The Christmas Season

Last Christmas I made a conscious effort to pare down the trimmings, traditions, presents and gatherings to focus more on the meaning of Christmas for me and my little family.  My soul searching and resulting efforts from last year smoothly transitioned into this holiday season and I am happy to say that despite circumstances beyond my control like a horrible flu bug, our Christmas was not only stress-free, but even had moments of peace, joy and great new memories too.

We started our holiday festivities by visiting a giant gingerbread house at a local hotel with friends.  It was a nice little *free* event, with cookies, hot chocolate and old fashioned Christmas candy.

We also went to an event at our local library entitled, "The Polar Express."  It was a great evening, again spent with friends, and we even got to ride a trolley down our town's Main Street to view the Christmas lights.  Here we are below with our friends Don, Jill, William and Grace riding the trolley.

Here Emma is looking at all of the sparkly lights.

To round out our holiday fun, we attended a Christmas party at our church.  The girls had a blast, and we are looking forward to making this an annual event.  Here they are below with their goody bags.

Here is Lucy decorating a gingerbread house.  This was a double bonus because Lucy had been asking to decorate a gingerbread house for quite some time and thanks to the church Christmas party, I was able to accomplish two things at once!

There were several arts and crafts projects for the girls to do at the church gathering too.  Here is Emma below decorating a "Frosty" ornament.

We saw Santa at the Polar Express and at our church's Christmas party too.  However, the impromptu picture taken at Bass Pro Shops one morning at the mall was the best one.  Each time Lucy saw Santa she asked for the same thing - twin baby dolls.  Emma would whisper "babies", indicating that she wanted the same thing Lucy did.  Lucy refused to sit in Santa's lap each time, and it took every ounce of her courage to tell him want she wanted for Christmas.  Emma only agreed to sit in Santa's lap at Bass Pro Shops.  After she saw the picture, Emma kept proudly squealing, "Emma!  Santa!  Lap!"

Lucy loves doing arts and crafts and one afternoon I found her with every craft item in the house strewn across the table.  She was secretly making our Christmas presents, and I was told to leave the dining room immediately.  It took great effort to walk away, especially after I noticed the open black ink pad, splattered glue and spilled glitter on the floor.

As a family we created snowflakes out of pipe cleaners and plastic beads to decorate Luke's grave blanket with.  This is one of my favorite Christmas traditions as it is a fun project that involves each member of our family.  Lucy loved every minute of it, and kept saying, "Mom, Lukey is just going to love this snowflake."

Emma was also able to string the beads on too.

Then we pulled out all of our ornaments we have made in years past for Luke, added this year's addition of the snowflakes and decorated his grave blanket.

Here we are at the cemetery, admiring this year's creation and talking to Luke.  I think we will need to get a bigger grave blanket as the years go on to accommodate all of our ornaments!

The first couple of Christmases without Luke were especially hard.   I would do anything to be able to have Luke here with us, and know what he asked Santa for this year and even see him open up presents in his jammies with his sisters on Christmas morning.  This year however, I can honestly say that the traditions we have put in place to remember Luke and honor him as a member of our family have really helped me to enjoy Christmas again.  Our Christmas tree has so many different ornaments to remember Luke by on it, and each one brings a smile to my face.  Seeing our stockings all hung in a row with Luke's in the middle makes me happy as does decorating his grave blanket and writing our annual Christmas letter to put in his stocking on Christmas eve.  No other holiday lends itself so well to the missing and the remembering of Luke and although I had a good cry at his grave on Christmas morning, the smiles outweighed the tears this year.

Going along with our simplified joy Christmas theme carried on from last year, we made very few Christmas cookies and somehow we still have a houseful of them.  I am going to have to put a note in the Christmas bins to remind me next year that baking is entirely optional since we seem to attract homemade cookies from the rest of the universe without putting in the effort of making them.  Here Lucy is below helping me decorate some almond macaroons which involved mixing ingredients in our food processor, scooping onto cookie sheets and decorating with almonds.  Super quick and super sweet!

Christmas eve dawned bright and early at our house when Emma woke up with a fever so hot it felt like we could get burned just touching her.  Her little heart was racing super fast and her breathing was shallow and labored.  We called our pediatrician's on-call number, who recommend we take her to an urgent care.  After showing up at the urgent care, we were told to go directly to the ER.  Will dropped Emma and I off at the ER while he took Lucy to my parents house.  Thank God they live only ten minutes away and are used to dropping everything, what with this being just another in a long string of ER visits this year.  When we arrived at the hospital Emma's fever was 105 degrees.  Five hours, a dose of ibuprofen, a red popsicle and a battery of tests later her fever was down to 99 degrees and they sent us home.  Diagnosis - virus.  We were relieved to know it was just a virus, and tried reminding ourselves that knowing all of the other tests for far scarier things came back negative was enough to discount the fact that we could have given Emma ibuprofen and a popsicle that would have been dye free at our own house.  This doozy of a virus is still with us as I type this post.  Lucy is currently laying on the couch with a 100 degree fever.  We have been sick since the Wednesday before Christmas and at the rate Lucy and Emma are going, they will have had fevers, coughs and runny noses for over two weeks.

