Christmas Celebrations

Saturday  in the early evening  Mystie

So I’ll fall in line with the general trend and contribute our stories from Christmas celebrations this year. :)

Christmas for us began Monday morning. We would be celebrating Christmas with the Winckler relatives at our house on Christmas Eve, so I got up before the boys — all three of them — and brought up the presents for our immediate and extended Winckler families and arranged them under the tree. While I was growing up, presents never lived under the tree but magically appeared all wrapped and pretty under the tree Christmas morning, and I always loved it — even when I became the one setting them out the night before as a young teen. One Christmas season a few years ago I started putting presents under the tree as I purchased and wrapped them, but both Matt and I thought that put the focus on the presents; putting them out the morning of also eliminates all stress of having yet another prominent “No!” in a house of little ones. Anyway, I did that and finished the dishes and started coffee and started a soup in the crockpot for our dinner/lunch to be served around 3. By this time the boys were awake and playing in their room, aware that it was going to be a good day, but unaware of all the day would hold. I made sure Matt was awake, then went in and got the boys and told them to go ask Daddy to make us biscuit ring for breakfast, and they got to go downstairs and have breakfast in their jammies, which they love but is not how things generally work on normal days because it involves another trip up the stairs too soon in the day for me. :) The boys saw the lighted tree with presents underneath before they had reached the bottom of the stairs and were immediately excited. Still, we ate our breakfast, with many comments from the boys about how much sugar was involved.

A present was promised to boys who were dressed, so they scampered up with Daddy and came back down dressed in record time. We let them open their present from us: green plastic army men. They played enthusiastically with these for over an hour, then asked about more presents, but continued to play with the army men more when they received a negative answer.

They had a light lunch around 11:30, around which time Aunt Barbara, Uncle Austin, and baby Ava showed up followed shortly by Grandpa, Grandma, and Auntie Em. They were then allowed to open another present from Mom and Dad — a book apiece — which I read to them before taking them up for their quiet/nap time. Most of the adults then played a couple games, Ava opened a couple presents, then the boys woke up and each got to open a present from Auntie Em. They played with those while we got food ready and had a nice sit-down late lunch or early dinner of soup, bread, salad, and jello. Afterwards, we exchanged presents with the Braendleins, who wouldn’t be able to return later that evening, and let the boys open the rest of their presents. By the time that was over it was time to say goodbye to the very tired baby Ava and then pick up and get ready for the Christmas Eve candlelight service.

Grandparents and Auntie Em returned to our house after the service, and the boys got a piece of fudge as we lit the advent candles for the last time. Then they were off to bed and we had our good-wine-and-cheese Christmas tradition while we exchanged the remaining gifts to one another. Dressed up from service, in the dark with much candlelight and a lit Christmas tree, it was a nice, grown-up end to the day.

The next morning I was once again up first. I always am on such occasions, it’s a lifetime tradition that adulthood has not broken — in fact, I’m even more prone now since the responsibility of setting things up is now my own. Christmas morning saw no more presents under our tree, but instead of stockings — because I haven’t figured out what kind of stockings I want to make or buy — I had wrapped small gifts for everyone (myself included) and set the table for breakfast and placed the presents on each person’s plate. The boys were very disappointed when there were not presents under the tree when they were brought down, but the prospect of biscuit ring once more quelled all sorrow. Then it was quick, quick, get dressed, get stuff packed up, and we were out the door at 10 heading to my parent’s place for Christmas. The boys were relieved to see that there were presents under Nana’s tree, but they had to be held off for a couple hours while we awaited the arrival of my aunt and uncle and cousins, who were still traveling over. Matt and Geoff and I played a board game while Hans and Jaeger played with Aunt Kirsten and the other relations stood around visiting. Around noon the full quorum of 21 were present and we commenced with presents, which took a couple hours and this time the boys had to be content that not most of the presents under the tree were for them, as it had been the day before. The highlight of their day seemed to be little rubber duckies whose heads lit up in psychedelic colors. Jaeger was also thrilled to help open a present for Ilse that turned out to be a crocheted “special blanket” in purpley-pink made up in the same pattern as his and Hans’ own special blankets, made by my Auntie Jan. As soon as he saw what it was, he literally jumped up and down and clapped his hands and exclaimed, “A special blanket for Ilse!”

The rest of the afternoon consisted of various people preparing dinner, playing games, visiting, playing on laptops, and crocheting. There were 7 teenage boys in the house, but I think I saw them for a total of about 5 minutes after the present-opening was over. I heard they were downstairs playing Guitar Hero. Jaeger actually took an hour-long nap on Nana’s bed and Hans spent some “quiet time” on the couch enjoying the “Complete Original Tales of Curious George” that Papa had found for him. The turkey took a bit longer than anticipated to cook, so we didn’t eat until about 7 and before we knew it it was 10pm and the boys were still amazingly cheerful and well-behaved. But we didn’t push our luck further and decided we had best get them home.

So we had an excellent Christmas, spread over two days, and Matt took Wednesday off and valiantly spent his morning cleaning things up and putting things away so that when the midwife arrived at 10:30 she commented that it looked like Christmas hadn’t even happened. And I’m sure he scored bonus points because he was hand-washing the last of the dishes when she arrived. :) There are a few perks to being at the end of pregnancy around Christmastime. :)

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 29th, 2007 at 6:47 pm and is filed under Lady of the House. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.