Kicking Off the Season

I've been excited to start the countdown to Christmas this year; we could use some good holiday cheer around our new home. Thanksgiving weekend always signifies the start of the holiday season for me, with the decorations coming out, the tree going up, and carols playing night and day on Pandora and the radio, but this year, we couldn't wait. With the roller coaster of emotions that has been our reality for the last couple months, I thought we needed a little boost and busted out the Christmas songs a couple weeks early. How sad can you be while Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree or riding on a one-horse open sleigh? I know that we all felt a little better looking forward to Christmas.

Christmas in Livermore

This fall has been full of big changes, and that means this Christmas is going to be important for our family. We sold our house, left our friends and neighbors who have been like family for the 8 1/2 years we were in NC, and moved across the country just a few weeks ago. Our past traditions will have to be adapted, and new places explored, and new people invited to make memories with us. It's a chance to focus on our family and find ways to have the spirit of Christmas with us, wherever we are. As we seek out Christmas, we can make this our home and I hope that on the other side of the holidays, we will feel a little happier about living here.

A Day in the Life

Post Christmas, our days are pretty lazy. No school, no work, and not too many plans of any sort.

7:13--Birds wake me up, but everyone else is still asleep, so I stay in bed, reading.

7:45--Stirrings from the boys' room. Escalates in volume within minutes.

8:15--Bean gets up, various people in and out of our bed for the next half hour.

9:00--We finally get some breakfast on the table. This morning, it's oatmeal. We need something healthy before the sugar comes out.

9:30--Kids are busy crafting and playing, being loud, as always. We remind them that they have to actually put on clothing today because they're going to meet up with friends for the day.

10:15 Everyone is dressed and heading out the door. Steve takes the older two to see the Penguins of Madagascar with friends, Peanut and I head to Target to see if they have any good Christmas clearance.

11:30--Peanut and I finished our errands and come home to play Legos and have lunch.

1:00--Peanut is down for a nap and I spend the next hour surfing the web.

2:00--Steve comes home after leaving the kids to go home with their friends to play at their farm.

3:00--Steve and I head out to the garage. It's a relatively warm day and the garage has needed cleaning for awhile now.

3:30--Peanut wakes up and comes out to play. Not as much work is happening, but we slowly get things sorted back into their places as Peanut builds forts and obstacle courses and gets bikes out.

5:30--I go back inside to start making dinner.

6:00--Big kids come home after hours of running wild, playing magic games, and sword fighting. They're going to sleep good tonight!

7:00--Dinner is finally ready. Meals tend to all be later than normal without the school schedule to keep us on track. Bean soup, with ham, because we still have a LOT of ham left from Christmas.

7:30--Kids all run off, trying to sneak more play time out of the day before we wrangle them into bed. I run to Redbox to get a movie.

8:00--Finally get everyone headed to bed. Steve reads to Peanut while I read How to Eat Fried Worms to the older two.

8:30--Everyone's in bed. Bean is reading (and will forget to turn off her light if we don't go back up in half an hour to stop her.) Steve and I watch the latest X-Men movie. We used to be good at keeping up with movies as they come out, but it's gotten harder and harder to fit one in between when the kids go to bed and when I fall asleep.

11:30--I'm still awake, scanning Facebook and reading, which is not normal, but knowing that no one should be waking up before 7 makes me feel like I can afford to stay up. It's going to be hard to get back to normal next week!

Boxing Day

We may not celebrate Boxing Day in the U.S., but our family certainly has our December 26th traditions, and honestly, it's one of my favorite days of the whole season.

While the weeks leading up to Christmas are full of anticipation and planning, crafting and shopping, wrapping and decorating, and Christmas itself is full of surprises and excitement, the day after Christmas is pure indulgence.

The kids usually sleep in from the sheer exhaustion of Christmas Day. We hang out in our pajamas as long as we like. We eat leftovers and cookies and candy all day. We play with new toys, read new books, watch a movie.

 This year, the kids spent much of the day bouncing on the new trampoline which temporarily took up residence in our family room because Santa thought that was really funny.

The laziness of the day is pure awesomeness and I look forward to getting to rest after the crazy month previous.

'Twas the Night Before Christmas

Every year I try to plan for a relaxed, family centered Christmas Eve, and every year, it is a crazy day filled with frantic last minute gift making (and even some buying by some members of the family), grocery shopping (along with the rest of the city), cleaning, deliveries, and baking.

This year was no exception, and I was a little frustrated with some of the tasks that I felt others were pushing on me, but in the end, I was spending time with my family. Maybe we didn't get to make a puzzle or play games as I'd hoped, but I did get some one-on-one time with each of the kids as Bean and I finished a present for her youngest brother, and Bug and I finished one for his dad, and Peanut and I always have moments through the day.

I snuck away for a couple hours to deliver a few plates of goodies to the ladies from church who I try to visit each month, and it ended up being a nice time alone in the car, away from all the noise at the house which was starting to turn me into the Grinch, and a good visit with the one woman who I found home that afternoon.

Maybe my favorite part of the evening was lying down with the kids, who'd chosen to all sleep in the boys' bedroom, as they drifted off to sleep. I fell asleep for sure before Bean, and maybe before Bug, too, so I got a much needed nap to see me through the couple hours of work I still had waiting for me (I was pulling the last tray of rolls from the oven at midnight), but in the moments right before we all began drifting off to dreamland, it was fun being with the kids as they wound down from the excitement that had been building all day on the most anticipation-filled day of the year.

Maybe next year will be different. Maybe the planning ahead will actually happen, or maybe I'll embrace the chaos and quit expecting anything different, but either way, Christmas Eve will have moments of happiness along with the frustration. Of that, I am sure.

Stockings Hung

What started as convenience, because we didn't have hangers for our stockings when we moved to this house that actually had a mantle, has become strong rooted tradition for our kids. The stockings are hung by the window with care each December. And there they stay until Santa comes along to fill them. They do get rearranged occasionally, or borrowed to be used as actual socks, through out the month, but hung at the windows is where they belong.

Spirit of Christmas

I do not think of myself as a musical person. I can't sing particularly well, can't pick out the intricacies of the music, and don't really play any instruments. But music has always been something that touches me. I have strong memories associated with a lot of different songs, and even a new song can touch me and immediately cause me to think about certain things.

This time of year, this means that our church Christmas program is one of my favorite celebrations of the season. There's a lot of beautiful music and I always end up feeling the true spirit of Christmas, remembering that the first Christmas gift came when a little baby was born a long time ago. This Sunday proved to be no exception.

We had a few very talented people sing for us as well as the children which is special in it's own way. One woman in our congregation has the most amazing voice and brought me to tears as I listened to her sing The First Noel. What had been a hectic morning where I lost my cool trying to get the kids out the door on time for church turned into a peaceful reminder of what is truly important (and making it to church on time at the expense of my kids feelings isn't).

The feeling followed me through much of the day, as I shared the symbolism of Christmas with the 8 year olds I teach at church (and they actually listened!), as I celebrated winter solstice with my family, as we watched Mr. Krueger's Christmas and listened to Christmas music, and then later, as Steve and I introduced one of our favorite movies of all time to our oldest child, It's a Wonderful Life.

I'm glad that I can be reminded each year, that along with all the parties, crafts and searching for the perfect gifts, Christmas is about something else, too. From the words of How The Grinch Stole Christmas: He puzzled and puzzed till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before. Maybe Christmas, he thought... doesn't come from a store. Maybe Christmas, perhaps... means a little bit more.