December 2020

Here is a link to photos and videos from December, and below are some things we've been up to that you may see in the photos.

Outings

Whenever the weather is tolerable, we bundle up and go for occasional walks. We stumbled upon a beautiful sunset on a rail trail along the Hudson that we visit often. Another place we like to visit is the Orange County Arboretum, where there was a very nice lights display that we caught before Christmas. I've posted many pictures of their meticulous landscaping and gorgeous flowers during warmer months, and they keep up the effort in the winter too as it turns out. That place is a local gem and always free. The day after Christmas we went to the Roberson Museum in Binghamton, which we visited once before when Becky's family was visiting. They have an elaborate model train with a diorama modeled after some of the city's history, and visitors can wander around the old preserved mansion  that is decorated with dozens of Christmas trees and other yuletide décor around the holidays. 

The Hallmark Store

Despite the pandemic and the crowds, we have been to a few shopping malls lately, sometimes just to get out of the house on a cold day with a bored toddler. Most malls have a Hallmark store, and some stores like Target and Kohl's have a Hallmark section as well. Alex is well aware of this because he is obsessed with the Hallmark tree ornaments that they have hanging out on display. He throws quite a fuss if we walk past the Hallmark store and don't go in, and if we do go in he throws a fuss when we have to leave. This year, Hallmark had two tractor ornaments and when we enter Hallmark, Alex immediately combs the place with a singular focus and finds the tractors, and then gets so excited while he stares at them with no intention of ever leaving. Eventually we caved in and bought both tractor tree ornaments, thinking that this would satisfy his obsession with that store. It seems it has not though, as he now finds other tree ornaments to get excited about. He just loves that store.

Snowpocalypse 2020

About a week before Christmas, a big winter storm was predicted. I planned to drive to the house for AirBnB cleaning before it hit, knowing that it makes more sense to dig your way out of a driveway buried in snow than to dig your way in. At the house, I measured 32" of snowfall by the time it was all over, although 40" was reported in the news. Either way, it was the most snow I've ever seen in a night. It buried everything completely, and around the neighborhood you could see white mounds where there were cars. No one could go anywhere for a while. It took a couple days for me to shovel and clear the driveway enough to get the car out of the garage, and that was thanks to some help from a neighbor with a snowblower. At the apartment, Becky and Alex saw about half as much snow, which is still a lot. A week later, on Christmas eve, the temperature got back up to near 50 F and an inch or two of rain fell, so by Christmas most of that snow had melted and that unfortunately caused flooding for some people.

Heating Problems

We were lucky that we didn't have any flooding issues to deal with on Christmas, but we did have some heating problems. First, earlier in the month at our apartment the fan went out on the heater unit in the basement, and we had to wait several days for our landlord to come fix it while it made clanky noises that disturbed our neighbor below. Then, we had heating problems in our house too. Our house has a tankless hot water system that heats the tap water and also the baseboard heaters in all the rooms. Although it is a newer heater, we've had problems with it ever since we bought the house, and it started having some failures again the same day all the snow fell. The exhausting work of shoveling snow throughout the day kept me warm along with burning lots of fire wood cranking the space heater. On Christmas eve, a service technician came out to look at the heater. To make a long story short, the plumbing was never set up properly for the heater, and it's hard to say why it has been having failures and only producing intermittent heat, but it has probably reached a point where fixing the heater and plumbing problems may cost more than just replacing the heater and setting it up with the correct pipes and valves. All told, it is going to cost us close to $10k - so that's what we are getting for Christmas whether we like it or not.

Christmas and New Years

We tried not to let our heating woes ruin Christmas. We stayed warm by running space heaters, lighting the fireplace, snuggling up with blankets, and chugging hot cocoa, and baking a glazed ham, as if we were spending the holiday at a cabin lodge with Bing Crosby. We made cinnamon rolls for Christmas morning and then opened presents. We don't typically buy a lot of presents - maybe some new clothes and a few new toys for Alex. We had a lot of nice gifts from family this year as well (thank you!). Alex is getting the idea of opening presents. We relaxed, went for walks, went shopping, enjoyed good meals, and visited the Roberson museum as noted above. I always enjoy coming up with a new Christmas card design each year. This year, I did a Bauhaus theme on the front and a photo of us sitting on the bed of a truck at a farm that Becky's mom took when she was visiting in the summer. We received many Christmas cards from family and friends far and wide as well, and we enjoyed seeing those. In other Christmas news, we organized our ward's Giving Tree project, which was all done virtually. People signed up to buy gifts for 32 people in our ward that are in need, financially or otherwise. We put them all in a pile and sorted them out, and Becky made lots of deliveries, some to families and some to single people. 

On New Year's eve, we ended up going bowling, which Alex really enjoyed watching. Becky won. With went to bed early like tired parents do; no reason to stay awake during more of 2020 than we need to.

Reflecting on 2020: A tale of two cities and a global pandemic

We have been fortunate in a lot of ways during the pandemic. Although many daycares and therapy clinics had to close, Alex was able to continue therapy during most of the pandemic. And although the university has taken a huge hit financially, I have been able to continue my job at the same salary so far. Becky had to stop working, but will be starting again soon. We started the year with our family split between two locations: Endwell (Binghamton area) where our house and my job is, and Washingtonville (Hudson Valley area) where our apartment, Alex's therapy school and Becky's job is. The two towns are separated by a 2 hour and 15 minute drive. At the beginning of the year, I was making that drive to the apartment every weekend, while I rented the house out on AirBnB during my absence. The pandemic forced me to start working from home though, something my employer was not previously very amenable to. This meant I could spend more time at the apartment with Becky and Alex, but I still would need to make a weekly trip to the house for a day or two to do cleaning for AirBnB rental guests. That situation is still not ideal, but the flexibility is a significant improvement. Because 2020 was such an abnormal year for us in this way to begin with, the pandemic actually made life more normal for us in a lot of ways. I'm hopeful that throughout 2021 I can continue working from home more. The AirBnB has worked out surprisingly well. We have a steady stream of guests usually each weekend, and this allows us to still use the house like a vacation home to escape our 1-bedroom apartment every month or so when we want to. The income has been enough to cover the mortgage, utilities and taxes most months. It is not enough to cover a new heating system unfortunately, and that turn of events just seems par for 2020. Alex has grown into a little boy and less of a toddler, and is using and responding to words more regularly now in ways that he did not a year ago, and that's been exciting to see. In therapy situations he can do a lot of things, and Becky stays on top of that so he stays challenged and hopefully pulls some of these things into his natural behaviors. Like most people, we haven't been very social this year. There are a lot of people we'd like to get to know better in our new ward though when we can. I've been serving as Executive Secretary, and Becky was just called into the Relief Society presidency. We have a lot of uncertainly about what 2021 and beyond will bring for us, but I guess so does everyone else right now. In any case, cheers to 2021!