Catching up

Well, my blog went on vacation at the same time I did, but here's a recap of the last couple of weeks.

I managed to take off more time at Christmas than I ever have. I drove home on the 23rd and stayed through New Year's. On my way to Tennessee I got to see some friends and caught up with a few there, but the trip was mostly about family.

Our Christmas was a little different than usual as we did things in shifts. There was only about an hour where all my siblings and I were in the house at once, but since I was in town the whole time I got good time with everyone. We spread out opening presents over a couple of days, making Christmas last a little bit longer.

Of course to me, the best part was spending time with my 1-year-old niece. She entertained us all for three days. Most of the time, we could just sit around and watch her. She has so much personality and is so smart (I know I'm biased but still).

One of the things you can very clearly her say is "It's good." This comes out as a statement but sometimes as a question about something.

She has a December birthday like me, and I spent a lot of time debating what I could give her for Christmas that would still be fun for her in six months since she was on present overload. I convinced my brother and sister to go in with me on this:

She was very cautious about it at first, but she ended up loving it. Of course my favorite thing is her looking out to her people, like a queen:

And here are a few other pictures I got of her with my real camera, not the iPhone:

She looks so much like my sister here.

Sitting next to the sign for the toy store my mom owned.

 Liking the big slide

I love her in this coat and bonnet. My sisters and I all wore something very similar when we were little.

Caroling

I thought for the rest of my posts for this week, I would share a couple of Christmas traditions in my family.

When we were growing up, we had several families we were good friends with that all had kids around the same ages. I'm not sure if my mom and her friends were trying to fulfill some picture of the perfect Christmas or just liked to throw parties. But one year when my younger brother and sister were still toddlers, they decided we should all get together and go Christmas caroling.

There were four families, consisting of 15 kids (though not all were there in the beginning) and eight adults. We rotated houses every year, gathering to eat dinner and then hit the neighborhood singing. I wouldn't say that we were the most talented group, and we had a limited selection of songs to sing, but I think our neighbors were pretty pleased to open their door and see 23 carolers. (Sidenote: On Sunday night, I actually had the experience of being caroled to for the first time, and it is pretty fun to open the door to singing.)

There are some funny memories from that time. We often tried to get complicated with our songs, but then no one would know the words, so we'd just break into "We wish you a merry Christmas." I think Jingle Bells and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer were our most frequent songs. And one year my mom put together songbooks to add variety.

We also attempted carrying candles one year. Why any adult thought that was a good idea, I don't know. Even worse, we had just had an ice storm and were slipping everywhere as we walked through the neighborhood. It may have been the next year that we loaded up in the back of a pick-up truck for a "hayride" between houses. This was a good idea, but somehow the youngest of all of us was stepped on in one of the unloadings and ended up with a broken collarbone. She is also the one that was born one year during caroling, and so we get to celebrate her birthday every year. She turns 20 this year if that gives you a time reference.

It's been several years since my mom withheld food until we actually went caroling, but up until last year we still gathered for dinner and time to catch up. By now of course, everyone has spread out, and there are four married kids so it's just not feasible to get us all together anymore. But I have to say it was a pretty good tradition for us and pretty cool that 20-some odd years later we were hanging out with friends we've had since birth.

Last year was the end of the tradition, our parents all had dinner but the kids were not obligated to go. I was actually flying home that night, and when I got to where my layover was, I ran into one of the guys that was part of this caroling group. We got to catch up, and just like when we used to carpool everywhere, our parents just dispatched my sister to pick up both of us.

Tis the season

To blog about Christmas decorations, or so it seems. And since I have nothing else to write about, it seemed like a good plan.

Christmas tree lights were always a big deal in my family. There were never enough on the tree (even though it looked like it was on fire looking through the window), they were the wrong color, they didn't have the flower bulbs and on and on. My dad would spend at least a full day putting lights on the tree (it was fake, by the way), and then we had boxes and boxes of ornaments to put on which stretched out for a week. 

So when I had my first apartment, I bought a pre-lit tree from Wal-Mart to avoid the light fiasco. I picked up a box of plain colored ball ornaments, and then hijacked some of my childhood ornaments to add. I put it up and decorated it after work one night last week in less than two hours. I will note that my parents have given up the lights drama as well and purchased a large, pre-lit tree that has enough lights to satisfy everyone. 

What added to our ornament collection was that every year, my parents gave my siblings and I each an ornament that represented something we had done that year. I have a lot of soccer player ornaments:

But there's also the angel from when I was in a church play:

And here's my newest ornament that was a birthday gift from a good friend, that really does represent the last year:

When I got the tree up, it looked very bare on the bottom, so I started wrapping presents that same night, which seemed ridiculous but for some reason very logical to me. (And now, I am also very close to being done with shopping and wrapping.)

In my old apartment I had a mantle, and I bought the greenery for that. But no mantle in this apartment, so I added this to the top of my bookshelf.

One year I had three nativity scenes in my apartment. It seems that was a bit of overkill. So I've settled on this one for now:

Since I live by myself, I always struggle to justify pulling all this stuff out and putting it up just for me. But I always do and am so glad that I do because I love sitting by the light of the Christmas tree during December.