December 2020 Christmas letter

Well, hands up who would have predicted that year. In common with most of the world, lots of things were cancelled, and we didn't go on our planned holiday. We've spent far more time at home than we've ever done, and we're looking forward to / hoping for some degree of normality resuming when the vaccine is distributed. 

If you happen to be passing by, want to say "hi", and government rules permit, please do get in touch - we always enjoy catching up with friends. The Family Browning would like to wish you all a [voice from off-stage: hold on, there's far more to say about our year than that]... 

2020 all started off so well (on a personal level at any rate, not so great for the bits of the world that were on fire). With Jen and Dan having got married in December, the Australian cousins were over, and the kids especially enjoyed playing together and doing exciting things like going to see the Lion King. We hope it's not too long before Kathryn, Sean and the children can get back over. 

Eilidh's swimming pool cake

In mid January, we took a trip to IKEA (the second of the year already, as we didn't have enough space in the car the first time round for everything we wanted!). Nothing much unusual in that; in fact, you could say it was a usual Browning day of trying to cram lots in - the girls' dance classes in the morning, squeeze in IKEA, go to the Hearts game in the afternoon. Eilidh came out of the dance class complaining of a sore wrist, which persisted throughout the day. It hurt every time Hearts scored (which was depressingly few and far between in "season" 2019-20), so it was unfortunate that Hearts won 4-0 that day. With the pain getting worse by teatime, a trip to A&E was in order, which revealed a fractured wrist and the requirement for a stookie. Obviously that in itself was bad news for Eilidh, but the double jeopardy bad luck was that she was due to be having a pool party the following weekend for her birthday. In the end, it all worked out OK, as she had an impromptu film night with her friends, before reconvening after four weeks and a quick healing process to party at the pool. So two birthday parties this year for Eilidh, though she probably would have rather done without the broken wrist. And one IKEA office chair which has had rather more use this year than was anticipated! 

Dance costumes

February saw Craig go away with the Explorers to the annual Sub-Zero camp, although the camp was wet rather than cold, so wet in fact that hundreds of Scouts and Explorers either had to abandon camp or sleep in a barn. The following weekend, we went to the church holiday in Ayrshire, enjoying a peaceful, though wet, weekend.

Iona's Trolls cake

As February drew to an end and gave way to March, there were murmurs that the schools' Easter holidays might be extended by a few weeks. Italy had gone into lockdown, but surely nothing like that could happen on our shores… The first weekend in March was the girls dance show. They did us proud, with one routine each of ballet, tap and jazz. One show down, and one acro show to go, scheduled for May… Through March, Gwen was also busy practising for a concert, Craig was busy building a new high sleeper bed as part a room redecoration for Iona's birthday, and while all that was going on, we had men in redoing our bathroom and en suite. All was finished bar the snagging the week before full lockdown, and a socially distanced birthday party for Iona was held the day before full lockdown. It was a conveniently sunny day, which allowed us to play games outside, and one of the competitions we did was to see how well each of the kids could wash their hands!  By the end of the day, we’d had quite enough of the song “happy birthday”. Gwen's 40th birthday party, which was due to take place at the Dalmahoy the following weekend, was one of our first casualties from a Covid point of view, quickly followed by our Easter trip to Sallachy. The former was replaced by a family zoom afternoon, while the latter, like most of the country, was replaced by a staycation. Alas, our long-weekend in Sweden at the start of May (part of Gwen’s 40th birthday present) also bit the dust, and couldn't be replaced by any number of trips to IKEA. Our rebooking for the same weekend in 2021 is looking touch-and-go at the moment. In the meantime, having not celebrated turning 40 yet, Gwen is quite content remaining 39 for another year!

Finally got them working!

It's fair to say that the first period of lockdown was one of the busiest periods of our life. In contrast to the media narrative of the country sitting around in their collective pants on furlough, Craig was working from 6:30am to 9am, before feeding and homeschooling the girls until 1pm, and then working until late. Gwen's work adapted to the virus conditions, with the majority of consultations being moved to phone, and very careful procedures being followed if a patient needed to come to the practice / a home visit.  Those hours when Gwen got away from the surgery were spent relieving Craig on the home schooling front. 

