Kyra had to work during the Christmas break, and Alex and Kaitlyn headed to her parents’ house for Christmas, and Zaque is on a mission in Oklahoma. Since no one was coming to Montana to hang out with us, we thought it would be a blast to head down to Provo, Utah and spend the week with Kyra.
It turns out we were right! Her roommates had all left for the holiday break, and our plans to stay with relatives fell through (thanks, covid), so we crashed at her apartment with a sweet inflatable air mattress bed. We spent the days walking around the BYU campus and the town, playing board games, watching movies, and of course opening Christmas gifts.
We found a fountain that was creating frozen foam. Yeah, pretty cool. It looks like bubbles or foam in the picture, but it was actually ice. Very, very thin ice.
We also took a moment to watch the Great Conjunction, where Jupiter and Saturn met in the twilight sky. Without any real equipment or even a zoom lens, this is the best I could do:
Provo has a cool store called Good Move where you can spend a few hours eating food and playing board games. They claim to have a thousand games, and indeed there were a lot, but I’m not sure there were that many.
Pepper quickly grew bored of the games (she’s just not a big gamer) so she walked back to the apartment while Kyra and I spent a few hours playing. We probably wasted 30-40 minutes attempting to set up and play Dice Forge, but the rulebook– or rather rule sheet— was so convoluted we literally couldn’t figure out how to play.
So we gave up and tried Kingdomino, which proved to be a bunch of fun.
Our Christmas loot was a small pile, but loaded with fun. Kyra was thrilled to open her phone screen protector…
… because it meant one of her other gifts was the phone itself. She’s been using a pretty old low-end one for a few years, and was happy to finally upgrade to something modern. Well, not entirely modern; I bought a model that’s several years old, because it’s just silly to buy a brand new late-model phone these days.
I ended up with a couple of nice shirts. One was from Eddie Bauer (well, not Eddie himself, but from Mom and Dad).
And the other was from Kyra, who had the bright idea of custom-printing a shirt with one of my comics on it, Squirrel Suit Guy.
Pepper ended up with a ukelele from me, since she’s shopping for a hobby and seemed interested in Zaque’s.
Then, of course, in keeping with Christmas tradition we had take-out sushi for lunch.
I’m kidding. Who has take-out sushi on Christmas Day? Apparently my wife and daughter. I enjoyed some grilled cheese instead.
We had an opportunity for a video call with Zaque, and wow that hair…
I’m pretty sure that’s not “mission appropriate” but with covid, haircuts are a weird business and apparently he’s been able to slip it through the administrative cracks. Kyra’s internet connection kept barfing, leading to many moments during the call that looked like this (notice all of us laughing in the corner):
We made some homemade pizza and celebrated the holiday with some bubbly. When Kyra opened it, the foam exploded all over the table. As a college student, she’s learned not to waste good food, and that led to this.
Not surprisingly, the week was a grand time. Merry Christmas to all.