A Merry Little Christmas

and so far a happy New Year!
I have wanted to do so much blogging lately but, as it always seems happens, have just been blogging in my head a lot. I have such a nice little blog running in my head – so cute and up-to-date and funny too! I am so witty in my head.

This is the week where everything/one tries to get back to normal, back to routine, and we are no different. So far things have gone really well. We are not exactly “on schedule” as I find the children and I are still crawling out of bed at 9am but we are being fairly productive once we are awake and getting done what needs to be. I guess I just need to bite the bullet one day and just wake us (me too?) up early and then try to get things back on the proper time. Sophia is still staying up late even. She’s only just fallen asleep shortly before midnight. Though she slept most of the morning away. I think she was in bed until almost noon today! Silly baby.

We have had a wonderful few weeks. We have changed things up again this year. Tom and I have been talking and praying about celebrating Christmas for most of this year and we decided to keep things simple and Christ-focused as is our goal with anything that we do. We enjoyed lots of singing, reading and acting out of the Christmas story in our home. Everyone wanted to be “Joseph” in our plays because he got a cool wooden staff that I found at a dollar store. LOL Amelie, Kellen and Bella were very fascinated with the angels. It truly is very cool and it was so neat watching their amazement and wonder when talking with them about the angels talking to Mary & Joseph then later to the shepherds. Bella loved the part in the story where Joseph and Mary look for a room in Bethleham. Whenever we talked about it, she would say “No rooms!” The children (except for Adrie and Sophia) sang a song at church that they learned that talked about Jesus’ birth. Both songs were very good and we had them on our ipod to listen to whenever we wanted. They still listen/sing them. I want to see if I can get a video of them, it’s super cute.
We did our Christmas baking this year for our neighbours, if you are interested in THAT adventure for me, see my previous post in which I discover that baking is not bliss. It was great though and the children and I delivered them all and sang to our neighbours. Everyone loved the cake pops and, glutton for punishment that I am, I am determined to make them again and not let them beat me! I shall win.

About a week or two before Christmas my Mum took Erilyn, Amelie and myself to a “sing-a-long” short version of Handel’s Messiah. Adriana was supposed to come but was sick on the night of it and Amelie came in her place. It was really so beautiful! It’s been so long since I’ve heard it and I wanted the children to experience it, so it’s beauty and, more so, for it’s power and bringing to life the words from Isaiah. I wasn’t sure that the girls were enjoying it at first. I’m not sure what they expected but that surely wasn’t it. I took them both to the bathroom a little over halfway through and I knew they were actually enjoying it as I stood outside the bathroom I could hear Erilyn sweet falsetto singing “and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.”
And the Hallelujah Chorus…wow.

Tom always has nearly 2 weeks off over Christmas and we loved spending that time with him. Also, for the first time in years, my Mum booked most of that time off too. We spent so much time with Dad and Mum, it was great! Tom was playing guitar for the Christmas Eve service at our church so we went there, it was such a nice service, a time to reflect on the awesomeness of Christ’s birth and the events surrounding. Our little ones sat very well through most of it. Afterward we headed out to Picture Butte to spend a couple of days with Dad and Mum. We decided to make it a “sleepover” just because we could! Why spend time driving when we didn’t have to? We arrived to their home and hadn’t been there long when I made the discovery that I had forgotten pretty much the only thing that we couldn’t get along without…Sophia’s diapers. Nuts. Since it was then about 9pm on Christmas Eve in Picture Butte there was no chance of running to the store to pick up disposables so Tom and my Dad drove back in to get them. I felt so badly. Thankfully everything went smooth from there on out. We spent 2 days with Dad & Mum and it was sooooo nice. We played games, this time it was “Carcassonne” and “Settlers of Catan,” enjoyed too much delicious food and had several opportunities to chat with my sisters (and brothers-in-law) on Skype. It really felt *almost* like we were all together for a bit.
Christmas morning was a special time. We did do gifts and we chose to draw names and exchange with my parents to just keep it to one gift each. We didn’t want the commercialism to sneak in or have the children overwhelmed with more than they need. It was great, everyone put a lot of thought into their gift for the other person though occasionally someone little had to be *helped* as their ideas might not have been….ummmm….well, let’s just say that Kellen had to be persuaded that Papa would really rather have a pair of leather gloves than the “wolverine gloves” that he saw in the store.

We spent time just together as a family, lots of lazy days spent playing board games or Wii.

……………..more to come.

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