Christmas Tidbits

As this merry month of December rolled by, I felt so many things slipping through my fingers--little bits and pieces about Christmas that I didn't want to lose.  The solution?  A Christmas tidbits post.  :)

~ 1 ~

I unabashedly and unapologetically admit that I listen to Christmas music year round, whenever the urge strikes me.  After all, is not the news that God sent His Son to earth as a tiny baby worth remembering and celebrating, whether the date be April 28, August 3, or December 15?

Let me qualify that by saying that if I owned or managed a public place of business, I would not play Christmas music until after Thanksgiving.  There is so much commercialism that has crept--no, raced--into our remembrance of Christ's birth, and I wouldn't want to add to that by playing Christmas music early.  Here in my own home however, I feel quite at ease listening to it whenever I like.  :)

So it was that sometime in November, I pulled out Josh Groban's Christmas CD and turned it on while Moriah was finishing her lunch.  After she was done, I got her out of her highchair, held her close, and danced around the kitchen while listening to "The Little Drummer Boy."

And then I cried.

"Really? You cried because of 'The Little Drummer Boy'???" you might be asking.

Yes.  Yes, I did.  Something about the lines "I played my drum for him...I played my best for him...Then he smiled at me..." touched my heart, and I thought, "Lord, here I am, playing my drum, so to speak, for You.  I'm fixing lunch for these children, I'm listening to their voices and answering their questions, I'm clearing off the table, I'm wiping off a dirty highchair tray, I'm giving hugs, I'm dancing with my daughter--none of which is particularly glamorous or noteworthy.  But it's my drum, it's what I can do, and I do it for You.  Right now I feel Your smile.  Thank You for that."

That's a good reason to spill a few tears, right?  :)

~ 2 ~

We were so happy this year that Grandma Fisher was here as we began our Christmas preparations, especially since it was the first time she's been here for that!  I've already written about our trip to the Christmas tree farm to get our tree, but here is the rest of the story.

After we brought the tree home, Jeff worked to get lights on it, which wasn't as easy as it might sound because somehow all of our strings of lights had decided that half their lights should work and half shouldn't.  Rather than put a bunch of half-lit strands on the tree, Jeff worked and worked and checked and checked to see what the problem was and which bulbs needed to be replaced.  He was relentless in his pursuit of fully-lit strands of Christmas lights.  :)

Meanwhile, I got out the boxes of Christmas decorations and started opening them up, and the boys were SO excited.  I suppose they're that excited every year, I don't know, but they were just having so much fun.  Every new box I opened and every new thing I pulled out was met by delight.  For example, when I opened the box containing our Christmas books, they exclaimed their joy and immediately grabbed some before settling down on the couch to read/look at books they hadn't seen in 11 months.

And then I got out the box with nutcrackers, and they were thrilled.

They used those nutcrackers to act out all kinds of dramas--a wonderful diversion while Jeff was still working on the lights.  :)

Finally, Jeff completed his task and declared that they could start putting ornaments on the tree--the moment they had all been waiting for, with various degrees of patience.  :)

They all enjoyed it, but I particularly remember Josiah saying something about how getting out the ornaments and decorating the tree was so much fun that it was almost as good as opening the gifts!!  :)

Moriah, of course, found something soft to carry around and cuddle with, little mama that she is.  :)

When I started trying to take a picture to use as this month's header, I began with Tobin as my model.  Eventually he tired of the job and happily let David take over.  And that's when I got my winning shot.  But I still like this one of Tobin.  :)

~ 3 ~

One of the very good things I had done last year as I packed away our Christmas decorations was to sort out the ornaments that particularly belong to each child and store them in a big Ziploc bag.  It made the process of decorating so easy this year to simply pull out a bag, hand it to a child, and let him have his own ornaments to place on the tree.  In years past, I would have to ask the kids to wait as I got out the ornaments and figured out whose they were so the proper person could have the honor of putting them on the tree--a big deal to my boys!  :)  I am definitely going to repeat that organization strategy this year as I put our ornaments away.

~ 4 ~

One of the very not-so-good things about decorating this year was that at some point during the past year, we had an infestation of stinkbugs in our garage.  :(  I remember several years ago when we were visiting my brother David and his family in Pennsylvania, we encountered stinkbugs there; and he told us how they were migrating south.  It was only a matter of time, I suppose, until they got here; and nothing we could do would have stopped then.  But still, it was disheartening to unpack our Christmas boxes and find lots of them.  I gave many of them a watery farewell in the toilet, and some got a fiery end in the woodstove.  But along the way, I learned something.  I learned what stinkbugs smell like.

Are you ready for this?

They smell like cilantro.  ;-)

The odd thing is that I like cilantro!  I like it very much.  Maybe that's why the scent of the stinkbugs didn't really bother me that much.  ;-)  

I did, however, hate the sight of them crawling out of our Christmas things.  I didn't like that one tiny bit.  Even though I'm not squeamish about bugs, I still had many moments of "gross!" and "ack, another one!" and "ewww."  :(

~ 5 ~

In years past, we have helped each one of our boys buy a gift for each of his brothers; and I really like how that adds the joy of GIVING to our celebration.  It's so much fun to see their excitement as they choose, wrap, and give those presents--and how they can hardly wait for their brothers to open them because they just know they're gonna love 'em.  :)

Until this year, most of those purchases were made at the dollar store.  It didn't seem too difficult to find something there that would bring some simple pleasure to each of the boys, and it was easy enough to drop a few bucks there and have it all taken care of.

