For the Love of St. John…

Posted on December 28, 2018 by Amy

I just have to do a super quick share today. I recently got the book “Around the Year with the Von Trapp Family,” and have been poring over it and using so many ideas for liturgical year living already, just since getting it at the beginning of Advent (I highly recommend it!). One thing I love about it is that it was originally published in 1955, so the feasts and celebrations in the book are very traditional and come from a time before all the liturgical and calendar changes of the Church from the 60s/70s. As I’ve learned about lots of things in the past few years, it seems to me that many beautiful old traditions from our Faith have been lost to time and changes in the Church, and I love to learn about them and try to bring them back in our home.

One of these I learned about from the Von Trapp book is the celebration of the Feast of St.
John the Apostle. Tradition tells us that enemies of St. John gave him poisoned wine in an attempt to kill him, but when he made the sign of the cross over the wine, the cup split in half, spilling all the poisoned wine and saving him from drinking it. So, on his feast day (which was yesterday) many traditional churches have a wine blessing after Mass. I discovered that our parish was offering the wine blessing, so I went to Mass and got a bottle blessed (incidentally, most other, more seasoned people took many bottles/gallon jugs of wine for the blessing… next year I think I’ll take more than one bottle!). My main purpose in doing this was to have blessed wine for our St. John’s Blessing before dinner last night.

Here’s what we did, straight from Maria von Trapp’s book:

I poured a small glass of wine for everyone at the table old enough to be able to do the blessing as instructed (so not the two little boys!). The girls got no more than a tiny splash in their glasses, enough for two small sips. We told our kids about St. John and the poisoned wine and then my husband began the blessing. He turned to me and said, “I drink to you the love of St. John,” and I replied, “Thank you for the love of St. John.” We then clinked glasses and each took a sip. Then I turned to Miss (as the oldest child), and she and I did the same. Then she and Lass, and so on until Sis completed the circle by drinking “the love of St. John” to my husband. Then we sat down to eat, the girls got full glasses of sparkling blueberry juice, or “kids’ wine” as they call it, and we continued most of our dinner conversation discussing St. John.

It was a fun new tradition, and we will continue to do it every year.

A New Way to Do Advent

Posted on December 17, 2018 by Amy

Every year since I have been an adult with a home of my own (20 years), I have put up and decorated my Christmas tree on the day after Thanksgiving. I did it when I lived alone, and it became a tradition in our family. I have always rejected getting Christmassy in any way before Thanksgiving, but the day after? We blare the Christmas music, get out alllll the decorations, and go nuts. And then I take the tree down by New Year’s, because by then I’m sick to death of it and can’t wait to have my house back to normal.

^Photos taken on November 29, 2013^

A few years ago, I began learning more about the season of Advent, and how it is meant to be more of a season of waiting and anticipation and not a time for celebrating Christmas yet. Christmas is about the birth of Jesus, and Jesus wasn’t born the fourth Friday in November, amiright? I started feeling a yearning to resist putting up the tree right away. To not blare the Christmas music for the entire month of December. To focus more on the waiting for the Savior instead of on the hustle and bustle of the world at this time of year. And then starting Christmas celebrations on Christmas and keeping them going through Epiphany.

I have wanted to do this for the past few years, but I always chickened out. Or I caved to the pressure. Or I was too mentally lazy to figure out how to do it differently. Or some combination of all of these. I was worried how my kids would react if I changed a bunch of our holiday traditions around.

So instead, I added other things. The Advent wreath. The Jesse Tree. The empty manger with pieces of straw for the girls to add for good deeds/sacrifices to pad it for the Baby Jesus. We kept Baby Jesus out of all of our nativities until Christmas morning.

Last year I made a point of trying to extend out celebration of Christmas, by keeping the tree up through the twelve days of Christmas. And I had gifts wrapped for my girls to open for each of the twelve days (one family game for each day).

But even though we’ve added in these Advent activities and I’ve tried to extend the Christmas celebration beyond Christmas Day, we have always still put up our tree and started celebrating Christmas right after Thanksgiving.

