It’s Christmas Eve! And my kids have a lengthy to-do list for our day that involves making treats, watching a Christmas movie, walking around the neighborhood to see holiday lights, and putting together the basketball hoop that is our for-everyone-in-the-family present this year:
We had to do some on-the-spot rearrangement to get it in the car — and it wouldn’t have worked if Charlotte had been with us instead of a daycare — but we made it happen. Fingers crossed Jose and I can assemble it without too many arguments. (Kidding. I think.)
We didn’t have quite as much luck with my present for Jose this year. He has been riding my old mountain bike all year and it’s just not very comfortable, so I told him I wanted him to pick out a new hybrid bike for Christmas! So we went to the bike store a few days ago…only to find that there is apparently a nationwide (or maybe even worldwide) bike shortage.
I remember reading about this back in the summer but I assumed the supply chain had caught up. WRONG. They had a bunch of bikes in the store, but all were previous orders waiting to be picked up. Jose was able to try one of those and we determined what he wanted, so we did place an order for a bike…but it might be March or April before it arrives!
Yet another bit of covid craziness that I did not expect.
The bike store did, however, have a few kids bikes in stock. After watching Emma ride her bike earlier this week, I realized that she had outgrown it — even though it is only 2 years old. So we decided to pounce on what the store had available and ended up spontaneously getting a new bike for Emma. (Charlotte will be happy to use the smaller one once she ditches her training wheels.)
We did a lot of bike riding last spring when the weather was nice, and anticipate doing that again this year. So it feels good to have everyone set up on bikes that fit them right — or will, once Jose’s bike eventually arrives.
We spotted the “great conjunction” of Jupiter and Saturn in the sky earlier this week. Many of our friends asked if Jose would be doing some astrophotography of the event but unfortunately the conjunction was in a tough part of the sky for his setup. He does all his astrophotography from our backyard, which has a fairly limited view of the sky due to trees and our house. The planets were low in the southwest, and our house blocks that part of the sky. Whomp whomp. But we did enjoy seeing it from a parking lot nearby!
p.s. I’m doing a 31 day blogging challenge.