On Keeping Christmas Going

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I know some families have already removed all traces of Christmas from their homes, but we've been keeping the Christmas festivities going strong here!  We have almost finished our annual day after Christmas puzzle, which Chris cleverly found hiding in the basement (right where I left it, I'm sure) just in the nick of time.  We drove out to a nearby Catholic shrine with a big lights display that a reader told me about and it was so cute--they even had food and a building full of international nativity sets.  The shrine is dedicated to Our Lady of La Salette whom I had never heard of before but fear not--I bought a book all about the apparition from their bookstore so I will be fully versed soon.  Or at least sometime in the next fifty years as I slowly but surely make my way through my to-be-read pile(s). 

And speaking of books, we had our annual book day which was great and involves almost no prep since I mostly just stash books for the kids in a big box in my closet as I find them throughout the year at thrift shops, estate sales, and the like and then lay them out the night before.  There was a lot of cozy reading going on in all the corners of the house today.  I found a Magic Eye book that I remembered from my own elementary school days for David and it has been confirmed that I still cannot see the pictures.  Unlike Chris who can see them all.....allegedly.

This year we also made gingerbread houses from scratch for the first time.  I found instructions online with printable patterns and it was really not any more difficult than rolling sugar cookies.  And as a bonus, the gingerbread is actually something you want to eat as opposed to whatever it is that comes in the kits I bought at Michael's in past years.  I know this from the delight in Christopher's eyes as he nibbled off the head of John's gingerbread man that he stole when John looked away for ten seconds.   Or maybe it was just the sparkle of a little boy who loves mischief.  Or perhaps it was both love of mischief and delicious homemade gingerbread.  Professional tip:  go to an actual candy store to get your supplies.  The kinds with bins of candy.  That way you can get just what you need and won't have giant bags of leftovers from the full sized bags at the grocery store.  Also they've got mini versions of most things which work better on the mini houses.  Unless you want to make your kids each of a full sized gingerbread house, which I do not recommend.  That's a lot of work.  Full sized houses can be had when said children are old enough to bake their own :)

I just love making gingerbread houses, it's one thing everyone here loves and participates in with almost no complaining.  Christmas miracles never cease. 

We've also still got Christmas cards trickling in--mostly the ones that got sent to the wrong address and had to be forwarded.  Sending and receiving Christmas cards is pretty much my favorite part of this whole season.  It's always stressful writing them all out but I'm always so glad I did.  I love to read all the updates and catch up with all of our friends and see how big everyone's children are getting.  The past two years I've said to myself that I seriously need to make a second card wreath and then each year I convince myself that this might be the year when we don't get any cards at all and how sad would it be to have two empty wreaths?    How presumptuous to assume we'd need a second?  Note to self:  next year is the year. I will finally make the second card wreath so we can actually see all of the cards, not just the top layer, and stop breaking clips off trying to stuff too many cards in one.  It's definitely going to happen.

Merry It's Still Christmas!  There's still lots of Christmas fun to be had!

On Christmas Day (and Eve)

Our church here in Vermont only has one Christmas mass at four on Christmas Eve so that's when we went.  Father asked Margaret if she would process in with him carrying the baby Jesus and place him in the manger and she was happy to oblige--although it ended up being more of a skip-dance-shuffle than a solemn procession. 

Once we got home we had our traditional feast of the appetizers and decorated the tree.  The placement of it in our little window bump-out is spectacular for outdoor viewing, but slightly less ideal for squeezing round to add ornaments while also baby wearing.  Margaret was the only one who stuck around to help to the end and every once in a while she would ask if she could have certain ornaments for her tree upstairs.  (We let her and the boys each have one of our fake potted trees that generally go on our front steps--because Chris refuses to ever be rid of them--but didn't this year due to a lack of electricity out there and our unwillingness to bother about it.)  When I walked by her room later I realized that Margaret is a Spectacular Tree Decorator.  She had taken some red ribbon and looped it around and then carefully placed each ornament so that no one section was overfull.  It really was a masterpiece of odds and ends. 

We stayed up entirely too late to get everything set up for Christmas morning and then the kids were up dark and early as usual.  Everyone had a wonderful time opening presents and I don't think we had a single flop.  Excepting of course for the licorice "candy" that my darling husband put in my stocking.  I generally think that licorice is one of the worst tasting things in the history of all candy making endeavors, but this must have been even worse.  I can't say for sure because he wouldn't let me try any after he taste-tested it.  Chris can generally eat literally anything and keep a straight face--a skill that came in very handy at the beginning of our married life--but  I wish I could show you the face he made when he put this candy into his mouth.  Alas, I was laughing so hard all of the pictures I took are blurry.  It was probably the high point of Christmas for me.  Isn't it sweet of him to try to find stocking candy for me that didn't have any processed sugar in them?  He's a keeper.  A keeper who got what he deserved for trying to give me licorice. 

