And a Partridge in a Pear Tre-eee

First of all, you become a grandparent not so much by your children having children, but by having things like this in your house:

You have a garage door opener for years and it never breaks, then one day you look at it with fresh eyes and voila- another set of grandparents is created.  That thing is at least 50 years old.

So Happy 5th Day of Christmas to all of you!  If I try to pinpoint the best Christmas I’ve ever had, I think immediately to the Christmas when I got the Baby-sitter’s Club board game, not so much for that gift specifically, but for the over-the-top excitement of that Christmas.  As I think about the details, I’m sure I start to merge various Christmases from 1985-1995:  church on Christmas Eve, barely sleeping and waking up super early on Christmas morning, spending time with my siblings and parents, plus both sets of grandparents plus aunts and uncles, candy and cookies all day, and presents.

That’s the kind of Christmas I had this year, over the top exciting.  I understand the true meaning of Christmas- INCARNATION, the Word made flesh, all pointing towards resurrection, the whole reason we have any hope for any second of our lives or future – and I’ve been thinking about it a  lot this year in relation to how we celebrate.  I hope I’m finding a way to celebrate that joyfully.  I certainly felt a joy among my family that runs deeper than commercialism or sappy sentimentality.

I certainly can’t claim that I did my best to avoid all things commercial, but at the same time I recognize that the Lightening McQueen sleeping bag wasn’t what made Christmas so special this year - or any year. 

It wasn’t even my brand new dictionary that made it so great.

I love the tradition and ritual of Christmas and so many of my best Christmas memories from years past were present this year.  Church with my parents on Christmas Eve, barely sleeping on Christmas Eve (both from excitement and a restless/upset child) and waking up at 4 AM, then 4:30, then FINALLY 6:30, opening presents with one set of (grand)parents in the morning, another in the afternoon and on into the evening (we can really drag it out), eating and spending time with the people I love, including Tate and Carolena on their first Christmas.

It was a truly wonderful experience.  

I really enjoy Christmas presents.  I know that it’s not really the thing for a
*mature* Christian adult to say, but it’s true.  I like shopping for gifts and wrapping them and giving them and watching them be opened and receiving them and talking about them.  I know, contrary to what my excitement at getting a new bike or pair of scissors may portray, that the presents aren’t what Christmas is about.  But I like getting a new board game to play and a new book to read.  As long as it’s possible to give and receive, I enjoy it. 

But there are so many other things I enjoy about it too – like the preparations of Christmas Eve, which we seemed to have two of this year, both on the 23rd and 24th.  Trent made the traditional Norwegian Christmas bread, julekake, this year while my mom made my former Assistant Chief of Police grandpa’s jailhouse rolls.  My dad and brother finished their last minute shopping and I wrote the Christmas story from Luke on the kitchen chalkboard.  There was joy in the preparations.

There were fabulous handmade gifts all around this year, many of worthy of their own individual posts.   For now, let’s just say that I have the greatest, most wonderful sister in the world and no one will ever, EVER, top the gift she made for me this year.

She also knitted a Viking hat for my brother.  Again, Best. Sister. Ever.

Among some of my favorite new Christmas traditions are Christmas Eve dinner cooked by my sister-in-law Kim, always festive and delish and not really that new actually, and Mel’s Christmas pumpkin.

Among the many Christmas miracles that undoubtedly appear worldwide every year, we had a small miracle in Rush and Tate playing peacefully together for a few minutes.  It’s hopefully the start of something wonderful.

And look at that Christmas trifle!  It looks just like the magazine…?

And after all the excitement…nestled all snug…

I could go on and on.  I’m so thankful for the time spent with my family – I love you guys.  And to those I didn’t see this year – Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas

While I sort my thoughts on the fantastic whirlwind that was December 23-27, I give you our attempts at getting a nice picture in front of the tree-

‘Tis The Season

The boys are napping, the cookies are baking, the coffee is hot, White Christmas is playing in the background…Christmas is coming…

We’ve had fun making holiday goodies this year, cookies for teachers and co-workers, Chex Mix for neighbors and garbage men, and caramel popcorn for the firefighters at the fire station behind Kroger.  Added bonus of bringing popcorn to the firefighters:  tour of the fire station and fire trucks.

Every year the city sends a calendar to all the residents.  It’s usually the calendar I hang in the pantry and use for the year; it also usually features a decent theme.  Last year it was pictures of city employees demonstrating green tips, cute.  This year I guess the theme was something along the lines of “sights of the city”.  I’m not totally sure what they were going for, I just know that as soon as I saw that the picture for two separate months was an overpass -yes, an overpass, like the kind that get your car over railroad tracks-and one month was the highway –where you sit for an hour every morning on the way to work!- I threw it in the recycling bin.  I have standards.

