Happy New Year! I feel like I should give you all of my New Year’s Resolutions and wrap up my favorite parts of the year AND tell you all about my Christmas Vacation, but since it’s already January 5, hmm what to do?

I’m back to work officially now, though I have the rest of today off. I taught my class this morning, and thought, since I’d been wearing cloth masks and everybody says cloth masks are bad I’d try a surgical mask instead (what I had on hand). I don’t know how people play the violin in a surgical mask, it is impossible and it pokes me in the eyes. Sigh. I’m not quite sure what to do as the only masks I have found that I can play violin in are cloth masks.

Yes, isn’t it great that the pandemic has grown so large again and things are being canceled? So, maybe that’s where to start telling you about my break. We were told oh yes if you are vaccinated/boosted it should be fine to travel, don’t worry, and then suddenly everybody was getting COVID anyway. But we decided to risk it to see our family, because at this point it’s been nearly two years, and it was fine to avoid activities for a bit, but you have to live your lives. I mean, driving down to South Carolina was still probably the most risky behavior.

The last week before Christmas was busy with finishing up teaching, packing, playing with Mannheim Steamroller, seeing my friend April, seeing Louie’s family, and playing Christmas Eve gigs.

We had a wonderful dinner with Louie’s family, lots of good Swedish food, including a homemade Princess Cake. It used to be that no one knew what a Princess Cake is, but now, thanks to the Great British Baking Show, they not only know but they have very strong opinions about it.

Truthfully, I do not love marzipan as much as some, but it was a lovely cake.

We drove to Clinton, South Carolina (my hometown) on Christmas Day, which was a terrific drive. It was warm enough that we ate lunch outside at a rest area, at a picnic table! I’d packed egg salad from AO&CO which was a fabulous idea–it made for a lovely picnic and a treat. Driving on Christmas Day meant that most restaurants would be closed, but that the traffic was nonexistent! We made excellent time and were at my parents house (also known as home) for dinner. My mom had a few casseroles for Christmas Dinner, so we enjoyed corn casserole and sweet potato casserole with chocolate cake for dessert (I think!).

The next morning we had my family’s traditional Christmas Day brunch (though it was the day after) of cheese grits and fruit cocktail. We also had shrimp cocktail, which was traditionally eaten on Christmas Eve. My other siblings had other Christmas plans this year, so it was just the four of us, which was very nice and low key. We hung out, went for a bike ride, and visited.

My dad has an electric assist “trike” and he just happened to have an extra one on hand that he had purchased for one of my aunts. Louie had to ride a regular bike, though he got a chance after our first ride to switch out.

The next day we drove down to Columbia to visit Congaree National Park. We weren’t the only ones with the same idea, and while it wasn’t as busy as Arches or Grand Teton, we did have to park in the “oversized vehicles” lot as all the regular spaces were taken. There are boardwalks through the swamp area that you can walk on, as well as many miles of trails and canoeing to be done. We opted for just the boardwalks since my parents weren’t up for more extreme hiking.

It was a beautiful day, eerily warm, but lovely to be outside. We walked around for about 2 hours and then had a small picnic.

We also went down to the Riverwalk to walk along the Congaree River near downtown Columbia, but didn’t go too far: my parents were tired of walking and in the words of my niece, it smelled like Chautauqua Lake in places.

It was my parent’s wedding anniversary so we wanted to take them out to dinner. (They tried to insist on paying, but that’s how things go). We ate at the Bonefish Grille on the way back to Clinton and enjoyed a lovely meal outside. We didn’t want to eat inside with them as to avoid anybody getting COVID.

The following day we went up to Greenville to walk around and have lunch. We also visited an electric bike shop and test rode a few bikes with electric assist. We learned there are two different kinds, torque assist, where the bike goes according to your pedaling, and I forget the name, but the bike just sorts of goes faster. These were Pedago bikes and even had a throttle, you could simply go up to about 20 mph without pedaling at all!

Our next stop on the trip was Macon Georgia to visit Louie’s in laws from before. They are wonderful people and very supportive of his relationship with me, so it was a fun time. The mom and two sisters were visiting, and we had a great time eating, drinking, playing games, chatting, and doing a little sight-seeing. They had two dogs there too, so the house was a bit louder than at my parents’.

We had some great meals, a good seafood and tapas dinner outside a restaurant, a fancy Christmas dinner with some more family (mushroom wellington for the vegetarians, along with potatoes, brussels sprouts, homemade rolls, and tomato salad), and New Year’s Eve with fancy appetizers and leftover dinner from Christmas. We were so glad to spend time with everybody!

COVID wise we saw a few more people than we might have felt comfortable, but everybody was vaccinated, and a few even took rapid tests here and there, but so far we are still not showing any signs, so I think we might be safe.

After that we drove up through Atlanta and spend a day with my friends April and Charlie. It was something close to 80 degrees so we hung out on their front patio and then had dinner at a really good Mexican place near their house. Louie and I both had the tofu enchiladas which came with a mushroom sauce and were amazingly delicious. We have already attempted to recreate them but ended up making enchiladas with mushroom gravy–oddly tasty, but perhaps not quite right.

We headed back home the next day, and hit every possible traffic spot, stuck in traffic in Chattanooga for probably 1 1/2 hours, another 1/2 hour in Nashville, slow downs north of Nashville due to snow and traffic, and finally got out of the snow and the traffic to get home around 9 pm. The cats were thrilled to see us!

So now I’ve been back a few days. I’ve spent a fair amount of time simply reading and relaxing. Today my plan is to start packing up the Christmas Decorations, and then read some more. Tomorrow I’m teaching some private students (officially the semester starts Monday, but I’m doing some makeup lessons from last semester) and then Friday the same plus my early morning job. Next week we are back to my full teaching load at home plus early morning, and then the following week is the start of the college semester, except we are online for the first two weeks, so I’m not sure how that will affect things (i.e. which of my students brought their instruments home?).

How was your Christmas and New Year’s Eve? (if you celebrate) Did you get some time off? Did you get COVID? Did you see family and friends?