The First and the Last

I’m terribly behind in posting. I knew that once “the baby” (funny to think back to a time when Alice was not Alice) arrived I’d find myself reorganizing my time. Somehow I didn’t see this blog dropping so low in the priorities. And yet, here we are, 9 months and only a handful of posts later.

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The Recap

The last day of the year. It feels a bit more meaningful as 2020 comes to a close, doesn’t it? Somehow a bit weightier? A lot of life happened these past twelve months, and I for one am happy to look back over it and relive the good and the challenging.

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Christmas Adam

Today is Christmas Adam, the day our family normally settles in for our somewhat quiet, cloistered holy days. We clean bathrooms, mop the floors, prepare cookies and add a last dash of sparkle to our hearth and home. I don’t suspect it will be the same this year, and I am very much okay with that. Mary Hannah has a special guest arriving for a long-awaited visit when she gets off work this evening, and the older boys have work and life today and even tomorrow. So it will not be the still, contemplative slip into Christmas Day that we’ve celebrated in the past. But that seems fitting in such a year of transitions. Things are not as they always were, and that is good and right. We are not static; we grow and change as the edges of our seasons pull taut.

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Advent Mornings

Looking back on all of the previous Advent seasons of our family, I will say that this, easily, has been one of the busiest. Busier, even, than the 2012, where I was immensely pregnant with Simon and requiring monitoring nearly every other day of the week.

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Holiday Baking

I mentioned decorating gingerbread houses recently, and several sweet friends reached out and asked for my recipe. And yes, I have a fabulous gingerbread recipe (actually, it’s my friend Jenna’s gingerbread recipe) but no, I do not bake and cut and assemble my own gingerbread houses. There are quite a few things I go out of my way to make from scratch, even if they are more labor intensive or whathaveyou. Gingerbread houses are not one of them. To start with, like anyone with more than one child, the question arises each year: share the decorating, or get individual houses for each person? And second, my people don’t actually eat the gingerbread, preferring instead to pick the candies off rather than going full on Hansel and Gretel. So really… not worth my effort to create something tastier and healthier in the long run.

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Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus

Does anyone else ever forget that we are not entitled to a tidy Christmas season? Does anyone else sometimes find themselves in the midst of a snarl, or a struggle, or a season they want to wish away, and find this lie niggling in the back of their head:

“But it’s Christmas. Why does this have to happen now and mess up the whole beautiful season?”

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Growth

Last Christmas, in a flurry of creative energy, I hit Pinterest and tried several new crafts and recipes. Something about the holiday season tends to spark that kind of excitement in me. This morning, for example, I’m trying baking soda ornaments for the first time. Not because our tree has any room for more ornaments (it doesn’t) but because it sounds like a fun, memory-making endeavor. Not very minimalist of me, but there it is.

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Advent {and a birthday}

Phineas turns fourteen today, and by one of those magical gifts that can only come from the hands of a Father of heavenly lights, he will awaken to a few scant inches of freshly fallen snow. The flurries began yesterday afternoon, and continued on through the evening, most melting as they hit the still autumn-warmed ground. But when darkness fell, the snow continued. This morning, there is just enough clinging to the grass and trees in the still-darkness that I can surmise my birthday boy’s first request: “Outside? Snow?”

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The Week Before

Thanksgiving is in a week, and we do not have a turkey. We do not have a turkey because we have no room for a turkey right now. There is a long and twisty story behind that statement that starts with my kitchen refrigerator going belly up in September, but also includes the massive blessing of a gifted mini-fridge that has bridged the gap between the capacity of our small garage unit (which we use for extra storage and eggs) and the epic, Covid-impacted appliance delivery times. We are not in a bind, not by any stretch. We can buy a turkey. But we also have no place to store a 22 pound bird carcass at this juncture. Therefore, no turkey.

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Our 24 Favorite Christmas Read-Alouds

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In about two weeks, I will spend an evening putting in all my winter library holds. I know there’s a popular “12 Days of Christmas” unwrapping of books tradition, but my version is a little different. I simply spend December jaunting back and forth to the library, bringing home our favorites and some new offerings. Then we read two or three every evening, before Daddy does the chapter book read-aloud for the night. It’s a sweet time and I look forward to it every year,  as do my kids. I suppose some teens snub their noses at picture books, but they’ve never shared my address— perhaps because I steer clear of much of the tripe on the children’s shelves at the library? At any rate, this is one tradition I encourage you to try. It’s a beautiful, simple way to gather each evening. And it’s free!

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