This year, something changed.  Walking through the aisles of the dollar store when I took each boy Christmas shopping, we discovered that there really wasn't much there that would bring lasting joy, so we upgraded--all the way to Walmart.  :)  There were a few of the boys' gifts that came from the dollar store (glow in the dark stars for Josiah's ceiling from Tobin, for example), but most did not.  Instead, we walked the aisles of Walmart, looking at things like games, LEGO sets, Nerf guns, etc.  It cost more than choosing gifts from the dollar store, but it also meant that the gifts among the brothers were really wanted gifts!  :)  It also meant that Jeff and I didn't spend quite as much on "fun factor" gifts for the boys, since we knew that was covered.  (Not to imply that we didn't give them any fun gifts, because of course we did!  But you know what I mean...)  :)

~ 6 ~

I wrote a little bit earlier this month about how wonderful (understatement!) the Holidayfest concert that Josiah got to sing in was.  I hesitate to use the word "magical," but it really was that.  It was so, so, so special--everything from the way Jeff unselfishly let me go that evening (our original plan was for me to go the following day, but because of the threat of bad weather and the possibility of the second concert being cancelled, Jeff urged me to go to the first one, which was a good thing because the second concert was indeed cancelled) to the fun I had hanging out with David before the concert (since we had to go really early for Josiah to rehearse) to the friends we saw there to the beauty of the concert hall to the absolute gorgeousness of the sound to the meaningfulness of the words and the whole reason for the celebration to the overwhelming joy on the way home as Josiah and David and I were all as happy as could be and laughed and carried on like a bunch of silly kids ;-) to the snow that fell and gave us a cozy day together the following day.  It was beautiful, it was powerful, it was memorable, it was magical.  One of my very favorite days of the whole month?  For sure!  Something I never want to forget?  Absolutely!  :)

~ 7 ~

When Shav the Boy did his (almost) annual photo shoot with Shav the Bear, Tobin wanted me to photograph him with another Christmas bear we have.  Tobin has, not surprisingly, christened him Tobin Bear; and I was happy to snap some pictures of them together...

 ...and with the Shavs.

 No, I don't know why Shav wanted to use our checkerboard as a blanket.

 Yes, I think they're adorable.

All four of them.  :)

~ 8 ~

With all the extra excitement this month, I wasn't surprised that Shav was extra tired (and the other boys, too, although they didn't fall asleep during the day as much as Shav did!).  Most of the time, he rarely naps; but during December he definitely had more than his normal share of naps.  One day, Grandma was here and was reading stories to him, and then this happened.

So Grandma finished reading the book to herself.  :)

~ 9 ~

The new song that I heard and loved this Christmas was "Light of the World" by Lauren Daigle.  I heard it come on the radio late one night when I was working in the kitchen, and I had to drop everything and figure out who was singing and what the song was.  I found it.  :)

~ 10 ~

Having our nativity set up on a low bookshelf meant that little fingers could touch and move the pieces...which is exactly my goal for it!  :)  Toward the beginning of the month, I kept finding pieces of white notebook paper under the stable and on the roof and scattered all around, and I wasn't sure if my boys were just being particularly messy or if there was another reason.  When I inquired, they told me that it was snow!  :)

"Aha!" I said, "Maybe I can find something better to use as snow," and I went upstairs to my closet and got out a silky white scarf.  I spread it under and around the stable and arranged the pieces in my traditional way: Mary and Joseph close together with Jesus right beside them, the sheep and shepherd back a little, and the wise men even further away, coming along in a line toward the stable.

Not long after that, I discovered it this way...

...ALL the characters huddled up together in the stable, and the "snow" covering the whole thing!  :)

I would leave it that way for a day or so, then rearrange it to my preference.  It usually didn't take long for someone to come along and put it back to the let's-crowd-in-close-so-we-can-see-Jesus-and-let's-have-snow-on-the-roof  arrangement.  :)

~ 11 ~

Since our Christmas celebrations were all finished on the 25th (some years we have obligations and celebrations even after that date), I've had a few days here at the end of this month to take advantage of a WOO* and have made some progress with some kitchen cupboards, the hall linen closet, and some paperwork (although there is still MUCH to be done in that area!).  :)

*Window of Organizing Opportunity, written about here

One thing I found was this piece of paper from 1997.  When we got married, we needed a vacuum cleaner, of course, so we decided to buy a used one from the lady who managed the apartments where we lived at the beginning of our marriage.  If I hadn't found this, I wouldn't have remembered that we paid $400 for our first Kirby!  :)

I also found some napkins that had been written on long ago by our most prolific napkin-note-writer, sweet David.  Not only was I intrigued by the fact that on one side of the napkin, he correctly wrote "Tobin"...

...while on the other side, he made the classic mistake of reversing the "b" and making a "d" in Tobin's name...

I also found it heartwarming that he had written the simple sentence, "I love you, Tobin."  Just four words, but what a wealth of meaning.  And between two brothers, such exclamations are ALWAYS welcome!  :)