Merry Christmas to All

Christmas finally actually happened. I love how the whole month of December rolls along it feels like a merry-go-round of activity and color and light, but when Christmas itself actually comes all becomes rather quiet. All the friends we have seen during the month are spending the holiday with their own families. Gifts have been delivered. The work parties and church gatherings are all done. And we settle into the quieter celebration. It's especially quiet for us because we don't have a ton of family around. I watched several Instagram and Facebook posts that friends shared of their huge family parties with pajama parades and long tables set up all through their living rooms to accommodate all the guests. I have to admit that I get slightly sad and a bit wistful when I see stuff like that, even though I know it could be overwhelming to attend that large of a party every Christmas. But since my siblings all live away and we don't have parents or grandparents who pull together a huge gathering, it's up to me and Troy to make our sweet holiday exactly what we want it to be. It has taken us some years to really identify what it is we like to do and how we like to celebrate, but we have learned to be proactive about it and so our celebrations are really wonderful.

My sister who lives in Colorado did come in to town for Christmas, as did the one of her three daughters who doesn't already live here. We had hoped to find a time when both Peter and Margaret would be here together but alas they did not overlap times. We planned a small gathering for my side of the family and the only time that would work for this was on Sunday the 23rd for a brunch. (Can I just say that I'm very proud of all the cooking and cleaning and hosting I did? Because I am. I almost felt like a grown-up.) We had a nice breakfast with bacon and waffles and fruit and of course whipped cream, as specifically requested by my niece Hannah. Real whipped cream! She triple checked. It was cute. Anyway, we had a nice breakfast together. I love my three big tall lovely nieces. So do my kids. We were sad Kate's Cameron could not be in town with us too, but Hannah has been seeing a cute guy for a couple of years now and he joined her in SLC for the holiday and it was nice to meet him.

Something really special about this brunch was that my dad prepared a gift for each grandchild. He mailed them to Adam's family in Seattle and sent them home with Peter's family in St. George when they visited. But for my and Margaret's kids we decided to open them all together since dad was there with us. I'm not sure how to say this tactfully but it was a little surprising that my dad wanted to do this. Surprising and very sweet. Normally he's only a part of the adult gift rotation, so it was touching that he wanted to do this. The gifts he gave were some treasures he and my mom picked out in Russia. He gave almost all of the kids dolls that he and mom found, except for Chase and his cousin Smith, who got a small collection of painted Russian eggs. He picked out nice Christmas boxes for each item and wrote a letter telling about where the gifts came from and that they were in memory of their Oma who loved them so much. Dad had Chase read this letter out loud to the group, which immediately reduced Kate to tears. It was super sweet. And they each opened their keepsake and I think all were touched by the gesture. It was a really nice morning together, and I just wished that my brothers and their kids had been with us too. See? I guess I really do crave the large family gathering.

I do have to mention one little visit we did get on the evening of the 23rd. Troy and the girls and I had spent the afternoon delivering the very last of the knitted ornaments - including one to Layton to our friend Mary, and may I here thank my husband for not being mean or scolding when we made it all the way to Bountiful before I realized that I brought everything we needed for the visit except the ornament itself? Good man, that Troy. Anyway, after that visit we headed to the University hospital to see our friend Myca who was struggling with some health issues and possibly had to face Christmas as an inpatient. Luckily she got to go home on Christmas Eve, but we enjoyed spending an hour with our friends. Ok so after that, we got home, and The Becky was waiting for us. She had some relatives visiting from England and she really wanted to introduce us to them. Troy was a little confused at first - like, why does this family really want to meet us? Well, the truth is, I don't think that was the point at all. I think the point was for us to meet this family, especially the two kids. They were two of the cutest and most outgoing kids I've ever met, plus those accents! We were completely charmed. They were so dang cute! They insisted on singing us a Christmas Carol, which proved to be a rendition of Silent Night that was rather out of tune and missing a line or two. They captured our hearts so completely that we spent the rest of the week singing Silent Night to each other in deep British accents. Our hearts were won.