We usually let the kids open their stockings and get their present from Santa first thing, then break for breakfast and coffee, and then take turns opening the other gifts--one or two more from us and then the grandparents' and aunts and uncles'.  It takes a surprisingly long time, probably because we are always losing children who want to go play with their new treasures.  The big boys ended up with quite a lego haul from one grandma and spent the rest of the morning assembling them and then guarding them from toddler attack.  There's also been a fair bit of shooting practice going on between John, who received a bow and arrow set, and Henry, who got a slingshot.  Weapons are always a big hit at our house. 

Now we just need to teach Henry to police his tiny paper ball ammunition. 

Margaret was a darling telling me over and over again how much she loved each of her gifts and how they were each the best one.  Chris thinks she's spoiled but obviously she's got a dear little grateful heart.  Yes, on Christmas Eve when the children were exchanging their secret santa gifts with each other, she may have yelled at John that the gift he bought her was "stupid," but that was clearly an anomaly.  Also, she didn't realize that it was a necklace making kit which she now thinks is amazing and not at all stupid.  I also explained to her that even if someone gave her a bag of poo, the polite thing to do is to thank them and think of something nice to say--"oh, what a distinct scent that has, how lovely it will be in my garden."  You know, in terms she could understand.  Based on her Christmas morning behavior, I think the lesson sank in.

David got a pretty epic beeswax candle making kit from Santa since he's been attempting to make his own lately so we need to make some time to work on that with him.  He generally prefers kits and projects that require actual parental oversight.  He tried to sit down with the Santa that came to the law school's winter/end-of-semester/definitely-not-favoring-any-one-religious-observance/holiday party and ask him for all of the different individual components of TNT. 

That one just cannot be trusted. 

He's just overflowing with scathingly brilliant ideas.  Like the Minecraft playing coupons he distributed to his brothers as gifts, the result of which is that they now think they can cash them in to play whenever they want.  Try explaining to very excited eight and five year olds that, no, they aren't allowed to go on a twenty- four hour video game bender just because they have an unauthorized coupon giving them permission.  It doesn't go well. 

We were going to do our own first ever family nativity play after dinner last night, but the kids were done and most of them crashed early.  Maybe we'll get to it later this week.  We've got a lot of big plans for the rest of the twelve days of Christmas including seeing some Christmas lights, making and eating gingerbread houses, our annual book and sketch pad getting days, making Christmas for the animals, and visiting family.  The family visiting also includes a ND game watch and celebrating my birthday--luckily not on the same day.  I mean, I enjoy ND football as much as the next person who prefers never to watch football on television, but I'd rather not spend my birthday doing it :)

And best of all, daddy will be home to participate in everything all through Christmas.  It's so nice to have Chris back on a student schedule!

Well, merry Christmas!  I hope you all are thoroughly enjoying yourselves!  We sure are!

On Christmas Preparations and Large, Well-Timed Projects

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I know, you've all been dying to find out if I finished Margaret's birthday peg dolls in time for Christmas.

Well worry no more!

Her favorite book is our copy of Little Red Riding Hood written and illustrated by Trina Hyman--please don't get some other Red Riding Hood picture book.  This is the best one.  The illustrations are amazing and I based the dolls off of them.  Obviously.  And if you're buying books you probably want to grab St. George and the Dragon too, also illustrated by Hyman.  It's perfection.

Those pegs were the only handmade Christmas gift I managed this year, besides stringing some beads on floral wire to decorate a dollhouse Christmas tree and making some tiny Christmas packages to go underneath it.  Margaret's getting a new dollhouse this year from my sister after an altercation between Christopher and the Chipmunk House in which he came out the victor.  I'm probably a wee bit more excited about setting it up and decorating it for Christmas tomorrow than a respectable adult should be, but what can you do?  My peg painting did inspire David to create his own peg doll gift set involving several Ninjago characters as well as hand drawn and then wood-burned backdrops on some scrap wood we had from our attic renovations.  Of course those painting sessions are what led to the toddler-in-the-white-acrylic-paint fiasco from my last post.  I'm going to say it was worth it though, for him to be so excited to create a gift for his brother.

Also we're now practicing the art of putting away our art supplies when we are not using them.

Once the crafting was all done, we finished up the Christmas cookie baking with the pièce de résistance of our annual cookie baking endeavors--the rolled sugar cookies.  Not my favorite of all Christmas cookies to eat, but the children's favorite by far--to make and to eat.  Probably because they pile them a half inch thick with extra sugar.  I mean decorations.  I'm not even sure how John managed to eat the one he stuck full sized peppermints to, but he did.  He's dedicated to his craft.

As usual I attempted to sneak in as many plain frosted stars as I could manage so that adults might actually want to ingest them.  Because unlike the children,  I'm boring.

Tomorrow we've got regular Christmas Eve things to do like decorating the tree and heading off to mass and wrapping all the presents that I probably should have already wrapped.  We've also got some un-Christmas Eve-ish things to accomplish like finishing moving all of our displaced furniture into their final places now that the boys attic bedroom is finally finished and we can get all of the rooms put together the way we had planned them.  Nothing like squeezing some ridiculously time consuming and stressful tasks into your last minute Christmas preparations.  I really want the house settled before we bring all the new Christmas goodies into the mix on Tuesday so hopefully we can get it all done.  That or I can pray for the grace to have a good attitude about leaving the house a partial mess even though it makes me feel more than a little bit crazy.  Hopefully we can get most of it done and I'll only need to pray for a little bit of grace to get me through the extra Christmas mess pilled on top of furniture rearranging mess.

