Post Category → family

Christmas bits

Christmas Eve morning was calm, blue, serene:

…and then the sun broke through.

It continued to shine all through Christmas Day. Crazy cold, crisp and clear. The best of winter in the North Country.

We all gathered under one roof for an early dinner. We dressed into our holiday best and went to church for a lovely hour of choral music, hymn-singing, story reading, and candles. Jameson read beautifully.

Then home. We lit all the candles, ate cookies and homemade eggnog, and let the holiday music ring. Ryan read Luke’s account of Christmas, and then we opened a gift or two. Including, of course, new pj’s. These growing kids were in desperate need this year!

Then Christmas morning: the biggest boy crawling into my bed before the sun was up, me telling him we’ll at least wait until the 6 o’clock hour, and him asking me every 3 minutes for the next 45 if it was time yet? Please??

Stockings, presents, jumping and joy. Cinnamon rolls and clementines. Then over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house! Or just down the road to Nana and Papa’s. Either way, we sang as we went.


in the van; she couldn’t leave the house without purse and hat, of course!

The celebrating was merry, the food delicious, and being almost all together the best of all. We gathered again the next evening and ate pizza and sang more songs:

No celebration of this marvelous event could ever be too big, Dad said, and he is so right. A Savior came to deliver us. To walk among us. To reconcile and redeem. That’s worth a bit of celebrating!

And so we do.

But eventually we must find our coats and mittens, run out into the cold, starlit night, and turn towards home and bed.

celebrating

We’ve made a list and checked it at least twice. Boys have excitedly crossed off “clean bathrooms”, as well as “wrap gifts” (the latter with, perhaps, a bit more excitement.) There’s nothing like waking up on Monday morning and realizing that it’s the week of Christmas!

These last few days have been:

cousin-loving,

baby-gazing,

breakfast-making,

hair-braiding,

baby-clothes-ironing,

nativity-arranging,

pb&j’ing,

book-reading,

gift-wrapping,

tree-gazing…

…kinds of days.

And any minute, my little ones will wake up with an explosion of excitement: A few more hours, and the celebration really begins!

quilts = bare cupboards.

Since Monday night, stolen moments have resulted in a quilt top for my Fiona girl.

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How cute is my helper?

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Speaking of Beatrice, my current favorite photo:

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Yes, she is that fun.

(I also feel like you should all know that, after smiling in happiness over how the quilt is turning out, I discovered that I have no cream, eggs, or salt. Salt. Clearly those moments were stolen from the grocery shopping “budget”.)

first week of december doings.

Ryan took the boys out one afternoon, and they strung pretty white lights around the lone tree in our yard. When it shines at night, so solitary in a snow-white, moonlit field, it’s just so pretty.

In this picture, Jameson appears to be sweeping the snow away. He’s got a long way to go:

*****

Cookies are what it’s all about, right? Rum logs are happily consumed at every moment that seems at all appropriate.

Beatrice longs for a cookie:

*****

There are pre-dawn book-reading moments that happen quite regularly. The basket of Christmas books gets heftier every year.

*****

The boys had their CFA Christmas Concert this past Friday evening. William was bursting with excitement over his “very first concert ever in his whole life!!!!!” I will be honest: I was not feeling the Christmas “magic” last week, but did my best to remember how exciting that Friday evening concert always was to me as a child. With that in mind, I made sure to carve out plenty of time to iron clothes, straighten ties, wrap scarves, and say in as many ways as I could, “Hey! This is a big deal!” And they had the best night. (Seeing life through someone else’s eyes sure helps a lot, doesn’t it?)