I enjoy quiet intimate time too. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day held more of this for us, which was fine, since we carefully planned what we wanted to do and how we wanted to celebrate. Can I just say here how much I love, adore and appreciate my husband? I really do. I'm so glad he and I are together. One thing that has become a tradition at this point is going to our neighbor's home for Christmas Eve breakfast. Becca made a delicious casserole and I brought....something good. I'm sure of it. I just can't remember what. Anyway, of course part of the reason for this gathering is to just be together but also we love to listen to the live broadcast of the Christmas Eve concert from the choir at King's College. It is beyond heavenly and brings exactly the spirit of Christmas that I always hope to invite. 

After breakfast was some quick clean up at home - of course I had laundry out and dishes undone, so we whipped the house into shape and then got in the car and drove to Crystal Hot Spring. I think this is the third year in a row we have gone there with Troy's brother Sam and his family. It's such a nice relaxing place to be, just soaking in all the steamy water and getting the holiday aches out of our bones. I didn't even bring my phone, so no pictures, which is really probably best for everyone. 

The evening held for us a quiet evening at home. My dad joined us, and we ate Korean food - bulgogi, mandu, kimchee. Not too much. It was delicious. I love having something interesting on Christmas Eve. For years with my family we would make homemade Mexican food. I've done appetizer nights before too. This was great. You know what was also really really great? We had just enough storminess to give the valley clean air. That's been a huge problem lately and we can only use our wood burning stove occasionally. Nothing lifts our spirits quite like having a crackling fire in that stove. December has been getting as inverted and polluted as January, so I felt like it was one of my favorite parts of Christmas to get enough weather to not only give us a slightly white Christmas, but to give us several days of clean lovely air and thus a merry fire burning in the stove all through Christmas and even the week after. Marvelous.

We ate our dinner, watched Mr. Krueger's Christmas and A Charlie Brown Christmas, and cuddled up to listen to The Night Before Christmas and a reading from Luke 2. Then it was off to bed for my kiddos, all of whom very happily still go to bed early on Christmas Eve. 

I was pretty darn excited for Christmas morning. Some years I have ideas of what gifts I want to give the kids well in advance and kind of have a plan in my head. However, this year I really felt behind and didn't have a clear sense of what to do. But it came together and I was really pleased.

Got to have the traditional line up into the living room

Really fun morning - here are some of the favorites:

Chase: a new cool razor, sushi t-shirts, tall socks. a Jurassic Park hoodie, new art pens and paper, a tactical spork from Romney, and most exciting - a giant new enclosure for his lizard, Omnom

Romney: a really nice camping knife, a huffelpuff t-shirt from Kate, a beard hat, a Stitch union-suit, a play ticket to see Wizard of Oz, new boots, and a great big Harry Potter Lego set.

Emma: Yoda legos, a Rosana Paninho cookbook, a rabbit puppet, also a ticket to Wizard of Oz, a chemistry set, a bath bomb set from Cara, and she got the real show stopper.....

Her very own pet! A tortoise!  Meet the newest member of our family, Topher:

It was really fun. We had to blindfold her and Chase came and put the little creature in her hands. It was really fun and she's been a great pet owner. What a fun pet - he's really active but not stinky. He only eats vegetables and is fun to hold and let run around. 

Okay there was another show stopper. Troy and I enjoyed picking out some gifts for each other - heart rate monitors and new slippers and jackets and casserole dishes. I didn't think there were going to be any surprises though. I was wrong! Troy arranged with a friend to get me a real banjo. I've so loved my little hollow-back tambourine-like instrument but he traded that with a friend to get a real grown-up and seriously heavy banjo. It's taken some getting used to but what a sound, and what fun to get back in the groove of playing. I did indeed burst into tears. Video not to be included here. That guy. He loves me. And I love him.

We did have to totally rearrange Chase's bedroom to accommodate both the new lizard enclosure and the new tortoise. Wasn't expecting to two that on Christmas Day but was actually great. I love bringing order to a space.