Except this year, we didn’t.

This year, I decided we were going try hard to keep Advent focused on waiting, and then to celebrate Christmas really big and for the entirety of the season. We didn’t put up the tree the day after Thanksgiving. We are making a game of not singing Christmas music. I’m trying to start new traditions by putting more emphasis on the wonderful feasts that occur during Advent.

The girls were a little disappointed to have to wait to put up our tree, but overall, they have really taken to the new way of doing things without much resistance. We’ve kept lots of our previous traditions, like doing our Jesse Tree reading, saying prayers, and reading books around our Advent Wreath each night. We still open a book each evening to read together (most old, but a few new). And I think it helps that we’ve added in plenty of other ways of celebrating.

We had a “New Year’s Eve” party on the night before the start of Advent.

We drew names on the first day of Advent for each of us to have a Christkindl throughout the season (someone to do special, secret things for each day). We celebrated St. Nicholas Day as usual with putting our shoes out, but then also added making special Speculatius cookies for the feast.

And we went to a fun St. Nicholas party at our parish.

We had a big feast of all white food (including our dessert) for the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception.

We had a big St. Lucy Day celebration/procession this year for that feast.

I briefly entertained the idea of making Lussekatter, or St. Lucia saffron buns, for the occasion, and then decided that there was no need to go overboard. Cinnamon rolls shaped like an “S” were a fine substitute.

Then yesterday, on “the pink Sunday” we finally put up our tree.

The third Sunday of Advent, for those of you who aren’t familiar, is called “Gaudete Sunday.” “Gaudete” means “rejoice” in Latin. It is a special day in the midst of the waiting season of Advent to rejoice, because the big event, the birth of our Lord, is almost here. The liturgical color for this day is rose, which is why it’s sometimes called the pink Sunday.

I thought about waiting until Christmas Eve to put up the tree. I know some people who do this. But I figured I would try baby steps this year and just wait until Gaudete Sunday, but not turn on the lights on the tree until we get up to go to Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve.

The girls were so excited to put up the tree and even listen to Christmas music for one day while we did!

We will put up the rest of the decorations gradually this week and I’m going to try to leave them up until Candlemas (we’ll see how that goes).

I have really felt a difference this Advent. It feels more meaningful. I think we have been able to focus more on the important things. It has been a little hard, but I can honestly feel the anticipation and excitement building. Now I just hope we will be able to keep up our celebration of Christmas all the way through Epiphany and beyond, when the rest of the world is done on December 26th!

I hope you are having a wonderful Advent season. Christmas is almost here. Gaudete!!

Trying on Some New Traditions, Also Known As Liturgical Baby Steps

Posted on December 10, 2015December 10, 2015 by Amy

I love this time of year.

I always have, but since becoming Catholic, it’s even more wonderful. It’s become more packed with meaning and different ways to celebrate. I’m a lover of tradition, and we’ve begun bringing in some new traditions to our family to celebrate many of the feast days that are so abundant during Advent.

There are some old traditions that I haven’t let go of, even though many will say that a true observance of Advent means that we should. We still put up our Christmas tree and decorate it fully on the day after Thanksgiving.

Since becoming Catholic, I’ve discovered that lot of people don’t decorate their Christmas tree or do much, if any, actual Christmas celebrating until Christmas day, and then they celebrate for the 12 days after Christmas. I think that’s fantastic, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to implement that in my family, and I don’t think I really even want to.

I think that’s okay.

I do try to emphasize the waiting aspect of Advent with my kids. We have an Advent Wreath. We do a Jesse Tree, thanks to Kendra and these ornaments (I did a version of Method B, printed the images provided onto printable and ironable fabric, and then ironed them onto felt – no sewing!). We open different Christmas books during each day of Advent, that I’ve wrapped in purple or pink paper, depending on the week. We put out our shoes for the feast of St. Nicholas.

