Christmas

So, now that we've all recovered from Christmas and are back into the swing of things, and the Christmas decorations are (almost -- just got to finish off that yew tree out front) put away, I have time to post about Christmas! It started out with a big of panic and freaking out on my part, since we came back to Austin from Thanksgiving on December 1st (Thanksgiving was  later than usual this year) and I realized that we had about three weeks to do all the decorating, Christmas traditions, etc. before the day itself! To boot, we had to say goodbye to Aunt Mo in December which meant that all Christmas activities with our little-extended family (since she was living with us) had to happen PRONTO.

Fortunately, things fell into place. All the old traditions and some new traditions. For example, Christmas Chapel (you'll see Louis's class is a bit rambunctious this year, and not super coordinated -- too bad as he sings all the time at home!):

And going to the Four Season's open house and gingerbread village. The kids (and moms) love doing this ever year -- they unveil their fancy gingerbread (actually sugar -- this year Dr. Seuss) village and give free champagne and cookies, and the kids dress us and roll down the hill out back. This year I brought the Happy Hikers and we had special guests -- Stella and Elianah (who have moved to Dripping Springs). It was really good to see them -- Rosemary always talks about Stella.

 

And all our usual decorations. This year, we  added a nice twist by having a lobster dinner the first night of decorating the tree (it ended up taking several days! We have a lot more ornaments than I realized. The kids were cute though and got up early the next day to do more decorating). Aunt Mo was there to share the feast:

 

A few days after that picture, we sadly had to say goodbye to Aunt Mo, who left for Chile. We had a nice going away party for her with her buddies at Backspace.

I got a few really lovely new Christmas decorations from the Junior League Christmas bazaar that I went to with Carlisle and Stacie -- tin angels and hand painted ceramic ornaments from Mexico:

Like last year, the kids  got to have a "school skip day" which gave us the chance to make peppermint bark for our neighbors and teachers and friends. This time James was in Philadelphia that day so we really lounged out and stayed in PJs all day and also had a special homemade challah bread and fruit breakfast (with the grueling kindergarten schedule Rosemary has really needed some school skip days -- we skipped last month one day as well when Louis wasn't feeling 100% and played Legos all day):

 

And then the new traditions -- like Rosemary and James playing Christmas music (the best part of this video, you have to admit, is when she looks over and realizes that I'm video-taping her, and she sighs the long sigh of exasperation and having to put up with me):

And, my favorite new tradition -- the ritualistic burning of last year's Christmas tree (which has been sitting for a year by our compost pile). It was a beautiful beautiful afternoon/evening. Louis found his old fireman costume which is about 4 inches too short, and added an old plastic container to his back as an oxygen tank. Nice touch, I think:

Burning the tree:

 

Sibling and doggie love. Couldn't make this one up if you tried to pose them:

This year, Mary and Dan visited for a few days before Christmas, which was a great way to do it because we could do a lot of the fun pre-Christmas activities with them. Mary "volunteered" (I volunteered her :-) to help out in Rosemary's kindergarten class Christmas party, so she could see all the cute kids:

And we took them to the Johnson City lights, which are truly spectacular. Met the Barkers there and the kids had a blast:

Random picture of the adorable mice cookies that Sheila made for us this year:

Because she's excited about being able to write, Rosemary is really into writing down things into an old empty journal of mine that I passed along to her and hiding it in her desk. She wrote a poem, a list of things she'd like to accomplish over Christmas break (and taped to my wall), etc. I was taking a nap,  and she barged in demanding that I tell her how to write all the names of everyone in her class. I told her that I was napping and she needed to leave me alone, but promised I'd do it later. She stormed off saying, "Now I'm NEVER going to remember everyone in my class when I'm grown up!!!!" (does that anxiety sound familiar, Summer?)

When I woke up, I saw that she had got Grandma Mary to write down the names for her, so she could copy them down in her journal. Mary told me that not only had she dictated them to her, but she had -- Mary realized later -- dictated them to her in alphabetical order.

So, I think she's going to remember.

We did manage to fit some good non-Christmas activities into December. Like Happy Hikers, which has become less frequent, but we still try most Wednesday afternoons after school. It's especially nice now that we have water down in the greenbelt again -- just the other day we had a HUGE group and didn't get any farther than the creek. Watching all the kids strip down and basically go feral in the creek for hours made me so happy -- it's like watching a movie from another era, these kids are so lucky to live in a place where they can just go free.

Love these pictures from one of our most relaxing hikes down in the greenbelt. Look at this incredibly bizarre statue that someone built there for us to discover!

 

Cute picture of James and kids at new delicious restaurant on South Lamar, Odd Duck:

Rosemary, of course, being very into the rules was quite interested in Santa this year and just how good or bad you're supposed to be able to be. I tried to de-emphasize that part of Santa, but, of course, sometimes you get desperate for ways to threaten your children, and this time of year especially (though I will say this is the first year -- which is kind of sad -- that the kids were not too excited to sleep for about 2 weeks prior to Christmas!). Below is a picture of the "spectrum" that she drew-- if you can't read it, it says "This is a list of good and bad children" and there is a "good" on the left side and "bad" on the right side. So, I guess she sees that it is not so black-and-white:

 

Anyway, she figured out a pretty good loophole -- she asked Nani what would happen if you were bad after Santa had already loaded his sleigh with the presents and was on his way. I mean, he wasn't going to turn around and unpack your presents or bother changing the accounting system at that late hour, was he?

Below is Louis's list, written by Rosemary. I can't really read it any more but basically it says, "Dear Santa, I was a good boy. A playmobile police ship. A weapon. A stuffed animal. I want these things, may I please have them." At some point in another list, he also asked for a dreidel and a weapon -- they've been learning a lot about other holiday traditions at St. Marks and there has been a surprising amount of Old Testament talk at the dinner table lately!

 

Then it all culminated with Christmas in Dallas. This year we were a pretty small group! Dev and Summer and family weren't there because William was about to be born (and indeed was born just before Christmas eve). Maureen and Paul were in Chile. So it was just us, and Julie, her boyfriend Zach, and Zach's six year old daughter August. Even though we missed our siblings/aunts/uncles, I think it made for a more relaxing, quiet Christmas, which was just what I think we needed after such a busy fall (and I was forced to be even more relaxed since I got strep throat and had to go to the emergency room twice!). Christmas eve dinner:

 

Rosemary's picture of the sled with presents for all the participants in Dallas Christmas:

 

Making the gingerbread house:

And another gingerbread house:

Nana's really pretty good picture of Santa and his reindeer -- commissioned by Louis:

 

The kids playing with their newly made "Kiwi Crate" craft kit from Dev and Summer:

 

Louis discovers his medieval castle from Santa!

Rosemary got Sudoku in her stocking and was completely glued to it:

The beautiful -- HUGE -- Christmas tree:

 

More dreidel:

Louis's marble maze:

Post Christmas walk at White Rock:

After a very fun, relaxing time, we headed back to Austin. Louis was still very much in Christmas mode, and made this (really pretty great) Santa from WikiSticks (wax sticks for modeling) -- he made it from "magic" according to him. He is definitely going to be our artist:

 

And we went on a great family hike in Marble Falls:

Then we hosted Julie, Zach, and August in Austin for a few days. The four of us adults got to go out to a nice dinner at Odd Duck and some dancing at the Continental Club, which was a blast, and then we did a few great hikes. It was a lot of fun to have them here. Overall, this Christmas was really lovely -- started out very busy, but ended up being relaxing and -- for the first time in four years, James and I were NOT catatonic at the end of the season!