Holiday Fun

I love Christmas! I revel in the festivities and the lights and the anticipation as much as the kids do, and I delight in the simple and abundant joy that fills the season. We have had plenty of fun in the past couple of weeks.

First, Nana came to visit for a couple of days. "Nana Claus," as we began calling her, filled the tree with presents while Hannah was at school and Ben and Becca were napping. The kids loved having an early Christmas celebration and excitedly unwrapped the special gifts Nana brought for them. Additionally, Nana Claus filled the kids (and us!) with candy and other treats. But, most importantly, she filled our house with love and fun while she visited, and we felt sad to see her leave.

Then, on Monday, Ben had his preschool Christmas field trip to the carousel downtown. Siblings could attend, which greatly pleased Hannah, since her vacation began after school on Friday. We have not ridden the carousel since ballet ended last spring, and I have missed it! Becca's initial wariness of the ride this time surprised me and made me realize that I need to take them more often.

I love seeing their happy faces as they enjoy the ride.

Finally, tonight, we took our first drive of the season to see a lovely lights display at our county fairgrounds.

The display has thousands of lights, and for a few dollars, we drove through the fairgrounds to admire them.

Because we have watched A Charlie Brown Christmas so many times this year, the kids loved the Peanuts display.

But, their favorite part is always the light tunnel, which flashes and changes colors as the cars drive through.

I don't know which I enjoy more - seeing the lights or hearing my kids' excited squeals as we drive past. Fortunately, my parents love the display, too, which gives us a good excuse to go again in a few days when my parents come to visit.

And, really, I think that is why I love Christmas so much. It is a season filled with beauty and joy and abounding with good excuses for merriment and celebration and generosity and fun. In what better way could we celebrate the birthday of the Giver of "every good and perfect gift" than to allow our hearts and our lives to overflow with thankfulness and uncontainable joy? Merry Christmas! It truly is "the most wonderful time of the year."

O Christmas Tree

On Saturday, we made our annual trek to a local Christmas tree farm to cut our Christmas tree. Josh and I have done this together since we were engaged, and our children make this tradition even more fun! A few years ago, we found a new farm after the old nursery stopped allowing people to cut their own trees, and although this farm is a bit farther away from our house, the trees have remained fresh and beautiful much longer. My family always had an artificial tree, so I take extra delight in the festive fragrance of fresh evergreen that fills my home each Christmas season.

After arriving at the farm (which we located much more easily this year with the help of our GPS), we parked near the Douglas firs and began searching for the perfect tree to bring home with us.

Some years, we struggle to find a tree we all love, but this year, we ended up choosing the first tree we saw. We dutifully looked around at other trees, but ultimately, we returned to the first tree that caught our eye.

Of course, we had to have a family photo in front of the tree! First, facing the sun (oops):

And then, with the sun behind the tree - much better!

After all of the required pictures, Josh began cutting down the tree.

This year, he did not even need my help. The tree had some bare space near the trunk at the bottom, which helped, as did the lack of snow on the ground this time. In past years, we have unwittingly timed our tree-cutting with the biggest early snowfall of the season, which makes for lovely pictures, but less than ideal cutting and driving conditions!

Hannah and Ben "helped" Josh drag the tree back to the car, and then I assisted in squeezing the 8-foot Douglas fir into our minivan.

We tied down the back door of the van, paid for our tree, loaded the kids into two separate cars, and began our journey home. We had to stop once on the way home to retie the back so the tree would not fall out while we were driving, but we made good time and got the tree set up before dinner.

We had a wonderful day together as a family, and we hope to decorate the tree soon as well. Finding four working strands of lights has proved to be a more daunting and time-consuming task than getting our tree! But, with Josh on the job, we should have a lovely, decorated tree by this weekend. Only 16 more days until Christmas!

A Rustic Thanksgiving

This year, we did something a little different for Thanksgiving. Josh's parents live near a beautiful state park in New York, and the whole family rented a few cabins in the park for the week around Thanksgiving. The cabins were actually fairly nice, although they were very rustic. We had heat (a necessity in New York in the fall/winter), a stove, and a refrigerator. We did not have indoor plumbing!

It was quite an adventure! As you can see in the above picture, we brought a potty for the kids so we did not have to trek outside with them every twenty minutes to use the bathroom. If you look out the window, you can also see that the ground was covered with snow. In fact, we had about 18 inches by Thanksgiving day. This was our walk to the bath house:

The kids loved the snow and enjoyed sledding and playing with their cousins. I told them that we were experiencing Thanksgiving a bit like the Pilgrims experienced it - although easier! I am not sure I would do it again, at least not until the kids are a bit older, but we did have a lot of fun. Next year I'm hoping for a more comfortable Thanksgiving!