The Stockings Are Hung by the Chimney with Care

My husband and I are eagerly anticipating Christmas, and having our youngest son and his wife (whose blog handle is Babisiu) here with us in VA over the holiday. As of now, those plans are going forward...and I don't know what I'll do if they fall apart, because it's been MORE THAN A YEAR--incredibly!--since we saw those two cute kids in person.

Our "baby" and his lovely curly-headed bride, who got married in September of 2019, flew here to be with us last Thanksgiving.

Remember holidays like this?  What a difference a year makes!

They were also supposed to fly up for a Pearl family reunion in NY, celebrated at our "Oyster Haven" VRBO house on Lake Champlain, this past July.  But he's in the Army, and due to the Covid pandemic there were strict travel restrictions in place for all military personnel at his base.  So we didn't see them in the summer.

My husband and I were planning to fly out to be with them at their house this Thanksgiving, but alas, our boy came down with Covid and his last official day of quarantine was the Friday after Thanksgiving.  (He's fine now, by the way; he had flu-like symptoms but he has fully recovered.  And Babisiu never even caught it from him--so I guess it's a really contagious virus...but sometimes, inexplicably, it's not.)  Anyhoo, needless to say, that recent Thanksgiving trip was a no-go.

After hearing all of that, I'm sure you can understand how much I'm looking forward to this upcoming visit at Christmas.  The basement is all ready for them!

When we bought our "new" VA house in 2017, it was, as far as we were concerned, move-in ready.  It was not a fixer-upper, which we'd both decided we didn't want to deal with at our age (especially after coming from a home we'd worked so hard to make perfect for us over the two-and-a-half decades we lived there).  The one project we did hope to tackle was finishing off the basement, so that we would have a big family room/playroom for our grandkids and a guest retreat (mostly for our youngest son and his wife, the only ones in the family at this point in time who don't reside near us in VA).  We paid someone else to have the bathroom put in.  But during the turbulent year that was 2020, my amazing husband finished off the rest--electrical, insulation, lighting, walls and ceilings--he did it all, with me as his bumbling assistant.  And now we have what is almost a little apartment down there.  The only thing missing is a kitchen!

The bedroom is small, but really cozy.

After we finished the basement project, we got a discarded fireplace mantle from one of our sons and his wife, and we mounted it on the wall in the play area of the basement.  I decided to give it the trompe l'oeil treatment (which is something I've always enjoyed, because I love me some whimsy when it comes to home decor).  I'm so excited that it gives me a place to hang stockings for the two eagerly-awaited Christmas guests that will be staying down there.

The stockings are hung by the chimney with care, in hopes that my kiddos will soon be there!  Seeing them again is the only Christmas gift I need this year.  God willing, that's the gift I'll get!