Christmas report
Christmas
We celebrated the 12th Day of Christmas with friends yesterday, and today we observed the end of the season with the ceremonial Taking Down of the Tree and the ceremonial Eating of the Gingerbread Houses For Dessert. Well, the start of the eating, anyway; those houses are big enough they'll satisfy dessert cravings, lunch and dinner, for a couple days at least. With Christmas wrapping up it's time for a quick report so I remember next year what it was like.
opening the opening
We started with our family Christmas pretty late: the darkness from the howling blizzard outside kept the kids in bed longer than we might have expected. Zion was the last up. But by eight everyone was alert and enthusiastic, and we had a delightful time opening gifts. Everyone was excited by something, be it a bow and arrows, a lego dragon, or a new faucet (though Lijah doesn't recognize that the number of his presents is finite, which is a cause of distress to him). This was the first year that Harvey was able to buy presents with his own money—as well as making things—so he was especially interested in seeing how they were received.
It was fine that we got a late start to the morning, because the snow made us pretty uncertain about heading out on the road to my parents' house: we were happy to linger warm and dry. But with a delicious brunch awaiting us we couldn't stay away forever, so at 10:30 we piled into the car for a treacherous 5-mile trip to Lexington. Or maybe a little more than five miles, because on our first try up the big hill at the end of the trip we only made it about 15 feet before slipping backwards, so we had to take an alternate route. Which also involved a lot of slipping and spinning tires... but we made it. And as we came out of the car the snow stopped and the sun came out. So.
The rest of our Christmas day was super relaxed and filled with food and sloth—oh, and some more presents too. More giant lego sets for the bigger boys, and giant stuffed lego figures for Lijah. They were delighted.
what Christmas is all about
It was a little too bad that my brother and his family couldn't be there with us for Christmas day, but not even—because it meant we got to do another Christmas with them a few days later. Lots of food again, and more presents for the kids. But this time we couldn't be entirely relaxed: you can't eat non-stop every other day without getting some exercise! So despite the cold we forced the kids out onto the sledding hill.
companionable
As it turns out running up and down the hill kept us plenty warm (OK, only Zion ran down very often... up was enough for the rest of us) and we stayed out all the way til sunset. Then there was hot chocolate and the fire to warm us up... and more food, of course.
Christmas coziness
It was all delightful. Let's do it again next year.