Christmas

This year Christmas has been flying by.  Grandma Kazleman came up to celebrate with us and the kids loved having an extra pair of arms to snuggle them and read them Christmas stories--especially John,  That child has all the grandparents wrapped around his little fingers.  I think it's something to do with his particular combination of eyelashes and dimples. 

Christmas Eve went better than I expected.  We had to go to the children's mass at the church closest to our house because that's where David was singing in the choir.  As far as I can remember, we've never actually been to a children's mass on Christmas Eve before, we always either went to mass on Christmas day or to the midnight mass.  This mass wasn't especially beautiful and it was extremely crowded, but the kids certainly were entertained and it was fun to watch David sing and begrudgingly perform the hand motions that accompanied the songs.  I made a feast of appetizers for dinner and in an impulse of brilliance I had the children exchange their Secret Santa presents and reveal their identities to each other before bed.  They worked so hard doing extra chores and choosing gifts for each other that it would have been a shame to let the excitement they had be overshadowed by all the other Christmas morning festivities.  When David gave Margaret the Frozen Lego set he bought her, little John turned to him and said in awe, "you picked the perfect present!" 

It was adorable.

Christmas morning was over in a blur of wrapping paper and bows and chocolate coins and the children thoroughly enjoyed themselves.  For dinner I attempted my first ever jello mold,  choosing a recipe that included mini marshmallows just like the ones my grandmother always made which made for not as cute of a presentation, but live and learn.  I'm the only one who actually thought it was good, but then again, I'm the only one who was emotionally invested in the thing.  Don't worry, next year it's going to be even better  :)

Since Christmas day, we've been doing all of our traditional Twelve Days of Christmas activities:  visiting the Botanical Gardens train display, making gingerbread houses, eating gingerbread houses, and slowly parceling out presents--new sketchpad day!  board games from grandma and grandpa day!  Next week we'll have my birthday, Christmas for the animals, Epiphany with a special cake, and the best day of all--the day when I reveal all of the books I've been squirreling away for each child for the past six months!  The kids love books, but they can't really compete with the excitement of new toys and craft supplies on Christmas day.  By holding them back until the end it really extends the celebrations all the way to Epiphany.

Tonight for New Year's Eve I'm going to make fondue for the first time ever with the free fondue set straight from 1973 that I scored last summer (what can I say, it's been a holiday of experimental vintage recipes!).  Then we'll watch footage of the ball dropping somewhere in Europe and go to bed by 9:30.  We know how to do holidays right at the Reintjes house ;) 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!  How are your celebrations going?  And more importantly, who has fondue tips they want to share? 

The First Week of Advent

A better title for this might be, There's Only Two More Weeks to Christmas!  But you'd have to read it with a desperate/panicky note in your voice to get the full effect. 

Having such a late start to Advent this year felt wonderful at the time but now I see that it lured me into a false sense of security since the late start just meant a shorter season to get everything done that needs to be done.  I finished the majority of holiday shopping before Thanksgiving but there's still so much to take care of before C-Day.  Now, I suppose referring to Christmas Day as C-Day sounds a bit combatative for the birth of our savior but every mom knows that a successful Christmas season requires a detailed battle plan and I need to get working on mine. 

I feel behind after an awful migraine took me out last weekend and I didn't accomplish half the things I thought I'd be able to, but my main goal this week was to finish up our Christmas cards and, save a couple of addresses I'm still waiting on, I think I'm finally done.  Having so many friends who are also in the military means that every year we have to go through the whole address list and figure out who moved and who didn't and track down all the new addresses--one day we'll all be retired and have our nice, stable, forever homes...of course by then we won't have cute pictures of babies to include on our cards so they might not be as exciting to receive.  It always takes me forever to get our cards out because I have a deep aversion to mailing out cards that aren't at least a little bit personalized so I persevere and send out cards the new-old fashioned way--with a family picture on one side and an actual written message on the back.  It feels like the polite thing to do.  Plus I'm the worst at keeping in touch with old friends so it's also a bit of a penance.  It would go faster if I invested in a return address stamp, but alas--all the moving means I never do. 

My goals for this coming week are to finish wrapping all the gifts and to get my cookie baking done and loaded in the freezer.  I love having a freezer full of Christmas cookies ready to pull out all season long, but I really have to gear myself up to actually get baking them.  This year is even worse since I'm off gluten and I can't even eat them.  So you can think of me this week as you're baking things you might actually eat and I'm baking things that I can't and crying on the inside.  Maybe it will be a new Christmas kitchen tradition.  Or maybe someone will invent gluten-free Christmas cookies that don't taste gross. 

If I really get going, I'd also like to firm up my plans for the Twelve Days of Christmas and make a meal plan for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day dinners.  We will see! 

Do your families have food traditions for Christmas dinners?  This year I want to make a meal plan and then just always serve the same thing every year so that I can free up the mental energy involved in holiday meal planning and use it for something more important--like remembering where I left my phone or whether or not I turned on the dishwasher :)