I like things tidy.  It's a gift...and a curse.

Well, here's to the last day of Advent!   May it be productive--but not frantic :)

Merry almost Christmas!

On Adventing with a Toddler

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I can't believe it's a week until Christmas.  I always try to get as much as possible done before Advent begins, but even with all the Christmas cookies baked and presents bought I've still not accomplished everything I need to.  I've got a set of Little Red Riding Hood peg dolls that I promised Margaret for her birthday (!!) that need to actually be painted if they're going to be done in time for Christmas.  Secret crafting is so hard when you have a new baby and you're tired and you just want to go to bed by eight when the kids do.

I've gotten some of our decorations out but not everything because (1) Christopher is a complete rampage-er of all breakable things and this house doesn't have many high shelves/out of reach places  so I haven't put out anything glass or delicate and (2) I just don't seem to have the energy to figure out decoration placement for this one year of Christmas.  I'm not sure why I had the energy to hang a gallery wall going up our staircase knowing we'll be moving again next summer while I can't find the inner strength to figure out where to hang greenery, but there it is.  Maybe it's the lack of a fireplace that's eating away at my subconscious and destroying my desire to decorate.  Why would someone build a house in Vermont with no fireplace?  Where will the stockings go?  Is it appropriate to lock your two year old in a dog cage--just until the decorations come down?  I don't have the mental energy to deal with these burning questions.  We did hang popcorn on the tree this weekend and Christopher seems to think it's a special treat I've provided  solely for his snacking pleasure and has been nibbling it whenever I'm not looking.  I'm not sure how the ornaments will fare once they go up on Christmas Eve, but it's not looking promising.

I thought we might have actually turned a corner the other day when I went into the playroom and found him stacking blocks into towers on the back of his cars instead of throwing them.  Maybe he's a creator of things now and not just a destroyer?  Today he stole a raw egg from the fridge, snuck it upstairs into my bedroom, and then smashed it on the floor.

Perhaps he isn't quite past his urge for mayhem just yet.

We're on our last week of school before we break for Christmas and the kids are pretty much over it, but I'm powering through because we had to take off a couple weeks for the baby and I am incapable of homeschooling into June.  We've been working on some Christmas-y songs and poetry so it's still festive.  I also realized this year that I seriously need to sort through my Christmas book box.  We have two baskets and an overflow pile and it's a little of out of hand.  Sorry Christmastime for Thomas, but I think your time has come...and gone.

Also, looking at that picture of one of our book baskets I need to do some remedial dusting lessons with the kids.

When I haven't been avoiding crafting things I should be crafting, I've been attempting to finish off several books I've had sitting around partially read before the end of the year.  I got a bit distracted when Ginny mentioned a Miss Read Christmas book that she's reading and I checked my library to see if they had it here.  They didn't so I grabbed Village Christmas instead as the next best option and it was perfection.  It's a short story about two spinster sisters dealing with new neighbors who have entirely too many children for the sisters' standards.  Since it is a Christmas story it obviously ends well and everyone ends up loving all the children and even hope for more.  Being *that* family in town I really appreciated the whole thing.  The Miss Read books feel like British Mitford books so if you're into those and looking for some more light reading you'll probably enjoy them. 

Update:  Since I wrote this a certain two year old has pulled all the popcorn off the bottom of the tree, broken three nutcrackers, dumped out a tube of white acrylic paint, and I'm pretty sure I'm cancelling the rest of the weeks lessons.  Getting caught up with my reading stack while drinking hot chocolate and protecting the gifts I already wrapped counts as creating an environment of learning and intellectual pursuits, right?  Soak it up kids.

How is your Advent going so far?  Hopefully it's involving less spilled paint than mine :)

On a White Thanksgiving

We knew coming here that Vermont would be cold in the winter, but I wasn't prepared for how cold it would be in the fall.  Luckily I had the kids collect leaves before the snow came and took them all out so we were still able to wax a bunch.  I might not have been able to enjoy them outside but they've been beautifying our sun room for weeks.  We even used some to make a bit of a thankfullness tree for a centerpiece on our Thanksgiving table so I was feeling pretty accomplished that day.

We ended up having ten kids and five adults over, which was much better than just cooking dinner for ourselves.  There's nothing worse than slaving all week in the kitchen to prepare a feast that's over in ten minutes after the children nibble some plain turkey and a roll and declare themselves full.  Having experienced both, having the extra adults around to linger over the meal and chat is definitely the better way to go.

I know what you're thinking, "it's Advent, why are we discussing your Thanksgiving from last month?"  Well, I have kind of a lot of children and I'm behind on pretty much every nonessential thing on my to-do list.  At least my November pictures are very wintery?