Throughout all this, Craig's Scouting barely missed a beat. The Explorers were straight online and onto Zoom, and virtual camps became the order of the day. The girls' camping experiences this year have comprised large tents, small tents, hammocks, tents on the trampoline and in the bedroom and dens in the bedroom. It's fair to say that the neighbours were left somewhat bemused by Craig leading online campfires, but this practice was put to great use after he put together an audition tape to be one of the participants in an international campfire festival, for which he and his glamorous assistant won a prize! (For anyone who's still not seen it and wants a reminder of warmer times, it's still available on YouTube.) 

Ice creams in Fife

April, May and June were all much the same. With movement being severely restricted, we settled into a broad routine of a walk on one weekend day, and a cycle on the other. Things began to open up a bit in July, the week before our planned holiday. The original plan had been to spend the first week in a holiday house in Wales with Gwen's parents and the Peplers, to celebrate Brenda and Roger's 80th birthdays, with the second week camping elsewhere in Wales. Wales itself didn't come out of lockdown until during the first week of our holidays intended holiday, but the Peplers and us managed to find a couple of rental cottages within a few miles of each other in Northumberland with generous refund policies if Covid interrupted proceedings. Other than having to pre-book our day-trips (and having to be in separate cottages), Covid didn't really impact our holiday at all. We visited Alnwick Castle Gardens (but not the castle itself, which announced they would open in the "main holiday season", ie English school holidays, not Scottish ones, grrr), Lindisfarne, Bamburgh Castle and a couple of Roman forts at Hadrian’s Wall, as well as having some the time on the beach and some walks. 

Wild hammocking in Applecross

In the second week of the holiday, we made the getaway up to Sallachy, where again, other than the local swimming pool being shut, we weren't really impacted by Covid. Walks, cycles, kayaking and trips to the beach were the order of the day, with a particularly interesting couple of days spent wild-camping in hammocks in Applecross. In those days, we found out that the reason that Eilidh's and Iona's pretty pink and purple hammocks were relatively cheap is that the holes in the bug net are small enough to keep out dragonflies, but not far more deadly midges! The result of that was that the second night involved Iona sharing Craig's hammock and Eilidh sharing Gwen's. Impressively, everybody managed to get some sleep in. Even more impressively, when we returned to Sallachy, we found that Iona had managed to acquire 17 ticks, more than half of the family's total. 

The blue one that Craig's in is going down like the Titanic!

As July changed to August, we were awaiting an update from Auntie Jenny and Uncle Dan on a new addition to the family, and on 1 August, baby Matthew made an appearance into the world; a wee cutie with two doting big cousins who can’t wait to properly play with / babysit him!

The girl's first Munros - Mayar (closely followed by Driesh)

On Craig's birthday weekend / our wedding anniversary, we went wild camping in Corrie Fee in the south of the Cairngorms. Some absolutely ferocious midges made their presence felt in the evening-time, making being outside the tent for any length of time very uncomfortable indeed. Never before has Gwen had a coughing fit by just opening her mouth to breathe and inhaling thousands of minibeasts… Despite this, we had a very satisfying weekend, which included going on a hike, with the girls climbing their first two Munros; we were very proud of them (we are anyway, but we were extra proud that day!). 

Corrie Fee - beautiful, but home to a gazillion midges

Wonder of wonders, schools went back after the summer holidays (in fact during the summer - they cut the holiday short by a week), and we joined in with thousands of parents across the world in being very grateful to teachers!

