. It’s like a geographic notch on the bedpost. I had a cool one I’d bought before we got the Airstream, with a foil layer on top of the map, and you scratch off the foil along your route to reveal U.S. landmarks. Turns out it was too big for the trailer.

So look at this map I found for Tracy!

It’s going to be a fun challenge for him to find beer he wants, in bottles (we rarely buy bottles because they’re hard to travel with), and that represent the area on the map up to his standards. It’s like a whole new kind of beer + travel database for him.

It hasn’t arrived in the mail yet but might before Christmas; this photo is from the guy who made it. I know it’ll fit in the Airstream though because I got the idea for it from someone with our exact model on the Airstream Interior Design facebook page. (I am so unlike my previous self these days, in many ways.)

I almost forgot: our Christmas tree was given to us by our neighbor Liz, who made it.

The wisemen were given to us by my friend Mary Margaret as King Cake figures (yes, one is Gandalf, fittingly). The bluebird was my mom’s (one of the few keepsakes I brought with me), and the pewter meditating figure rounds out the oddity of this particular season.

Kayaking our Backyard

Even the kayakers here in Bonita Springs are festive!

That’s not us though; we don’t own Santa hats. But we did go kayaking, and I took way too many photos.

I’ve said it a bunch of times, but the river is right behind the trailer.

I’d been hesitant to go kayaking because our kayaks are long and the river is narrow and curvy, and I don’t have the skills to navigate around those tight turns without getting one tip or the other stuck on a bank or in vines.

We chose a day when the current was slow and the water was relatively high, and I actually had no problem at all.

I was rewarded with scenes like this tree, plus two iguanas high up in a different tree above my head, which I couldn’t photograph. One seemed like it was the size of my outside sofa, no joke.

Holiday Animals

I didn’t get a shot of my iguanas, but Tracy got a shot of these two. See the green one with the loooong tail underneath the colored one? It’s iguana mating season here, apparently.

I’ve also seen the otter behind the trailer several times (no time for a picture, plenty of time to squee).

Christmas day and evening are going to be chilly, so I expect Tracy and I will be doing a lot of this: Playing our Firefly board game inside and perhaps finishing our Star Wars movie marathon.

If we’re lucky, my other good friend from high school named Karen (who lives in Miami) will visit us! If the weather/covid/general strange times as these keeps her and her husband from making the trip though, I’ll understand. It’s an unprecedented winter season for us all. I’m trying to focus on the wonder part of it. And of course my new dishes.

Happy Winter Solstice, and Merry Christmas from Tracy, Banjo, and me.