These are things that I’ve gradually added in. This is only my third religious Christmas, so I’m trying to take baby steps. I’m learning what works for us and what doesn’t. I can do an Advent wreath. I can do a Jesse tree. I can’t not decorate my Christmas tree right after Thanksgiving. It’s a family tradition that I love too much. Maybe some year, we’ll decide to move back the day we do it, but that’s not this year.

This year I’m trying to add in a few new traditions. Tuesday was the Feast (or Solemnity??) of the Immaculate Conception. The girls enjoyed providing a little bit of decoration by rounding up all the Mary statues and holy cards from around the house.

Front and center was Miss’s Immaculate Conception peg doll that she specifically requested for her birthday a couple of years ago. She was pretty excited to put that out there.

I decided to implement a new Immaculate Conception tradition of eating an all-white dinner, since the Immaculate Conception emphasizes Mary’s purity and preservation from sin. White = pure… so, dinner:

This dinner was a last minute decision, so I chose things that I could make with minimal effort. Cheese ravioli in butter, roasted cauliflower, and poached fish. The result was okay. The fish was supposed to be halibut poached in olive oil, but I couldn’t get halibut at my grocery store so I had to settle for cod. Then I burned the heck out of my olive oil and had to start over again with vegetable oil. Cod poached in vegetable oil. It was about as tasty as it sounds. BUT, the rest of the food was good and the girls really got into the reason we were eating white food, which is the whole point, obviously. And of course we had vanilla ice cream topped with white chocolate chips afterward. Over all, I’d say this is a tradition we can continue. Next year I’ll plan ahead a bit and chose a better recipe for white food though.

Yesterday we celebrated St. Juan Diego’s feast day. This one was pretty easy to do, because our parish had a “Mary Party,” with our associate pastor in attendance as Juan Diego himself.

The kids played games and made a craft and they absolutely loved it.

Saturday is the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. I’m making quesadillas for dinner, and maybe we’ll do some sort of craft. We’ll read a book about her that the girls will open that morning.

Sunday is St. Lucy’s feast day. This one always seems like it has so much potential for fun celebrating, but I just can’t bring myself to make saffron buns from scratch. Maybe I’ll try at least making cinnamon rolls the way Lacy suggests in this post as something different and special to mark the day. I can probably even manage to craft St. Lucy crowns with my girls or something.

You can see I really plan this stuff in advance.

I think the point for me is that I’m trying to gradually add in more activities that acknowledge the beauty of all our Church has for us to celebrate this season, hoping that these things will become traditions for us and that my girls will look forward to them each year. I try to do this all year long, but this season is special because there’s so much potential.

If we don’t make funny-shaped cinnamon rolls or paper candle crowns on Sunday, I’m not going to beat myself up. We have a book about St. Lucy and I’ll print out a coloring page and call it good. I don’t want observance and celebration of the liturgical stuff to be stressful for me or for them.

Baby steps, right?

Merry Christmas and Stuff

Posted on December 26, 2014 by Amy

Merry Christmas!

We’ve been on a crazy ride of illness, travel, and dog potty training that has led to very few posts this holiday season. I’m sorry.

In spite of the fact that in the past two weeks three of us had a stomach virus, and then three of us had what I originally thought was a really bad cold but was probably a vaccine-dampened version of the flu (yes, I ended up with both of the bugs), our travel plans did not get disrupted, nor did our celebrating. Everyone stopped puking and was fever-free before we needed to leave for the first leg of our travel (we packed a bucket just in case). And I suffered through the flu while my husband drove nine hours on the second leg. No one was sick for Christmas Eve or Christmas Day!

Here are a few highlights of our travels and fun. We celebrated with my in laws last weekend. The girls loved their presents and enjoyed lots of family time.

The weekend was packed with activities and playing. The girls really made the most of it.

We have been at my parents’ house this week, where the girls have had more fun playing with more cousins. We spent Christmas Eve with my brother’s family.