Which is why next year, I’m voting for a firefighter calendar.  This town has TV quality firemen and women. 

Is this ornament felt? It is now.

Our response to the extra activity of December is cycling through staying up too late working on things one night only to accidently fall asleep as soon as the boys go to bed the next night.  I’ve been trying to watch Elf and wrap Christmas presents all month and finally succeeded Saturday night, only to remember tonight that the washing machine was full of clothes that I washed on Friday and never made it to the dryer.  I’m one of those overloaded printers who keeps dropping jobs – and the scary thing is, my life isn’t even that busy.  Yeah, it’s two kids busy, but some people have twins and a number of people have more than two kids.  99% of the things going on right now are pushing me towards pull-it-together/get-organized new years resolutions.

I keep trying to find a time to make a few Christmas ornaments.  I could be doing that now, if I could find any of my embroidery floss.  Trent informed me that if I 1) had a spot for it and 2) put it away after I used it, I would probably be able to find it.  Again, I’ll keep that in mind when working on my 2012 resolutions.  It’s just too late for 2011.

We do have a few new ornaments this year, thanks to a box from my mom filled with handmade ornaments from my childhood.  Gracing our tree this year are hearts and gingerbread men sewed by my mom and some paper ornaments that I made in mother’s day out.  1984 was apparently a very creative year for my family.

Chain Reaction of Mental Anguish

Among the thousands of things that, pre-children, I thought I would never do, I was not planning on pushing the whole “Santa’s watching you and he only brings gifts if you’re good” bit.  But before kids it also makes sense that discipline tips like calmly saying no or going to time out might actually work.  The reality is that the only thing that works is threatening to THROW AWAY EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF HALLOWEEN CANDY IF YOU HIT YOUR BROTHER AGAIN.  So I’ve been floundering since early November and after a strenuous morning, I suddenly remembered that Santa has a naughty and a nice list.  After I told Rush that only good boys get presents and bad boys get coal, he tilted his head, looked me in the eye, and said, “Thomas has coal.”

Backfire!  Damn tank engine.

A lot of wonderful holiday traditions have been a source of stress lately.  At dusk, the blue lights on a strand of multi-colored lights don’t look like they’re working, tears.  Someone didn’t take a nap, let’s start ripping ornaments off the tree.  We’re still eating dinner, so it’s time to start getting upset about blowing out the candles on the Advent wreath.  And the Advent calendar:  75% disaster, 25% fun.

There’s still an unpacked Rubbermaid box in the dining room, filled with Christmas plates and coffee mugs and a cookie jar shaped like a snowman.  It makes me sad to see it, because is that the first step to becoming someone who is not decorating because it’s too much work?  Putting out the decorations isn’t too much work, it’s getting the kitchen clean for ten minutes so I can find a spot for the stuff that’s the problem.

I felt better about the close-to-failing state of Christmas spirit at our house when we went to Rush’s school party today.  Two kids cried when Santa walked in and Rush waved, but did not want to sit on his lap or get very close.  The experience helped move me further towards a zen stage where instead of calling my mom and Trent’s mom to figure out a plan for Christmas Eve/Day, I’m just going to talk to them when I see them and devise a plan that will minimize tears.

It sounds like a downer, but it’s really not all tears and tantrums around here.  I mean, it’s mostly tears and tantrums, but we have our moments.  For the first time in years, Trent hasn’t scheduled a major home renovation or woodworking project for the month of December.  It’s wonderful, better than I could have imagined, to have him available to help.  He baked cookies for Rush’s teachers and stamped our return address on our Christmas cards and hopefully, hopefully, we will find time to watch a Christmas movie together.

We’re just merging the tough moments –when I turned into Marsha Mason in The Goodbye Girl (minus getting mugged, thankfully) in the Kroger parking lot last night when a carton off eggs fell out of the cart and smashed and then a huge bag of canned goods tipped over in the middle of the parking lot and started rolling away- with the good moments –pause, pause, pause, trying to think of something Christmas related that has gone smoothly…um…damn…come on…well, that’s the point isn’t it?  We’re healthy, we have people who love us, we await the coming of Christ.

That’s it:  Christmas morning may find all of us with a tender of coal, but we await the coming of Christ.

Insecurity

And then I thought, what if I am really bad at making Chex Mix?