After some room cleaning and dinner preparation, we packed up and headed off to the movie theater to go see the new Mary Poppins movie with Emily Blunt and Lin Manuel Miranda. What a fun show. We all really enjoyed it and I may have teared up more than once. We loved it. Great way to spend the afternoon.

In the evening we again had my dad over as well as Troy's parents to enjoy a little more of a classic dinner than bulgogi - awesome pot roast and potatoes.

What a blessed Christmas day. I'm so very grateful for the celebrations we enjoyed and the people we got to enjoy them with.

What a Month!

Just how much festivity can one family cram into one festive month? Probably more than we should. I can't help it! I'm sure I kind of drive everyone nuts, so some of the activities I do just by myself so I don't totally burn out my family. We run ourselves pretty ragged though. And I love it! To quote Buddy the Elf, "Oh, I love it I love it I love it!" (He's talking about maple syrup and I'm talking about Christmas but I think we're pretty much on the same wavelength.) Speaking of Buddy the Elf, it turns out that I have yet to find the limit of the number of times I can watch that movie without getting totally sick of it. I think I somehow saw it four times this season and every time it just brought me smiles.

Romney found the coziest phone-charging spot in the house and spent several evenings here

Ok here's what kept us hopping for the month of December.

12/4 - a Relief Society Christmas Cookie exchange, which I attended but did not bring cookies to. Shame on me. I was there to ogle the cool house and mingle with neighborhood girlfriends.

12/5 - a quick trip to Bountiful with the girls to go see our friend perform the role of Cinderella in Into the Woods - amazing - an all-kids production of the entire show. Paige knocked our socks off. I could listen to her sing all the day long.

12/6 - I went to see The Lower Lights in concert at Kingsbury Hall with a small group of teachers. What a rockin' show they put on. Anyone who plays Christmas songs with a banjo in the band wins my heart. I'm so happy they played my favorites - I Saw Three Ships and Once in Royal David's City. You wouldn't think it would go well to totally rock out to Once in Royal David's City, but check it out on Spotify. My favorite. Great evening together with Caryn, Nicole and Elyssa.

12/7 - The Ward Christmas party - dinner at the ward and hanging with friends. It was great until one of my children wasn't as nice as she should have been to a friend and that took some mending and I'm still kind of sad. Probably I shouldn't blog about that but it happened and caused some aches in my heart. Hopefully the child involved will always remember the lesson learned.

12/8 - During the day we had the happy opportunity to spend the morning helping my dad decorate for Christmas. This was surprising - last year, just six months after my mom had passed away, my dad wanted pretty much nothing to do with Christmas. He didn't decorate at all - in fact, he handed off all of his decorations to me and to my sister. And he went away for the holiday. So this year when he called and asked if I knew where his Christmas stuff was (an alarming question, I'll admit), I happily offered to return his tree decorations and other things. Troy and Emma and I spent the morning helping him add holiday joy to his house. 

That evening was the annual singing party at the home of our neighbors, Becca and Martin. Soup, cheese, bread, and lots and lots of singing. I always get a little wistful at this party because it always makes me long to sing as well as I wish I could. I'm an ok singer but not a great one, and some of the music is really challenging, especially for an alto who can't always find her note. But I love the gathering every year.

Every year Good King Wenceslas must be performed in character 

12/9 - Singing Christmas music in church 

12/10 - and this is not really Christmassy in any way - Jury Duty! I got to spend the entire day at the Federal Court going through the jury selection process. It was kind of a long boring day and I was not selected. The good part of this day was that I brought my Christmas ornament knitting and got an absolute ton done on them which was fortunate because I was very behind. Also, that evening, Romney was awesome and went with her fellow voice students to an assisted living facility to sing for the folks living there. The kids are quite young and some of the performances were a little rough, but I enjoying seeing them sing and I was so proud of Romney. She sang The First Noel all alone and then did a duet of White Christmas. She's really coming along.

