A Cherry Pie Christmas
November 30, 2025 — 8:18pm
Dear Reese,
On the last day of Thanksgiving break, it’s snowy and blusery. We go to the Maritime Museum to run around and learn about their festival of lights — it’s a fundraiser with donated decorated trees (and gifts) all around the first two floors of the museum that will be raffled off. We pick out our favorites with MorMor and buy extra raffle tickets.
Then we go through the ten levels of the museum tower. It’s mostly to let you run around and look at new things since it’s not a great day to spend outside. Staying at home all day, we all start feeling a little cooped up.
During your nap, MorMor, Cappi, and I watch the new Christmas movie that was filmed in Door County: A Cherry Pie Christmas.
It’s a Hallmark-style movie, though not actually from Hallmark, and free on Tubi. We are not really a Hallmark family, so the writing and plot don’t do anything for us, but it’s fun to recognize all the Door County locations and see how they heighten and make up parts of the local culture. We don’t actually have a cherry pie baking contest. I’ve never heard us called “The Christmas Capital of the Midwest.” I’ve never heard a local call someone from Chicago a “city slicker”. Their version of fish boil was pretty underwhelming compared to the real thing.
But if you’re from Door County or visit often, it’s kind of a fun (one-time) watch. And we all rarely watch a movie together as a family, so I soak in the 90 minutes.
Your nap starts and ends late, which means you’re not as tired as usual for bedtime routine tonight. You keep hopping off the bed while I’m reading to you to pick out a different book. Eventually, I let you play on your own while I close my eyes on the bed — I figure I don’t have to fight you to go down if you’re not tired yet.
You entertain yourself peacefully as I listen, thumbing through books and playing with your sound machine. After ten minutes, you get my attention to read a final book to you and then sign to me that you’re ready to sleep.
Love,
Mama