Mommy's Blog: Holiday Season

These past two weeks have been lovely. Smooth and calm and full of light and excited, happy children. How incredibly lucky I am to have time off during the holiday season. Time to bake and time to travel and time to visit pretty places and time to snuggle in with family. Time to sleep in! What a gift, this time! And all of it lit and twinkling with candles and song and the magic of Christmas... For all of the trepidation I may feel about the future, the here-and-now is overflowing with blessings. I write tonight by the light of our Christmas tree, at days end after the last of our Christmas celebrations, greedy to soak in just a bit more before we pack our holiday season into the rubbermaid bins until next year...

A picture-walk through our holiday season, to remember it by.

Picking up where I left off, the Friday before Christmas, our second day off as a family before the holiday. A quiet trip to the Historical Society...

.. and an equally quiet, just-right evening with our friends. We'd thought we might re-visit Stan Hywet to take in the lights, but decided to avoid the crowds and just eat some (delicious) homemade soup and talk the night away while our kids played. Really, can't get much better than that.

And, we saw some lights on the way home-- a quick stop at the Bedford square, where the light display was as perfect as we'd remembered. Ivy called these "floating trees."

Christmas Eve...

All in readiness, we prepared for our big celebration day with our Lakewood family. After a slight bump in the road which involved dropping our twice-baked sweet potatoes into the oven, a trip to the store, and remaking the recipe, we still managed to arrive at Gram's house right on time...

Lovely, thoughtful gifts (a fabulous Legot set for Jack, an animatronic cat for Ivy, the Echo for Nat and a Ninja blender for me...) and an equally lovely ham dinner (does my mom know how to set a pretty table or what!)...

Becca and I surprised Gram with a new "santa car" to replace the much-loved gift from Grampy. Her reaction was priceless.

We went over to Becca's house to enjoy her wonderful decorations and some dessert....

...and then everyone came East to go to church at the little disciples church I've been singing with.
I love how earnest my little Ivy girl is. She marches right up for the children's message, listening with all her heart. She even got to light the "love" candle in the advent wreath. I can see this girl loving church.

Home for reading and jammies and bed. Holding on to this Christmas eve for sure, as I think it may be the last one when I have two children who both *believe*. Jack has been talking about staying up to catch Santa, and asking rhetorical questions about who really gives the present, in that tone of voice that begs us NOT to answer. We haven't. He'll come to his own conclusions. I am sure he knows the truth, yet isn't quite ready to give up on the magic. In a way, this is the most magic time of all, because he is CHOOSING to believe. My little analytical boy--yet there is a bit of a dreamer inside of him still...

Listening to the story again, this time read by Grandpa. I am so grateful for this little book, for his voice inside of it, his dramatic pauses and enunciated words and gruff tones and the deep love for his grandbabies that comes through the tiny speakers. I hope they feel it too.

All is calm, all is bright. I will never get tired of this moment.

Up-late-tired-parents selfie by the light of the tree.

By night...(loving our new lit garland on the mantel!)...

...and in the still-dark of the morning....Kids slept in til almost 7. I, on the other hand, was up at 5:30. I never can sleep in on Christmas morning.

Corydon loves Christmas.

The aftermath.

It was our fastest opening ever, I think. The kids were on a mission and plowed through their gifts efficiently. Gone are the days when they would play, engrossed, with each gift as it was opened. We let them go ahead , then opened ours with a bit more leisure... yet we were still all done with presents and breakfast by 9:30!

So, we got an early start towards Aurora! Christmas number three in 36 hours, here we come!

What a spread for dinner!

Claire had us seated, bistro-style, throughout the house. Little pockets of fun and conversation everywhere...

Jack, photobombing a nice picture of Nat with his cousins and friends...

Waking up in Aurora is the loveliest. Light coming in through those big farmhouse windows-- and knowing you have nothing on your agenda for the day at all. You can snuggle back in under the down coverlet... or go into the warm room to find your son dutifully building away at Legos....

.......or wander across the hall to find your daughter reading to her Lulu from Lulu's own first grade primer book.

I feel like I could not love this little girl any more... until we go to the mall ( for our annual we-just-got-lots-of-things-so-let's-get-even-more-because-its-on-sale trip to Target) where she carefully wrote "make people happy" on the Resolution board.
Mission accomplished, kid.

We thought it would be a good idea to visit Long Point. Nope. The wind nearly blew Corydon away, and left us breathless after a quick walk to the point and back. I like to think of myself as an unconditional lake-lover, but I may need to put a caveat on that for days like this one.

Christmas number 4: Morehouse family

They need to stop growing, these cousins.
Except they are growing up so very nicely, and I really like the people they are growing into. So I guess it will be ok.

It's just they used to fit in front of the tree a lot better.

A visit with the Koon cousins. Ivy and Izzy (and Charlie the cat) continue to be besties.

And Jack has found a gaming soulmate in cousin Alex.

Winter Waterfall Wednesday!

Pretty. Cold.

Museum of the Earth with all the cousins.

I love this picture so much.

Toughannock Falls

After 4 supremely relaxing days in NY we headed home to prep for the new year. We lucked out with the weather-- no real snow for either leg of the journey!

And all of a sudden-- New year's eve!
Party at Melinda and Will's house...

New year cookies-- and old year cookies (yep, those are coffins! if I was better with icing they would read RIP 2016...) because I guess now I make cutout cookies for ALLLLL the holidays..

Our boy-- a dancing machine! except for the 85% of the party where he could be found reading his book. A boy after my own heart...

We drop the ball at 8pm at this party, and do it up like its the real thing, with champagne and toasts and kisses.. afterwards, this little party animal could be found "toasting" the disco ball. Toast, sip the sparkling grape juice. Toast, sip, toast, sip. Repeatedly.

New Year's Day. A splendid start to the year-- stunning day and some together time for Nat and I while the kids went to a movie with Gram.

We made the most of it by shopping clearance sales, then getting coffee and visiting not one, but two beaches.

I can only hope 2017 will follow in the footsteps of this great start!

Not pictured -- two magical days in which my kids had school but I did not. Got a bit of work done but mostly Nat and I went out for lunch and it was totally awesome.
Then school started back up for me and there went the rest of the week, a blur of activity and sleep deprivation (5am is hitting me hard after all the leisure and adequate sleep of break). A fine week, capped off with drinks and tacos with a couple wonderful co-workers on Friday night.

And suddenly we are here, the day after Epiphany, the final end of Christmas. I have spent the entire day in jammies, as is customary on Fake Christmas Morning. I have also consumed an inordinate amount of pastry and hugged many of my favorite people. A small collection of some of the nicest children in the world filled our house, then went off to play so quietly we almost forgot they were there. When putting Ivy to bed tonight, she looked around her messy room and said, contentedly, "We had SO much fun in here today!" Jack regaled us with tales of wrestling and the "don't laugh game." It remains one of the joys of my life-- watching my friends' children becoming lifelong friends with my children. This is immortality, right here. The love with continue for another generation, and on from there. And I am so grateful.