Before we get too far into January, I wanted to record some memories from the twins first Christmas. Lucas and Elena were very excited for Christmas this year, understanding more of the true meaning of Christmas and of course also looking forward to getting some presents. Lisa and Leila, at 7 months, had fun just coming along for the ride, and eating the wrapping paper. Oh, and stealing the other's gift...
We had a nice quiet Christmas Eve at home with just our family; reading the Christmas story and watching the Charlie Brown Christmas special before opening one gift (gifts for the kids from their Auntie Grace and Uncle Drew in Canada).
On Christmas Day we had a nice breakfast of French toast and bacon before opening more gifts and getting ready to head into Sao Paulo for a big Christmas meal with my in-laws. My sister-in-law was also there with her two girls and her parents. The big kids did really well during our little service and then we opened gifts. Lucas really enjoyed helping grandma hand out all the gifts and stockpiling his own stash to open at the end.
Playing with / eating / opening their presents
At the end of the evening when all the gifts had been cleared away and we were packing up to head home I managed to get a few shots of the girls in front of the tree.
Love their matching expressions.
Lucas is already asking to have the Christmas decorations back up in our home. It's a good reminder to keep Christmas in our hearts all year long. Hope yours was a wonderful celebration of the greatest gift - Jesus Christ.
So, it's a little late to be writing about Advent now, considering Christmas is merely days away. Somehow December just caught me off guard (I'll blame my brother's visit from Nov 10 - 30). Last year I wrote about our Advent Calendar that we've used for the past four Christmases. While I had some ideas about doing a different kind of advent calendar using match boxes, I was already late so I didn't do anything drastically different.
I decorated our home with lots of red this year, so I wrapped match boxes (filled with two chocolate coins for the older kids) in red, blue and green snowman paper.
I did want a different way to attach the boxes so that after they were taken down there was still something on the calendar. I decided to make some cute numbered tags and attach it with a ribbon that would stay on after the boxes were taken down. I threaded each ribbon through the loop on the tree, then taped the number and the box to the ribbon. The box is easily removed from the bottom part of the ribbon.
We also found a better place to hang the tree this year - last year it kept falling down. I hung all the boxes with the numbers all mixed up; Lucas is enjoying the challenge of finding the numbers. With only five days before Christmas our tree looks emptier, but it's nice to see the ribbons and little number tags. Along with the lights we hung around it, I really like the set up this year!
Since it's already December 31st, I thought I'd better highlight some of my favorite moments from our Christmas celebrations this year. The kids faithfully opened their little advent boxes every day, even though some of the candy melted on a few of the hot days!
On Christmas Eve we spent the evening together enjoying finger foods and watching the Charlie Brown Christmas movie before reading the Christmas story and allowing the kids to open a few presents. Needless to say it wasn't an early evening but we were hoping that at least we'd get a few extra minutes in the morning.
Christmas morning the kids opened their stockings and we had crepes for breakfast and tried to leave the house in a somewhat clean state before heading off to my in-laws for our big family meal.
We missed having the whole extended family there but still had a great time enjoying the food and company.
The "young families" table - two brothers and their families.
Of course we had to get a photo of the whole gang which sometimes takes a while with squirmy kids, but this time I think we got it in one or two shots!
The kids really had fun playing together. Elena and her cousin Sophia are only three months apart.
Top photos: Lucas and Sophia cuddle on the sofa during our reading/meditation time.
Bottom left: Sophia and Elena - Bottom right: Helping Lucas open a gift.
We had a nice relaxed afternoon and evening before heading back to our home. Of course we had also tried to get a nice family photo a few days before Christmas, but both kids were extremely uncooperative! Here's our best shot.
Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas! Now, on to the New Year with lots to look forward to. Can't quite believe that next year we will become a family of six.
If you had taken a peek into my kitchen a few weeks ago, you would have seen a slightly pregnant woman, apron tied snugly around her waist, leaning over the counter, stirring a big bowl of sugar cookie dough, and soft streams of tears flowing down her cheeks...
It was a beautiful, sunny, Brazilian summer day early in December. The kids were off to school, and this momma decided to get a head start on her Christmas baking. The sweet sounds of Christmas music drifted through the house as she sifted and stirred the flour, sugar and butter.
It was when a certain song started playing, that she was brought to tears. It was one of those songs, you know the ones, where the marriage of music and lyrics is so sublime you cannot help but be moved. The words and images evoked, along with the rise and fall of the melody and the swell of the chorus stirred up emotions so strong that the woman could not even sing along. Feelings of grace, awe, wonder and faith. A deep stirring within her soul. A hope and a longing for its powerful words to be fulfilled.
It was a song known intimately to her, sung many years ago and yet the parts and harmonies, the words and dynamics remain so strongly etched in her memory.
The story it tells is of the true meaning of Christmas, not just that we remember Jesus' incarnation, his death and resurrection, but we also anticipate His coming again. It is this truth that we celebrate at Christmas and from which stems all the joy, peace, hope and love of the season.
