Heaven and nature sing!
What a wonderful Christmas we are having. I am so grateful to be together as a family -- Patrick has almost two weeks off work, he has finished his school work for the next while and we can just enjoy each other's company, open our home to friends from away, and eat copious amounts of chocolate.
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One of my favourite traditions:
We hold off decorating the tree, or even erecting it, until Christmas Eve day.
In all honesty, it has taken me a few years to get used to this. I felt a real sadness and envy in previous years that other families were already enjoying Christmas-y stuff, and we were slugging away at Advent penances (not especially gruelling ones because I am a wimp ; merely abstaining from playing Christmas music and indulging in Christmas treats and chocolates, decorating with a bit of purple fabric and boughs) right until the end.
But now it feels just right. It's become part of our family life. (I love how I feel a real "Craine-ness" emerging in our family, instead of Patrick and I trying to awkwardly mush our family-of-origin traditions together.) And in all seriousness, this teeny effort on our part to hold back the tide of 'holiday-mania' (as opposed to Christmas tide) means we are able to enjoy the 12 days of Christmas without being tired of it all.
Even the Christmas ornament clutter looks fun and festive
He found the Baby Jesus hiding in Daddy's desk. Look he pleased he is!
Yes, his shirt is backwards, because 3 1/2 year old boys insist on dressing themselves.
(I prefer to let him, and have people think I'm lazy...
because another one of my mantras {along with "At least it tastes good!"} is "It's not lazy, it's Montessori!")
Isaiah declaring "Babee Jeeee!" with a bit of pizza in the other hand, just for good measure
He was in charge of placing Baby Jesus in the manger on the morning of Christmas Eve, then Daddy blessed the creche, and the tree, and went ahead and decorated it
Lovely tree, with presents awaiting two sweet children
(I took this photo at about 12:30 am on Christmas Day after Patrick and I got everything set up. This was the earliest we had ever finished up on Christmas Eve, so we both were feeling pretty smug)
My little Jesse tree ornaments find a new home on the Christmas tree
Can't you almost smell that evergreen goodness?
Our early Christmas present:
My parents gave us their old piano!
The day before Christmas Eve, a few strapping, generous male friends of ours hoisted this massive lug onto a dolly, onto a truck, and drove it from the city way, way out to the boonies where we live, amidst a snowstorm to boot!
We are so blessed by their sacrifice of time and back muscles!
While neither Patrick nor I play with any prowess, we both read music. And we are determined to have music be a part of our family life.
I am so, so so looking forward to signing our kids up for piano lessons!
Stockings made with love by my aunt
Awaiting eager fingers to pry them open
(Blurry; forgive me)
A rare moment of silence, almost reverence, from Isaiah
as he took in the tree first thing in the morning
Isaiah quickly caught on to the gift opening excitement, and would say "Ahh!" as soon as any present was unveiled, whether for him or someone else
(Actually he said "Ahh!" when the waitress brought our lunch to the table at Swiss Chalet yesterday. He is impressed by the simple things in life, I guess)
Another favourite moment:
Noah gave me a gift this year, with no prompting from anyone else.
He won a little bell with Santa on it at at his preschool Catechism class and decided right then and there he would give it to me for Christmas "so Mommy can have her own bell for our Christmas Bells walk!"
He also wrapped it himself.
This sweet boy.
His sweet brother.
They take my breath away sometimes.
Christmas morning brunch.
Bacon, eggs, orange juice in champagne glasses, blackberries and cantaloupe
Also, ignore the pile of clutter in the left corner and focus on the joy radiating from these three fellows.
That's what I did, and I only noticed as I went to post this.
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When Patrick and I were coming home after dinner with my parents on Christmas Day, I asked him what his favourite part of it all was, and he said "In all honesty, when it was just the four of us at home."
I agreed.
Every year we have had Christmas Eve dinner with my in-laws, then Mass, then presents and breakfast at home followed by our Bells walk (one of my other favourite traditions!), followed by Christmas Day Mass, followed by brunch and gifts with my in-laws and then gifts and turkey dinner with parents. Does that list exhaust you, too?
It's become a little much for all of us, most especially the boys. They miss naps, eat too much junk, are shuttled around for long car rides, get to bed late, and most of all, get deluged with so much stuff all crammed in to one of the holiest and family-centred feasts of the year. We want dearly to make Christmas not just about gifts, but having gift-opening with us, and then two sets of grandparents (with aunt and uncles and great aunts thrown in there) all in one day is making that kind of impossible.
I think next year, we will keep to our own little selves on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and see the rest of the family during the other eleven days of Christmas. We love our parents dearly (very dearly!) and so do our children, but to properly enjoy their company at Christmas, we need to scale back a bit and be more rested.
Merry Christmas to all of you!
A very wonderful Craine Christmas. There is a blessing and a curse to having both sides of the family within driving distance. We have never had to spend Christmas day driving around or sitting down to more than one turkey dinner. I always enjoy when my parents are here and they get to wake up with us on Christmas morning. We are very specific with both sets of parents about gifts and this is the first year that we didn't feel overwhelmed by gifts or plastic. All of this said, I do envy you the closeness of family. Great photos. Thank you for keeping up the posts.
ReplyDeleteFor the most part, of course, having them so close is a blessing. A huge, huge blessing. Not just at Christmas but on a week-by-week basis.
ReplyDeleteI am pretty certain I would be terribly homesick for them during these holidays if they WEREN'T so close, something I have been naturally thinking about a lot in the last while.
We are actually very intentional about what gifts we buy our kids, and very specific about what gifts we'd like them to receive. But it seems a little awkward to try and give that speech to some relatives from away who send them gifts every year, even though they have only met them once. I mean talk about looking a gift-horse in the mouth!
I really like the gifts they get, and so do they, but it's the volume of them, all opened in a single day, that overwhelms me. We were inspired when Noah was just a baby by a blogger who said she gives her kids three simple gifts at Christmas, in honour of the three Wise Men. We've been doing that every year. What we FORGOT, though, was that she said they were only allowed to open these three gifts period. Any gifts from extended family were stockpiled until Epiphany. We might do likewise in the following years.
So in my pious "we'll keep to ourselves" diatribe, the ideal would be to live close by, and have the boundaries and expectations set up that we could do our own thing a bit, and then see each other when it made sense for our children's schedules. Packing them into a car and driving three province's away to celebrate Christmas sounds dreadful, even if it means we get to have some time for just us.
What about spacing the gifts out over the 12 days? I have always thought that if we had a tone of gifts (which we don't) I would divvy them up over the 12 days of Christmas to keep celebrating in kid/gift language. Also, I imagine that when you live away from the families, you will be incredibly happy when you don't have time to yourself;) Although you will also be glad to get back to a routine when they pull out of the driveway. There is no perfection, is there?
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