The girls were so tired when we put them to bed. Still, I could hardly believe it when I woke up on Christmas morning, after 8am, and my kids weren’t even awake yet. We had to wake up Sis once her sisters were up and ready to go.

We had our sacrifice manger, with all the straw the girls filled it up with during Advent, under the tree with our homemade Baby Jesus in it for them.

Of course, they were excited to run to the tree to see what Santa had left too. Sis had a little bit of hard time adjusting to being awake once the initial excitement had passed.

The favorite gifts seem to have been the light-up Frozen dresses, Miss’s sewing kit from my mom, Sis’s jewelry, and their Baby Alive dolls.

It was a great week and a fun and relaxing Christmas.

Because of the sicknesses and travel, we didn’t get to do a few of the fun things I had wanted to do. Fortunately, since becoming Catholic, I have learned that many Catholic folks actually really start their Christmas celebrating on Christmas Day and go at it for 12 days. So, this year I’m going to count the twelve days of Christmas (starting with Day 3 tomorrow because the idea to do this is just occurring to me, I’m still learning this stuff) and get caught up on even more fun Christmas-y things for the next ten days. We have cookies to bake and lights to go see in the park and other cool stuff we can do.

Merry Christmas!

7QT Why I Don’t Threaten my Kids with the “Naughty List” at Christmas

Posted on December 19, 2014December 19, 2014 by Amy

A few years ago I heard a story about a friend who said to her daughter, who was about 4 or 5 at the time, “If you’re not good, Santa won’t bring you presents!” The little girl replied with something like, “Yes he will. I wasn’t good last year and he still did anyway.”

When Christmas gets close, I don’t tell my girls that they need to be good or Santa won’t come. I don’t tell them than an elf is watching them and reporting back to the big guy so they’d better behave. We do have an elf. Ours is Christopher Pop-In-Kins, who was recommended to me by Super Friend (he isn’t as popular as “Elf on the Shelf,” but he was actually the original, coming out in 1985, 20 years before the more commonly seen elf).

Our tradition is that we decorate our tree on the day after Thanksgiving. Then my girls put their letters to Santa into our, appropriately named, “Letters to Santa” ornament that my mom got for them when Miss was really little. In the morning, the letters are gone, the Christopher Pop-In-Kins book is under the tree, and Christopher (Lass always calls him “Mary Poppins”) is hiding somewhere in the house. He moves every night, but doesn’t get up to goofy shenanigans, because I don’t have the energy or desire to create elf messes and then clean them up again.

The Christopher Pop-In-Kins book does mention that he is a helper for Santa, and that he keeps and eye on kids and reports back to Santa before Christmas Eve. It doesn’t make a big issue out of it though, focusing more on how much Christopher likes little children and wants to be able to visit them. The book doesn’t say that Santa won’t come if Christopher tells him the kids were naughty.

I try to make our elf more of a fun little tradition and less of a “He’s watching you and telling Santa everything, so you better be good” kind of behavioral control. I don’t talk to my kids about being on Santa’s “naughty list,” and I don’t tell them that if they don’t behave, Santa won’t come. I’m not judging people who do do this. I get why they do. Before thinking about it a bit more in recent years, I used to occasionally make comments like, “I wonder what Santa would think about that behavior.” But it never quite felt right for me, so I don’t do it anymore. Here’s why:

I don’t really like the idea of Santa having a punitive role. He’s a happy, jolly fellow. No need to make him the bad guy.
I think it can be a little harder for kids to be on their best behavior at this time of year. Often they’re getting less sleep, or schedules are disrupted by activities. There’s so much excitement and hype (and sugar!) around them. That’s not to say I don’t still expect my kids to behave, but I try to be understanding of it being a little harder.
I try to emphasize that Christmas is about more than getting gifts. My girls write a letter to Santa every year and in it they’re allowed to ask him for one thing. Then I try to talk to them about all the more important things about Christmas. It seem that if I repeatedly remind them that they have to be good so Santa will bring them presents, that keeps the focus of the season on getting presents instead of the other things I want them to be focused on.
I prefer immediate and definite consequences for inappropriate behavior. The threat of Santa not bringing presents, because it’s mom or dad saying what Santa might do (or not do in this case), isn’t immediate or definite.
I try to make it a general rule not to threaten consequences that I’m not willing to enforce. I’m not willing to take away my kids’ Christmas presents, so I don’t threaten that “Santa” will do it, when I know he won’t (see the story above about my friend’s little girl!).
I think the admonishments to kids that they must “be good” at Christmas time to avoid being placed on the “naughty list” are too vague. It isn’t realistic to expect kids to not misbehave in any way for the whole month of December (or November too, depending when folks start talk of Santa). What is the cutoff point? How many times to they have to be “naughty” to get on the list? Can they get off it once they’re on it? How do they know? Seems kind of anxiety-producing to me, and there’s no need for added stress during the holidays, in my opinion.
I want my kids to realize that they should work on being on their best behavior all the time, not just to get something from Santa. When my kids asked me a few weeks ago, “Do we have to be good so Santa will come?” I replied, “No. You have to be good because that’s what we do. We always try to be our best all the time, not just for Santa.”

So. This are my two cents about Santa and the “naughty list.” Even still, because of the brief mention in the Christopher Pop-In-Kins book and the common theme of “be good or else…” in songs and Christmas movies, my girls have an idea in their heads that they need to be good for Santa. When we went to see him last week, Lass asked him, “How do you know who’s good and who’s bad?” He replied that his elves help him. I didn’t mind that she asked him that or that he replied in that way.

I don’t necessarily want them to think that Santa has no interest in children having good behavior. I’m just not going to threaten them that he’ll leave them out on Christmas if they don’t have it all the time.

Linking up with Kelly at This Ain’t the Lyceum for Seven Quick Takes Friday!

Seasonal Successes (and failures)

Posted on December 10, 2014December 14, 2014 by Amy

I love this time of year.

Last year was my first time in a long time of celebrating Christmas as a religious holiday rather than just a secular one. I tried to add in all the Catholic things (Advent wreath, Jesse tree, St. Nicholas day and other feast days, etc) while keeping everything we had been doing before (visiting Santa, baking Christmas cookies, our Advent calendar experiences, etc). I ended up feeling a little overwhelmed, but we had a fun time anyway. I enjoyed learning about and beginning some new traditions.

This year, I am feeling utterly overwhelmed by it all. I don’t know why exactly. Maybe it’s because we’re doing real homeschooling (beyond preschool), part-time Catholic school, and have just gotten two puppies. Maybe it’s because we are going to be traveling for the week of Christmas, so I have had to ship almost all of our gifts to my parent’s house and have less time to get everything done before we leave. I don’t know what my problem is. But I’ve decided that I just have to let some things go if I want to maintain my sanity and keep focused on what is really important about Christmas.

One example of letting things go: From the moment we got our decorations out, I decided the Advent calendar of years past, with a different fun experience for each day, was going to have to bite the dust. I hung it up. I just didn’t do anything else with it (I didn’t even take out the cards from last year!).

I just can’t do that one anymore.

I have had some nice successes in my efforts at seasonal celebrating and observances. And also some plans that seemed fabulous in my head and then were just big flops. For example:

*I made some lovely new ornaments for our Jesse Tree and ordered a book to go with them (courtesy of Kendra, how awesome is she to share?). I also got the DVD from Holy Heroes with cute little videos for each day with the readings. Unfortunately, we haven’t actually done the readings (or watched the video segment) since day 5 (5 days ago).

*I made it to Mass with my children for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception on Monday. I set Miss’s Immaculate Conception Saint Anne doll on the counter in place of honor and talked to the girls about the meaning of the Immaculate Conception (Mary’s conception, not Jesus’s).

Unfortunately, I didn’t manage to do any other activities I had planned to commemorate the day. No special dinner. No dessert. I didn’t even get around to giving them the coloring page I have had ready to go in our liturgical year binder for months.