Ready for some open-water
swimming 💦

The girls were delighted when swimming pools reopened, though we did manage a couple of open water swimming outings, which are a different kettle of fish altogether from a family swim in the local pool. Face-to-face Scouting and dance classes also resumed in September, as it looked like things might be beginning to return to a semblance of normality. And then, abruptly, things started to get worse. We got pretty lucky with our timings. Our October holiday plans were to go down south to stay near (but not with) Brenda and Roger, and after a very nervous wait to see the day before we were due to travel what Nicola would let us do, we were on our way. Our trip to Splashdown water park was amazing, with Covid meaning a restricted number of customers, and therefore virtually eliminating queues! Ditto our trip to Paultons Park theme park, which had the added bonus of being on a school day. In some instances, we didn't even have to get off the roller coaster before having another turn. Our other day trip was to Portsmouth Historic Docks to see the Mary Rose and other ships, where we virtually had the run of the place! 

Body boarding and snorkelling

We also did some cycling in the New Forest, including meeting up with the grandparents for a picnic, and a beach day similar to what we'd done in the summer, except with some body-boarding thrown in for good measure to replace the sunshine (which we're not sure constituted a like-for-like swap).

The final weekend of the October holiday comprised a weekend with the Jenkins in caravans at a holiday park, shared accommodation sadly not being an option this year. The Andrews had been due to join us too, but sadly found themselves constrained by the Merseyside lockdown. 

And that, sadly, was about that for the year. Iona decided to stop doing gymnastics at the initial lockdown, and after her dance class was disbanded, decided to stop that too. She's still in Beavers and her swimming lessons, and we'll investigate other exciting pursuits for her in the new year. Meanwhile, her favourite hobby is "building school" aka lego; what once was called the family room (converting to a guest room) has officially become known as the "lego room" in 2020. On days in deep lockdown, cries of boredom were few and far between; more frequent were complaints that there were only 12 waking hours in a day, and schoolwork, walking or cycling deprived her of precious lego time. Her new favourite method of transport is the skateboard!

Eilidh finished Cubs at summer, gaining her Chief Scout's Silver Award, and moved up to Scouts. She's in P7, and getting ready to move up to high school! She's still enthusiastically dancing (Gwen has enjoyed surreptitiously spying on the zoom classes and hearing lots of unfamiliar French words amidst burpees and abdominal crunches), loves swimming (she is definitely faster than her mum now), is learning the oboe through school, and gets up to all kinds of creative activities at home. She's set up a wee website and published some of her stories on it, and, both on her own and with her friend (and here), has set up a couple of YouTube channels. Here's a humorous wee 30-second creation of theirs:

Gwen's had a very busy year in work, both in the surgery and in teaching trainee GPs. The pandemic necessitated a new way of working in general practice and a whole load of learning and service redesign. Teaching sessions before the summer were cancelled so that all focus was on the front line. However, since the summer, she's spent many hours transitioning many of the materials so that they could be delivered online. In the rare occasions when she's not having to be a doctor, teacher, chef or cleaner, she has been conscientiously keeping fit at gym classes (or in their absence, swimming or borrowing a body pump bar for home), and she's enjoyed helping to plan church services. 

Craig has also had a busy year at work. He's now in his 20th year at Mercer, but recently had the exciting confirmation that he's been accepted by Edinburgh University to return there in September 2021 to study a Masters degree in Climate Change Finance and Investment. So big changes ahead in 2021. His football-playing has been curtailed somewhat by the pandemic, as has his football watching. The girls were alarmed by the extent shouting at the telly on Hallowe'en as Hearts put Hibs to the sword in the delayed Scottish Cup semi-final. The final on Sunday 20 December promises to be just as loud! (Edit: it was, but more disappointing 😢) Just in the last week, Craig received noticed that he is being given an award (the Silver Acorn) for exceptional service in Scouting for over 20 years, a very proud moment indeed.

Shepherds and sheep in the 
online church Nativity

Overall, it's fair to say that we count ourselves very lucky. We're both still working when we know that so many others have been impacted, and none of us have (to our knowledge) had the virus. We give thanks for our health and pray for continued good health, and that of our extended family and friends. The Family Browning would like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and every good wish for a happy and healthy 2021!