As the music played, the woman made no attempt to curb her tears, but rather, cherished the moment, soaking in the words and the truth presented. Simply, a Christmas memory that won't be soon forgotten.
Have a listen, and bask in the wonderful truth of this season. (Scroll down to see the full words)
"When He Comes Again" - by Rebecca Peck
Verse: When He came, He spent His first night on a bed of hay When He came, He left Heaven without wealth or fame Wrapped in rags, Christ had no sign of royalty, The truth of who He really was the world could not see.
Chorus: But when He comes again, On a cloud of majesty, Every eye at last shall see, He is the great I am, When He comes again, The hosts of Heaven with Him, He'll bring to earth a kingdom without end, When He comes again.
Verse: When He came, He was rejected by the ones He loved When He came, He drank freely from Death's bitter cup, Betrayed and broken, Jesus hung in agony, The truth of who He really was, the world could not see.
(Repeat Chorus)
Tag: The hope of all the ages the everlasting Lord, That baby boy from Bethlehem shall reign forever more. (Repeat Chorus)
One of my favorite Christmas memories from my childhood is sitting around our big dining table, with my mom, siblings (and maybe some friends) listening to Christmas music, tree lights on and decorating a huge pile of sugar cookies with all colors of icing and fun sprinkles.
So even though my kids are very small now, it's something we've attempted the past two years already. And this year I learned something VERY important - don't ever try a new recipe for the first time with your kids.
It just. didn't. work.
It was a new sugar cookie recipe that included baking soda, baking powder and cream of tartar. And the recipe didn't seem to have enough flour. So when Lucas and I tried to roll it out, all we got was a big, sticky mess. I had mixed the dough while the kids were in school, and it had chilled in the fridge until we were ready to bake the cookies.
I also realized I had the occasion to use this "situation" to teach Lucas some things too. He is in a stage, how can I put it nicely, where he is exploring the full range of his emotional capabilities. So before he had a complete meltdown about our futile cookie attempt, I tried to help him see how we could keep trying, sometimes things just don't work the first time, you have to be patient while mommy figures this out etc.
In the end he and Elena were happy to just play with the dough, adding flour and colored sugar to their hearts content, and making a big mess out of it.
Of course I didn't give them all the dough and was able to salvage a few cookies later on that we had fun decorating. And next week we'll try again with my old stand-by recipe (aka - my mom's :))
What Christmas traditions are you passing on to your kids?
Last week when I was getting my Christmas decorations up, I faced a truly serious (first world) problem. My string of lights was too long for the shelf I was decorating! What was I to do? Double the string? Let them hang off the edge? I didn't want to just waste the lights, so I decided to create a little light jar that could contain some of the lights and give a little extra something to the shelf.
Here's what I used:
- A tall, straight vase (about 20cm tall and 8cm wide)
- A plastic tube that was holding some ornaments (20cm by 5cm)
- A bunch of straight white twigs
- Some little white snowflakes
- Silver/Turquoise ribbon
I needed the inner tube to keep the lights contained, and the first thing I did was to do a test to make sure my little led lights wouldn't melt the plastic of the tube.
Once I had the inner tube in, I just dropped the white twigs around it, spacing them somewhat evenly. Then I added a few snowflakes here and there, and wrapped my ribbon around the middle.
When I set it up on the shelf, I put a bunch of lights in the inner tube and topped it off with a pine cone to hide the wires coming out of the top. Now even with the lights off it looks cute.
There you go! A simple project to deal with those pesky first world decorating problems. :)
Have I mentioned I love decorating? When it comes to Christmas, I'm no different - I love pulling out the garland and the white twinkly lights. Since we've moved around a lot in the past 8 years, I've been able to decorate lots of different homes for Christmas (even my in-laws!) and it's always a lot of fun coming up with new ideas. Even when we spent two Christmases in the same house (only once in the past 8 years!) I decorated differently both years.
So now that we are set up in a new house (hopefully for a few years), I thought I'd share my Christmas decorations. While I love the traditional Christmas colors, this year I thought I'd experiment with blue, silver, white and turquoise.
I decorated our small table-top tree with white lights, a wide silver/white ribbon, some bell garland, white twigs, blue ribbons, pine cones, and blue, silver and turquoise ornaments. I used a turquoise scarf to cover the table and a fluffy white baby blanket as a tree skirt.
We don't have a fireplace or traditional "mantle", but I usually clear off any shelves and decorate them with garland and lights.
We have a nice big wood valance over our living room window and it also got a nice garland with lights, white twigs, a few ornaments and pine cones. In the middle is a star with a few ornaments hung underneath. Almost two years ago, a cousin got married and I was able to keep some of the decorations she used in her January wedding. The little blue, turquoise and white bobbles are making their second annual appearance in my Christmas decorating (Thanks Charissa!)