*I wrapped Christmas books for each day of Advent, in purple and pink to go with each week. We have kept up with the daily opening of the books, but we haven’t done a great job of keeping up with the reading of them. Which kind of misses the point, right? Geez.

*I rocked St. Nicholas’s feast day. The girls put their shoes on the hearth and they each got a couple of these adorable little saint dolls, some chocolate coins, a Veggie Tales Christmas DVD, and a Twilight Turtle (they have always loved their cousins’ turtles, and I got them on sale from Zulily).

St. Nicholas left a note explaining that he hopes the stars/light from the turtles will remind the girls of how God created the heavens and earth and stars and sun and everything else, and also of how Jesus’s light is always with them. Huge. Hit. We watched DVDs about Saint Nicholas and read books about him. Unfortunately, I forgot that I had some new play nativities for the girls I had planned to leave as Saint Nicholas gifts as well. They’re still sitting in my basement.

*I took the big girls to see The Nutcracker. It was a special date they have been looking forward to. They loved the Nutcracker stories we read last year and our trip to the local art museum that has a beautiful Nutcracker display throughout. It really was fun, though a touch long for them.

Unfortunately, though I had purchased a new Nutcracker book for them this year, we didn’t manage to read it before going to the ballet, so the girls kept asking, “Who is that? What’s happening now?” because the whole story wasn’t fresh in their minds (nor in mine).

They still loved it, and have been playing “Nutcracker” ever since. With costumes even. Lass is usually Clara or the Sugar Plum Fairy. Miss is usually the Nutcracker:

In addition to all the above partial successes, I have also managed to get most of my shopping done, to make a couple of Christmas crafts with the girls, and to remember to move our elf every night (except for that one time when Lass came down early and said, “Hey! He’s still in that same spot!” and I convinced her that she had just woken up too early and needed to go back to bed for a little while to give him time to decide where to go).

See? Lots of successes.

I tend to have big ideas about all the amazing things I want to do with my kids at this time of year. Then reality comes calling and I have to make adjustments. Instead of fretting about not doing enough, I’m working on just being happy with where we are. I could get caught up in doing activities and crafting and baking and going here and there to see and do, but then I would be missing the whole point. I spent ten years missing the whole point, so I don’t want to do that anymore.

We will probably catch up on our Jesse Tree readings/ornaments tomorrow morning. I’ll make more of a point to read the Christmas books we open each day and the ones we missed. We’ll go see Santa, and go to the Nutcracker display at the museum, and bake cookies, and make more crafts, and observe the feast days of Our Lady of Guadalupe and Saint Lucy. And if we miss something, it will be fine. Because we won’t miss celebrating Jesus’s birth most of all.

Remembering the whole point of it all has been one of my very favorite successes.

A Thanksgiving Recap and Advent Intro

Posted on December 1, 2014 by Amy

Thanksgiving was amazing. It really was. We invited our dear friends to join us for dinner. I spent all day cooking. The girls helped me. They made decorations, which we promptly forgot to move into the kitchen/table area.

Good food. Great friends. Memories made.

It is truly a blessing when friends are like family.

As I always do, I resisted focusing on Christmas until Thanksgiving was over. I think Thanksgiving is important, and I like to let it have its day.

But come Friday, I’m ready to move on. I love our tradition of decorating the Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving.

We’re singing Christmas carols and setting up nativities and trying to get a photo for the Christmas card.

And we’re getting into our Advent focus. I’m really relieved by how much easier Advent is this year. Everything just feels less confusing and overwhelming. I mostly understand what to do with my Advent wreath/candles. I have a decent grasp of what the Jesse tree is all about. This year I don’t need to look up words like “Annunciation,” and “Immanuel,” and “Epiphany,” and I’m confident in my ability to tell the Christmas story to my kids. In fact, they can tell it themselves just as well, which makes me very happy.