12/11 - Attending the play Christmas at Pemberly at Pioneer Theater Company with Romney, my friend Kalleen and her daughter who is a dear dear friend to Romney. What a charming play. It was all about Mary, who is a pretty sad character in the original Pride and Prejudice. I mostly do not love P&P spin-offs, but this one was fun. My least favorite character was Elizabeth herself, who I thought was not very true to the original, but I loved the others, especially Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley. You know what the very best part was? Romney and I got invited to go to this play and we happily accepted but then I realized that Romney didn't know the story at all. I was waiting for the perfect time to introduce it to her! We spent any spare time we could find in the weeks prior watching the BBC production and how tickled was I that Romney got into it! I loved sharing it with her for the first time, and we had so much fun watching the movie and then the play together. 

12/12 - Three or four days in the previous couple of weeks poor Romney had to get up extra early despite all the evening activities and attend early morning rehearsals to prepare for her show choir's Christmas concert. Finally on this Wednesday evening we got to see the show and it was grand. It was a little long because it combined the theater group with the dance group with the mixed choir with the show choir. Long and crowded, but so fun to hear her group sing. Luckily we could slip out after her section and graciously offer our seats to standing parents and make an exit. 

12/13 - I'm not kidding. This month was non-stop.  Thursday the 13th the girls and I had tickets to go see the Mormon Tabernacle Choir's Christmas Concert. Thank you thank you to The Becky who is part of the Orchestra at Temple Square and who gets us tickets every year. We so appreciate them. This year the special guest was Kristin Chenoweth. What a star! We were so excited. We made a plan to go really early - our seats were in a balcony section but because we went so early we were able to be seated way down low and it felt really close. We also brought binoculars and that was so fun to feel like we could really see the performances well. It was so fun! You know, I'll always love the year that we got to see the story of The Candy Bomber, hear Tom Brokaw tell about WWII and hear Alfie Boe sing. I don't think I'll ever love a performance like that again. But I will say that Kristin Chenoweth came in a close second. What an adorable person! We were all absolutely delighted by her performance - so charming and funny and heartfelt. And the singing! You know, I don't actually like most of the songs she sang, but the way she sang them really made me like them after all. What a night!!!

Here we are waiting outside in the cold. Our plan to arrive very early did not take into consideration the fact that the doors might not open that early! That's okay, it was all in the name of getting good seats, and we got good seats!

12/14 - in the afternoon I was happy to swing by the faculty holiday lunch, complete with a Café Rio buffet and a hilarious white elephant gift exchange. I myself was the lucky recipient of a coloring book about magical farting animals. That evening the school's art teacher was hosting her annual and absolutely massive Christmas party at her home in the avenues. I love the art teacher with all my heart but I, yes even I, was feeling run down. And so my husband and daughters and I drove to the party where they dropped my off and I ran in to say hello. I was in and out in literally under 10 minutes and I was very proud of myself. A quick Julie hug and then we decided we needed a treat together with just us. Ok, no Chase. He's now a teenager with a busy social life and spent many evenings away from us. Troy and the girls and I drove to get us a little Neilsens' frozen custard and listen to our favorite Christmas stories on the way. A very pleasant evening, in which Troy discovered the perfection of eggnog custard and Romney sadly discovered that peppermint custard is not for her but luckily has a very nice sister who shared her raspberry concrete so together everyone was very happy. Such a pleasant night. 

12/15 - Our friends in the avenues held a little afternoon Christmas openhouse. We, minus Chase, stopped by to enjoy a great buffet of toasted ham sandwiches and brie cheese. Yes, I remember the menu. It was awesome. The girls made mini gingerbread houses and Troy and I observed the fun of having a train track running around the base of a Christmas tree. We may be planning on finding a way to bring a Christmas train into our home at some point. There's room somewhere, right???

Emma displaying her mini gingerbread house

12/16 - Not much went on this day but in church the primary did put on a rambunctious and lovely nativity play. Emma played the part of the angel and did her best to memorize the part. We heard a lot of "Behold! I bring you good tidings of great joy!" around our house that week, and thought often of Gladys Herdman although Emma was pretty sweet and didn't offer to punch a single shepherd. (See: The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, a book we read together every Christmas.)