There's a little peek into our little house. We also have some festive poinsettias in the window and I still have to hang my wreath on the front of our house. When I finished all the decorating and turned only the Christmas lights on and invited the kids to come see the living room they gasped and said, "it's bootiful, momma!" (Still doesn't keep them from taking all the ornaments down though!)
I always grew up doing Advent, in our churches we celebrated the four Sundays before Christmas, and at home we usually had some kind of calendar (the best ones were the ones with chocolates) and our own Advent candle wreath and I even remember having a chocolate advent calendar at boarding school one year that my roommates and I took turns opening.
As our family has moved around a lot in the past few years, we have hardly spent Christmas in the same country twice, let alone the same house. So a few years ago my mom gave us a re-usable Advent Tree and I think it's been nice to do the same thing three years in row even though we haven't been in the same place.
Here's what we do. We collect match stick boxes through the year. (Or if you're like me, you go to the store on November 29 and buy 20 boxes of matches for $2.00 since you can only find 4 around the house. I now have a big ziplock bag full of matches and no way to light them....hehehe)
We fill the boxes with small candy or chocolate and wrap them up. This year I am doing a blue, white, turquoise and silver theme with our decorations, so I wrapped half of the boxes in white wrapping paper, and the other half in turquoise.
My supplies; tape, scissors, wrapping paper and boxes.
Our Advent Tree is a jute tree with 24 loops for hanging ornaments or, in our case, boxes on. It came from Bangladesh I think.
I decided to arrange the boxes in lines of white and turquoise. Each box is wrapped with ribbon and tied to the tree. If I was really organized I would have made cute little number tags to also add on to each box. As we take off the boxes, I tie the ribbon back on the loops in a bow.
Here is our finished tree! I put it up on the wall with a removable hook. Each day the kids get to open one box, share the contents and we talk about how Jesus is the best gift of Christmas. Of course, we also have to talk a lot about patience and waiting, several times a day, as 24 hours is a LONG time for the kids to wait for the next box.
Maybe it's because this is the first time in three years that we are celebrating in our own home; maybe it's because we are in the middle of summer here; maybe it's because we now have kids who need to be taught about what Christmas really is; maybe it's because of all the consumerism and economics of the season; maybe it's because I'm trying to lose weight and save money. I'm not really sure, all I know is it's been weighing heavily on my heart these past few weeks. I don't even want to play Christmas music, decorate or bake "Christmas" cookies. It just doesn't feel like Christmas.
Here in Brazil, we don't really celebrate Thanksgiving or Halloween and so the Christmas season seems to be extra important. As early as October I noticed Christmas decorations going up in the shops. The malls here go all out with massive displays of green and red wreathes, strings of lights, giant trees, reindeer, snow(!?) and of course, Santa. There is a huge hype, this rush, this frenzied madness of parties and shopping all culminating in "Christmas Day" and while it is all very pretty and engaging and charming, it really misses the point entirely. This I think is what saddens me the most. I know that Christmas has all kinds of baggage; no doubt you will find someone who will explain away all the Christmas traditions by linking them to some pagan or secular custom from the world's often not-so-pretty history.
Despite the way "Christmas" originated and the many ways it has been changed and re-interpreted over the centuries, I think we have to admit that for the most part Christmas is no longer a "Christian" holiday (if it ever really was). So now what? It's not so much the "pagan" rituals or customs that were included in the celebration of Christmas that bothers me, it's the fact that now we seem to have put so much more emphasis on the decorations and the gifts and other "traditions" that we have lost sight of the simple, incredible fact that we are trying to remember and celebrate the most important life this world has ever known. The life that gives meaning to our lives.
As I've been mulling this over the past few weeks (this post was probably started at the beginning of December) a few thoughts have been forming...
1. Christmas is not a day, it is a season. It doesn't matter if we celebrate on the 24th, the 28th or even in January. What matters is what (or rather who) we are celebrating. As Christians we celebrate Christmas as the birth of Christ, but it doesn't stop there - throughout the year we have other seasons where we celebrate other seasons of His life - his ministry, death and resurrection. We celebrate not only that he lived, but that he died and lives again. Christmas is only the beginning...
2. A friend of mine posted this on his facebook status a while ago, "Christ did not incarnate to fight against culture, but to transform it. Why should His disciples do any differently?" (Flavio Silva). I'm not sure if he was referring to Christmas, but when I read it, I immediately thought of its application to our celebration of Christmas. We don't need to give up Christmas, but I think we need to be different in the way we celebrate, so that people can tell it's not just about the holidays, food, gifts and decorations. We need to transform the culture of Christmas.
3. As I thought more about how to celebrate Christmas I thought of this scripture, "But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have." (1 Peter 3:15). If we celebrate differently, we will have opportunities to share the hope we have.
So don't call me Scrooge (now that's a whole other ball of wax...) but we are definitely celebrating Christmas differently this year - no Santa, no huge pile of gifts, no Christmas tree, no "Christmas" songs about reindeer, snow, mistletoe and elves - just sincere acknowledgment, gratitude and thankfulness for the one simple life we celebrate at Christmas - Christ.