Though we’re still doing lots of Christmas-y things, I’m trying hard to keep a good focus on the purpose of Advent too – prayerfully anticipating.

I have so much to be thankful for. And so much to look forward to.

Bumpy Christmas

Posted on December 25, 2013December 25, 2013 by Amy

Merry Christmas! Our day was wonderful and joyful and kind of rocky. I always like to imagine that our holidays will be Hallmark perfect, with everyone happily playing and rejoicing and enjoying each other. We had some of that, but some of the not-so-perfect stuff too. It was kind of a bumpy Christmas.

As promised, baby Jesus:

I enjoyed playing Santa last night. My husband enjoyed that I didn’t buy anything with “some assembly required” this year.

This morning, ready to go…

Trying to eat the big guys’s leftovers:

Toy packaging is absurd.

The girls each got a nutcracker and were thrilled with them.

We have princesses…

Miss loved her little wooden Saint Cecilia doll:

Sis got a baby doll, and her favorite thing from the box was the spoon. “Poon! Poon!” She’s sleeping with it as I type this.

She also wanted to constantly play with “Baby Cheesis.”

Miss loved her fairies and her Elsa and Jasmine dolls. But she refused to take them out of the boxes and played with her sister’s new dolls instead.

We had a lovely, soft snowfall all morning.

It was all so idyllic. Until about 10:30 am.

Lass randomly threw a rubber ducky (of all things) into the air and hit Miss in the eye. In spite of her Daddy being able to find and retrieve a small speck of something from her eye and then flushing it with water, she still could barely open it and complained of pain for quite a while.

She ended up taking a trip to the emergency room with her Dad to have it checked out. Can I just take a moment to comment on how hard it is to stay at home while your child goes to the ER? My husband is a medical professional, and knows the ER doctors, so it made more sense for him to take her. And there was no way we were getting a babysitter on Christmas. So. I stayed home with Sis and Lass, who bawled because her sister had to leave her, and I fretted for the entire time that my girl was gone.

Of course she was in good hands, and she got the royal treatment at the hospital. Poor girl has a corneal abrasion.

The rest of the day was kind of a wash. We put on Christmas movies all evening to distract her from the pain, and to distract all of them from the fact that my prime rib dinner took forever to finish cooking, so we didn’t eat dinner until more than an hour after our usual dinner time.

But. Dinner was delicious. My biggest girl is now snoozing peacefully after her Daddy snuggled her until she fell asleep. I’m staring at a big mess of wrapping bags and presents strewn about my floor around the tree, and I’m not cleaning it up. I have a glass of wine and some time with my hubby.

In spite of the bumps, it was a great day. It was a beautiful mess of a day. This Christmas season has been extra special for me. I’ve spent a lot of time today thinking about what Christmas means to me now. I have so much to be grateful for.

I hope you had a joyful Christmas too (minus the bumps).

Random Christmas Catch-Up

Posted on December 24, 2013 by Amy

I haven’t felt like writing much this past week. I guess I’ve just been savoring Christmas time.

I think this post will likely end up being a jumble of thoughts on our Christmas-ing thus far. Such as: I’m thankful we got to spend time with extended family this past weekend, in spite of the nasty weather for traveling. My girls love seeing their cousins.

Cousins and aunts and uncles are an essential part of Christmas. I remember Christmas gatherings with my cousins when I was little.

That’s me, front and center. ^^ In the red suit (??). Weird, but I really, really loved that red suit.

I have to admit, there is a part of me that longs to hunker down, snuggle in, and stay home during Christmas. But I would absolutely never take away these cousin times from my girls. We make a point to visit and spend time with family all year, but there’s something special about the memories of Christmas with tons of family members around.

Essential.

In other random holiday news:

Tonight I will go to my first ever Christmas Eve mass. I’ve never been to church at Christmas. Even though it will be packed and we will have to wrestle Sis throughout the service since the nursery won’t be open, I am really looking forward to it.