A herd of Angels

A Slightly Tidier Angel Gang

Troy and Romney coming to view the Nativity - in all its chaotic joy 

12/17 - This doesn't sound very fun at all and for poor Emma it wasn't, but Emma did that classic kid thing of waking up in the dead of night and puking ALL OVER her bed. (Even at the age of nine, does it still have to be all over the bed?) So she took a very sick day and I wasn't very sad to also take the day off and take care of my little gal and also get a ton of Christmas stuff done. Is it bad that I was grateful for the time?

Isn't there something just so sweet about a sick kiddo? And sad too.

12/18 - A fun night watching Chase's a 'Capella choir perform. He says he doesn't like it, but he sure seems to have fun up there, especially during You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch. He's quite the base. Even as a freshman he was in the base section, his companions being large-statured seniors.

This year's ornament - a gingerbread house

12/20 - Christmas was creeping nearer and nearer! The shopping was mostly done (but never quite!!) and the ornaments were all knitted up and packaged. The menus had been picked and the guests had been invited, and things were settling in. My brother Peter decided he would like to make a quick trip to visit, and it ended up being a little weird because neither his wife nor his oldest daughter could come due to work and play rehearsals, but I'd say we ended up having a lot of fun, even though it was a quick visit. When they arrived on Thursday we headed up to Zoo Lights and were really quite impressed with the magnitude of the lights up there. We had the pleasure of bumping into the cutest dad who was a teenager in our neighborhood and we knew way back in the day, and now he and his wife are just the cutest parents ever. So fun to see him. 

Oh how Iva loves her tallest cousin. And he loves her back.

Don't mind the fuzzy selfie pictures

Captain Splits to the Rescue

12/21 - With Peter in town we were looking for some fun things to do together even though we were still kind of busy during the days with work school and stuff. At dinner time Troy and I slipped out for a bit to attend his company's dinner at a Brazilian restaurant. I've heard of these meat-parties before but never experienced one. It was very difficult to not die by over-eating there. I felt I was at a Roman banquet and could just call for delicious meat any time I wanted. It was quite tasty. I'm grateful for Troy's job and boss and situation. After that though we wanted to have fun with family - Troy had heard about this crazy thing called Christmas in Color in which you drove to the equestrian park way out in Riverton and paid like $30 for one car full of people to drive through this course that was decked out - and I mean TOTALLY decked out - in crazy bright and flashing light displays, all synched up with music that you could tune into on your radio. It took a good 40 minutes to drive through it. It was snowing gently while we were driving and they gave you funky glasses to wear that made snow-men appear as halos around all the pin-points of light. Iva sat up on my lap while we crept through the course, and the kids all smashed into the middle to stick their heads out of the windows. It was actually really really fun, even though I'm sure the idea would be nigh until offensive to some with all the garish display and loud music. I would totally go again though!  

12/22 - Before the Romneys headed back to St. George we took some time in the morning to first make a trip to the Grand America hotel to see the decorated window scavenger hunt and giant gingerbread house. Sadly, it felt like half the valley was there with us. I thought a morning visit would prevent that but I was quite wrong.

I love this photo because this is what it's like trying to get Sam to hold still for a picture

After that we got to go visit a new memorial near the downtown library, built in honor of people who had passed away and donated their remains to the University of Utah hospital. It was pretty tender to find my mom's name etched in the glass. I'm glad there's a place with her name listed since we are not going to have a grave.

Later that afternoon, after the departure of family, the kids and I took a shopping trip together to find a few last gifts for friends. We found a great little shop in the Gateway Mall called Salt and Honey that is filled purely with items hand made by local people. It was great! I was so excited to find this store and we had fun picking out treasures.

Love it when the siblings love each other

Troy and I were able to go listen to Peter Breinholt and his band put on a delightful Christmas concert and it was so nice to just slip away with Troy. The kids were invited to spend that time at our neighbor's house, who most years put on a kids Christmas party. They made trains out of candy and enjoyed a movie and games together. My kids really look forward to that tradition. 

PHEW. Like I said, what a month!! As you very well know by now, I wouldn't have it any other way. The lights, the music, the dear friends - it all just totally fills my cup.