Oh December. I love you. You're always over just so darn fast. Every year I'm sure I'll enjoy it more if I find as many Christmassy things to do as possible and simply drench our calendar full of them. I have this feeling that I have basically typed the same thing about Christmas time every December in this blog, but since it's still true I typed it yet again.
We had a lovely month of celebration. We indeed were extremely busy and even still there was a lot we didn't get to. But it was a wonderful year. One of the first treats of Christmas was a surprise visit from our friend Mary with whom we tree-hunt every year. They brought us a big box which I felt sheepish about - we don't usually do anything for them! But when we opened it we saw why they couldn't help but get this for us - check out the blanket Mary and her daughter found at a fun market. It's perfect!! It's just like it's us in our red Land Cruiser collecting our tree. We love it. Softest blanket, sweetest friends.
Early in December we took a day to zip down to St. George just for one night. Between ward Christmas parties and friend's birthday parties, we only had one night when we could do it, and even then we ended up leaving Chase home by himself. He misses this one friend's birthday party every single year due to the tree trip, and because this year the party didn't fall on the same weekend as the tree trip we just couldn't make him miss it again. He's 15. We were a little nervous about leaving him home but he was at the party until late and went to church the next morning on his own so it all worked out. The reason the rest of us went down was because Peter's daughter was in a local production of the musical of A Christmas Story. She had a little speaking part and everything; she was one of the kids in the classroom and was on stage rather a lot. It was a very small old town-hall type building, but the seats were set all around and the stage was actually the floor of the place, not up on the tiny actual stage down at the far end. It was a delightful show and we had so much fun getting down there, enjoying dinner together then watching the play. What a treat.
In years past we used to always make sure to plan the first Monday in December as gingerbread night at the Mayfield's. However, our lives all got really busy and we hadn't been able to for a few years. We've tried to keep up the tradition of making the houses at least with ourselves or possibly with a closer-by neighbor. But we really missed the Mayfields. It was a very happy surprise when one Sunday Misty texted me and asked rather last minute if we could make this year work and we decided to get together the next night. Our kids have grown a lot since our last gathering but I have to say that I had so much fun watching our teenagers have fun getting to know each other again and being very funny. We ate paninis hot off the press and nibbled a lot of candy as we decorated our houses.
This wasn't really a specific event, but I want to include this silly selfie I took - here I am wearing my mom's Norwegian wool sweater. My mom looked great in this sweater and I was the lucky recipient of it after she passed. I got to wear it to our school's Christmas sweater day, I wore it to several parties, and even Romney wore it a few times and we both got lots of compliments. It's a great sweater and I enjoyed bringing the spirit of my mother to our Christmas celebrations.
A slightly less classy article of clothing appeared at our faculty Christmas lunch - I had a lot of fun going to this gathering one Friday after school and enjoying Asian salads and treats with the many great folks who work at my school. Anyway, we did a white elephant gift exchange. I felt like I came up with a pretty good gift - I went around my house and found all the left over gift cards to places like Cafe Rio and Deseret Book that I thought maybe had some money on them but I wasn't sure. Maybe $10? Maybe $1.93? Maybe nothing? No idea. I thought that was fun and the recipient got a lot of laughs. But not nearly as many as the final gift that was opened at the party - this lovely fleshy hairy belly-button-sporting fanny pack. I haven't laughed that hard in a very long time and the fact that this was the last gift of the day was a Christmas miracle if you ask me. It was after all, the best of all the game.
This was the second year in a row that I had the good fortune to attend an evening of carols sung at the Madeline Choir school. Our group of friends who were trying to get tickets almost missed them - by the time we figured out they were available and had started to request them there was only about 10 minutes left before all the tickets were gone. Troy and Chase didn't join us but my girls came and I was so happy about how much they enjoyed the music. Concerts like that can surely get very long for young listeners but they both told me how much they loved it. There really is nothing quite like the exquisitely haunting sound of those young voices echoing up through the huge hall of that cathedral.
This isn't a very important event here but I have to give a quick shout-out to an amazing group of PTA friends whom I enjoy very very much. I love being on the PTA. Never thought I'd say that but you can't make me quit now. I love it. We had a quick gathering just a few days before Christmas.
On the last day of school - Friday the 22nd, can you believe that?!?! - I slipped out of school a bit early. I had already missed some because Emma had been sick on both Thursday and Friday. (I was actually so grateful that she was legitimately sick. I REALLY needed some time away from school before Christmas. I may ask her if she could please get sick again next year.) But I worked a little. I left early enough to meet my Becca back at the cathedral for their performance of one of my very favorite pieces of music, Benjamin Britton's A Ceremony of Carols. It's only about 20 minutes long but so worth the trip.
On Saturday the 23rd my sister was in town and that was the only day she'd be around on the same day as my dad, who left on a trip to California on the morning of Christmas Eve to spend the holiday with friends. We gathered for dinner and time together.
There were a lot of other things that we did that ended up with no photo evidence - I'll just list them for the sake of remembering them:
Annual singing party at the Bucherts in honor of Martin's Birthday. It was the first held at their new house and worked out better than expected despite the smaller space. Soup, singing, lovely as always.
In the middle of the month I took a day off in order to have my own personal Christmas celebration and also get ready. I drove around listening to great music, sipped warm tea, picked up the last gifts, did some wrapping and watched a movie and knit. Will definitely do that again next year.
We went to see The Last Jedi and loved it, even Emma, who is a new viewer of the Star Wars movies. We watched episodes IV - VII with her over the fall to help prepare her and she loved them a lot. Fun to enjoy that together.
Another interfaith gathering on Sunday the 17th - we had a joint church meeting with the Catholic Parish nextdoor to our LDS wardhouse. That meeting is very special, and I feel so grateful for the great feeling it produces.
On Friday the 22nd we were able to attend the first show to be put on in the brand new Hale Center Theater - Elton John's Aida. We got an email from a friend offering us free tickets. What a treat! I thought I'd only be able to convince the girls to join me but Troy said he was in to, so we told Chase he had to come as well. I think he wasn't very excited, but he told me later that once the first song started he thought to himself, "Oh CRAP. I AM going to like this." We all were amazed and sort of just flabbergasted by the scope of the show. Such a cool stage, such a fun performance. It made me even more excited for Christmas morning because I had already purchased as a gift for the girls tickets for a performance of Newsies that will happen this summer.
So yes, December held a lot of joy and I feel so grateful for the fun and joy we experienced. It was a really great year. It snowed on Saturday the 1st of December and then stayed cold - so even though we didn't get a lot of snow after that we had just a skiff of a white Christmas all December long.
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