My Mother-in-law gave me the coolest gift this year. I don’t even really know what to call it,

but it is delightful. It has the figures of the Nativity on it, and the heat from the candles makes it spin. We lit it up on Sunday after we lit our four Advent candles. I think in the future we’ll do it along with our Advent wreath each week. It spins faster the more candles are lit! It will be a new tradition.

We made a crazy amount of Christmas cookies last week to take and share with family over the weekend.

^^Miss wanted to make a baby Jesus cookie for everyone in the family.

I am thankful that we have plenty leftover. I had made a random and stupid comment to the girls that if we ran out we could just make more to put out for Santa on Christmas Eve. I’m really glad we don’t need to make more.

I love time in the kitchen with my girls, but decorating cookies is not my favorite holiday tradition. I would have liked it better if we didn’t have so many cookies to decorate so late at night, I think. Note to self for next year.

I still have to make a baby Jesus doll to put in our manger under the tree in the morning. I was going to buy one, but they are expensive!! The girls are very interested in the fact that I’m making one.

Try to share my vision. I swear it will be a baby Jesus by tonight.

We’ve been filling our manger (also homemade, just a wooden box that I painted brown) with a piece of “hay” (raffia) for each kind gesture the girls make. They get excited to see how soft the bed is that they’re making for baby Jesus.

Except for my procrastination on making the baby Jesus, which I’ll do after the girls go to bed tonight, I’m ready for Christmas. The presents are wrapped. Dinner is planned and will be relatively easy. I’m all set to make creamed eggs for breakfast. I’m excited to just enjoy my husband and girls tonight and tomorrow. Merry Christmas!

Joy to the World

Posted on December 19, 2013 by Amy

I love Christmas carols. Love them. I am nearly incapable of doing something Christmas-related without turning on my favorite holiday tunes. In fact, when I was wrapping gifts the other night, my husband was listening to some (quite lovely) classical music. It just didn’t feel right. So I grabbed my phone, plugged in my ear buds and started jamming to “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas.”

When I decorate the tree, wrap presents, bake Christmas cookies, I must listen to Christmas carols. And to be honest, I listen to them any other time I get the chance too, or just sing my favorites at random wherever I happen to be. I’m the annoying lady singing along with the songs playing in the stores. Love me some Christmas carols.

I’ve been this way as long as I can remember. My Mom and I listened to Johnny Mathis Christmas music while making no-bake cookies for her bunco group every year, and the tradition kind of stuck. You know I am a Christmas tradition junkie. And I have music in my head constantly, so this is the perfect time of year to just sing out loud as much as I want (so sorry if you happen to see me in a store).

My favorite carols? Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, I’ll Be Home for Christmas, Chestnuts Roasting... I’ve also always loved Give Me Your Love for Christmas and What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve? which I think are solely Johnny Mathis songs, though I’m not positive. Perhaps oddly, other songs that I have always included among my favorites are JM’s musical rendition of the Our Father (which is actually how I came to know the prayer by heart long before ever actually praying it), Do You Hear What I Hear?, Silent Night, and my all-time favorite, The Little Drummer Boy (which may or not be responsible for my previously-vaguely-held half-belief that there was a drummer boy involved in the story of Jesus’s birth).

Even when I didn’t believe in the story told in these songs or the God praised in them, I still loved the music and tradition of them. I’d sing along to them every year, without giving a thought to what they were about. “Joy to the World,” “Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” “O Holy Night”… I’d sing them all loud and proud and never stop to consider the beauty of the songs beyond the tune. I didn’t think about the words, so half the time I sang them incorrectly (“Long lay the word, in sin and err opiiiiiining…”)

But this year. This year, oh how I love these songs. This year I have a new appreciation for how truly beautiful they are.

My new favorite is O Come, O Come, Emmanuel. I purchased some new Christmas music from iTunes this year specifically with this song in mind. I have to admit, I still don’t entirely understand what it means, but it’s so haunting and joyful at the same time. I can’t get enough of it.

The wonders and joys of Christmas are multiplying for me this year. Joy to the world.