Because of our illnesses, we were unable to go to Christmas Eve mass. I was super bummed, as this is one of my favorite traditions of the holiday.  The quiet hush of a church packed with people, the reading of the Christmas story, and sitting with Will and the girls all dressed in their Christmas finery is the pinnacle of Christmas for me.  All of the preparations are finished at this point, and finding a seat in the crowded church is the last thing we have to do to get ready for Christmas.  Emmanuel, God with us becomes tangible and as we sit down in the pew I can almost feel the peace of Christmas descend upon us.  In an effort to find a way to recreate this feeling, Will and I decided to bundle the girls up and take them outside for some fresh air around the same time we would have been heading to church.  When we got outside it was like we were the only four people on earth.  It was so quiet - no cars were driving on our usually busy street and snow flakes were just starting to fall as the sun sunk behind the line of trees to the west of us.  Time stood still as the girls put out some reindeer food to help Santa find the way to our house.

I was filled with overwhelming feelings of warmth, love and gratitude - much the same as if I had sat in church.

We even wrote "Merry Christmas Luke!" in the freshly fallen snow on our driveway.

Christmas morning, thanks in part to doses of both tylenol and ibprophen, our sick children found the energy to enjoy their gifts.  We made a point again this year to make each other something ourselves.  Will made me a wood insert to fit into our kitchen junk drawer so that it stays nice and organized (if you know me, you know that this is my favorite kind of gift - something for organizing!).  Lucy and I made Will clay garden markers and Will made the girls doll bunk beds.  I sewed the girls fairy wands and crowns out of felt.  Here is Lucy, handing me my favorite Christmas gift of all - the project she made all by herself with lots of ink stamps, sequins, glitter, glue and love.  It was completely her idea, and she hid it in her closet until Christmas eve, when she proudly placed it under the Christmas tree.

Here are the girls discovering their stockings.

Santa brought them their requested twin babies!

Opening gifts...

And Lucy figuring out how to use her new Kaleidoscope.

Favorite gifts the girls received included but are definitely not limited to puzzles, games, craft supplies, new back packs, dress up clothes, doll bunk beds and their beloved twin baby dolls making me the grandma to TWO sets of twins!  Lucy and Emma were watched by their special Elf on the Shelf Sammy, who reported back to Santa every night while they were sleeping during Advent.  We overheard Lucy tell Sammy that she wanted a pair of dress up shoes for her and for Emma so that they wouldn't have to share.  Will and I thought that was a great idea since the biggest thing they fight over these days is the one pair of high heel dress up shoes in the house.  Fortunately the Elf listened.  Maybe it was because of the secret we heard Lucy whisper to him on Christmas eve, his last day to watch the girls, "Elf, I promise to be nicer to Daddy next year."

By Christmas evening, the excitement of the day had definitely worn thin as Lucy vomited every twenty minutes to two hours throughout the night and Emma kept waking up from her horrible cough.  This past Sunday the girls were well enough (or so we thought - their fevers returned during mass) to have a Christmas re-do at our church.  They were the most well behaved we have ever seen them.  Note to self - somehow figure out how to induce fever like symptoms before mass every Sunday.

The girls loved seeing the Nativity scene up at the front of church, as well as finding the pair of snowflake ornaments they had made up on the children's Christmas tree in the church's vestibule.

We are still sick here and spent New Year's Eve last night at home.  Will and I made a dinner of different appetizers and filled wine glasses with white grape juice to toast the new year.  It was all we could do to get Lucy to join us at the table, and when I suggested she lift her glass to toast, this is the look she gave me...

This year has definitely had it's challenges and I think the above picture of Lucy sums it up perfectly.  We said goodbye too many times - to my brother, sister-in-law and niece who moved 14 hours west, my sister who moved four hours south, and friends who moved across the world to Japan.  We also said final goodbyes to two loved relatives - Will's uncle Bob in the spring, and Will's grandpa this past fall.  We had two hospital stays - first my four day stay in February and then Will's three day stay in October.  Not to mention two emergency room visits for Emma, three kidney surgeries for Will, two toe surgeries for me, a round of physical therapy for back pain for me and countless follow up doctor appointments and medical bills for the lot of us.  We were also saddened and grieve several events that took place in our country far more devastating than our own personal struggles this past year as well.

Yes, when looking back on 2012 while in the midst of the worst virus we have ever had it definitely takes some effort to come up with some positive memories, but here goes.  We gained a flock of chickens, learned how to care for them, established the garden of our dreams complete with veggies, berries and fruit trees, built a swing set in our backyard, finally got around to decorating four of the last five undecorated rooms in our house all while watching our girls grow.

We learned so much through our trials and tribulations this year and I have to say that we are starting 2013 not only one year older, but also wiser.  I am not proud of how I handled a lot of moments this past year, however I am looking back not with regret, but with appreciation for what I have learned and who I have now become.  I am grateful to have a clearer understanding of who I can count on in times of trouble, and who I need to move on from in my life.   I have been exposed to many great new people, ideas and books that give me a reason to hope for my family, our country and our world.  I am amazed at how God's solutions and timing were far better than anything I could have conjured up on my own if only I remember to put my troubles in His hands and have the patience to give up my need for control.

So, for 2013 my list of goals is short and sweet - good health and the accomplishment of several more dreams that we are actively pursuing and hope to relate on this blog as the year unfolds.  Here's to a HEALTHY and HAPPY New Year for all!