The Transitory Nature of Material Life*

Last year we successfully made at least one handmade Christmas gift for all our family members; this year I was hijacked by two twin sized (hopefully) quilts for Rush and Tate.  But –miracle!- as of last night, they are finished.  The last stitch of a quilt amazes me every time.  I spend hours and hours and hours and hours working on it, then I sew the final stitch and all of a sudden I’m curled up under a quilt instead of working on a project. 

The whole process seemed, at times, a tad futile.  The first time somebody throws up on his quilt, I need to channel the Tibetan monks and their sand mandalas and remember life’s impermanence.  But making the quilts is about more than making nice bedspreads that will probably get coke spilled on them.  It’s giving them my love in something that they can wrap around their heads and using my hands for something other than pressing touch-screen buttons on my phone and continuing a beautiful art form in the midst of a society that’s probably going to forget how to write in cursive.

I’ll post some pictures after Christmas.  Let’s save some surprises.

So if I can finish one last gift for Tate, I will maybe have time to squeeze in a little handmade something for someone.  There are still a few available weeks.  If nothing else, I did finish my handmade gifts for the names picked in the family drawings.  Rush finished his too and already gave it to his cousin Remi:

It’s a wreath made of ribbons and tulle.  She seemed to love it and wasn’t sure if she was going to hang it on her door or find a round mirror and use it as a frame.  Rush is learning to cut with scissors, so he really enjoyed making it.

We’re planning to get our Christmas tree tomorrow and pulling out boxes of ornaments yesterday was getting me into an ornament making mood.  Maybe my Saturday night will include a felt, embroidery floss, sequins, and White Christmas.  Hot Dr. Pepper anyone?

 

*I borrowed that phrase from Wikipedia.  Do I need to credit that?  If so, done.

Occupational Hazard

When I was growing up, my mom would occasionally make junk soup.  Sounds delicious, right?  I’m pretty sure my mother kept a jar in the freezer and would randomly throw in vegetables, a few leftover green beans, some celery, a handful of corn, and when the jar was full it became junk soup.  Allegedly lots of people do this, my mom’s friend Ellen called it Soup of the Day and her friend Linda called it something else, something I’ve obviously forgotten because I was never very interested in soup that had been gradually taking shape in the freezer, growing from the things my siblings and I were so crazy about the first time around that we didn’t even finish them.

Then all of a sudden last week it was 4:30 and I had no plans for dinner.  (The phrase “no plans for dinner” could really go two ways – it’s either wearing a dress and heels and coyly talking to a gentlemen caller or it’s standing in the kitchen with a ponytail and two small boys pulling all the pots out of the cabinets.  In this story, it’s the latter.)   All of a sudden I find myself chopping up sweet potatoes and opening cans of black beans and tomatoes and finding half a package of frozen corn in the freezer and a carton of chicken stock in the pantry and here we are.   Important difference:  I’m calling mine sweet and sour peasant soup, not junk soup.

For most things I really don’t mind turning into my mother; she’s creative, hardworking, efficient, honest, giving, etc.  But I really didn’t want to start making junk soup.  I’m not even a big soup fan.  Unfortunately junk/sweet and sour peasant soup fits so well with my inclination towards vegetarian cooking, my goal to not waste food, and my poor dinner planning that it was only a matter of time. 

I’m making peace with the soup.  I’m just hoping I can keep myself from cooking turnips.  There are few things more disappointing in life than walking into the kitchen for dinner and seeing a big bowl of what appears to be mashed potatoes and then realizing, oh wait, it’s turnips.

hot glue gun, dude

We generally have the lamest Christmas lights on our street.  A few strands of lights onto the bushes, then we can’t find another extension cord and we decide we’re finished.  In the past, the quality has been of the level right below someone who didn’t put up any lights.

But this year, Trent’s brother inspired us with a new trick.  He sent a video panning the front of his house, white lights outlining all the windows and doors.  At the end of the video, we hear Troy’s voice:  “Hot glue gun, dude.”

It turns out you can use a hot glue gun to glue your Christmas lights right onto the brick of your house. 

 

Trent and I are a good balance for each other.  Trent would race up an unstable ladder with a boiling hot glue gun and climb onto the roof without a second thought and I would see the ladder and decide that we should stick to wrapping lights around the tree trunks as high as we can reach.  But we spend 5 minutes bickering and voila, compromise and 3 strands of lights are glued to our home.

No tree up at our house yet, but with it’s sequined pockets filled with treats and anticipation, our advent calendar is a superb catalyst for tantrums.  So far it’s caused tears for two out of three days.  There’s just something about a project that I spent hours and hours on setting off a fit at 7 AM that really gets me in a festive mood.

I think we’re past all that now (maybe?  yes?) and ready to get into the Advent spirit.