Post Christmas Musings

Cookies all ready for Santa under the tree on Christmas Eve

We had a lovely Christmas. There was a perfect Christmas Eve with breakfast for dinner (brinner), a sweet nativity, and then stories by the light of the Christmas tree. Christmas morning was wonderful as well, with presents to open, German oven pancakes to eat, and toys to play with. I baked pies and rolls all day on Christmas and then we had spectacular dinner with dear friends. The kids jumped from toys to books and back again all day long. It was perfect, really.

Christmas for me gets better and better the more kids I have and the older they get. This particular Christmas season I entertained all sorts of questions about Santa, helped the kids come up with gifts for their daddy, and listened as my kids learned all the Christmas songs well enough to sing along. It is a delight to hear Luke tell Noah about Christ's birth and the real reason that we celebrate, using the same language that we used as we taught him in previous Christmas seasons. It was particularly gratifying to watch Luke nearly jump out of his skin with anticipation for Nat to open and read the book he made. Noah was sweet throughout the season, singing about "Frosting the Snowman". He seemed so much more aware and receptive this year. Isaac was oblivious and happy to be a part of whatever was going on. It's beautiful to be a mom all year and particularly sweet this time of year.

My Christmas pictures, however, do not reflect the lovely time we had. I am blaming the fact that it was overcast all day and we never got really good light for picture taking. I will have to do some serious editing before I am happy enough to share our pictures. There are lots of blurry pictures to be deleted. That's on the list of things to do.

I will soon document the puppet theater, the handmade puppets and the drawings that Luke is creating with the help of his Christmas book. For now though I have laundry to fold, Primary calls to make, and dishes to be done. These things don't wait, not even for Christmas.

We hope that your Christmases was just as lovely!

Festival of Lights

These pictures are mostly to provoke mad bouts of mission nostalgia in my sister, Emily. Back in the golden days of the DC North mission there was a live nativity during the festival of lights (as well as sort of odd dioramas of church history scenes in the visitor's center). My sister Emily was Mary during one of her Christmases here in the mission. I am sure that when the novelty of being Mary wore off the job must have been cold and a little boring. Someone must have figured that out and felt that the missionaries might be better used elsewhere. They have now replaced the live nativity with this lovely set.

Snow

We felt right at home this past weekend as the DC area saw its biggest storm in years. It started about midnight on Friday and didn't stop until six in the morning on Sunday. The total count is somewhere above two feet of snow. It all feels familiar to us as we remember the record amounts of snow we enjoyed our last winter in Madison. This is exactly what should happen the week before Christmas, Luke is off school tomorrow and the government is shut down and so we will have our papa around as well. There might be more snow pictures before the week is over.

Bionic

My kids' serious injuries never happen when they are actually doing some of the death defying stunts they try and pull but occur instead when they are doing perfectly normal things. Luke broke his wrist while walking down the stairs at the doctor's office, Noah sliced his lip wide open while playing in the bath and, most recently, fell while balancing, very close to the ground, between the couches. He cried a little and then came over to sit on my lap. I didn't think much of it and continued typing on the computer when I looked down and noticed blood dripping from his head and a pool of blood forming on the floor. The back of his head had a gaping wound that was dripping blood and forming blood clots all in his hair. We hemmed and hawed trying to decide whether we should take him in. In the end I was glad we had called and made an appointment. It didn't stop bleeding all morning. He was an angel at urgent care while they numbed the area, and the STAPLED his head with what looked like a staple gun. I have had stitches multiple times (I was nicknamed zipperhead for a good reason) and am pretty comfortable with the process. The staples weirded me out a little. But he's all healed up and didn't seem to notice the fact that he had metal in his scalp.

If you have a weak stomach you may not want to look at the following picture. I do not have a weak stomach (except when pregnant). But there was still something very unsettling about metal staples in my boy's head. Every time I brushed up against the back of his head with my hand I got the heebie jeebies a little bit.



I look at this picture and wonder if this is just the beginning of the rest of my life with these active boys. Isaac certainly seems headed for sutures with his climbing tendencies. Maybe I should just invest in my own medical stapler...

Merry Christmas

Isaac turns one

Can it really be that a whole year has passed since the birth of this little person? He is a wonder, to be sure. My grandmother infamously stated, in company of all six of her daughters, that her girls just got smarter and prettier the more she had. We all took that to mean that the sixth daughter was the smartest and the prettiest. This didn't do much for the self image of her eldest daughters and I was always sort of astounded that she could have said such a thing. I completely understand her now. She wasn't talking about the girls, she was talking about herself and her own appreciation of their beauty and intelligence. She was referring to a process that I can only understand because I am in the middle of it. The more children I have, the more awesome the whole thing seems. Isaac melts my heart in ways that the other boys didn't. I think it must have something to do with the fact that I understand that most irritating things are just a phase to be endured and the good stuff is what lasts. I worry less and enjoy more with him.

We celebrated his first birthday in Illinois with the Fredins. Looking through my pictures I can see that I did a pretty poor job at taking pictures. I neglected to get pictures of all the extended family, of the incredible spread that Barb put together and didn't document how cute the kids looked individually in their alphabet shirts.

Here is what I managed to document:

Luke made place cards for all of the kids. He and his beloved uncle Dave painstakingly found and placed all the letter stickers in their places and then debated about where all the kids would like to sit.




The boys helped me make letter cookies for all of the kids. They loved rolling them out, finding the letters and then watching them bake. Each of the kids got to frost their name in cookies.

The adults ate "I" cookies because it was Isaac's birthday, after all.

I made each one of the kids a red shirt with their first initial painted on in white-- everyone looks good in red, right? I sewed very simple drawstring bags for goody bags. They were filled with four colors of homemade playdough, alphabet stickers, a little notebook I made for each of them, and a pack of smarties (I know I am forgetting something that was in there).

playing with their dough and letter cookie cutters

The cake was a new technique for me. I have never used fondant but wanted the option of a perfectly smooth finish so that it would really look like a letter block. I was pleased with the way it looked. Taste was another matter. Fondant really doesn't taste good, which I knew going into it. It doesn't taste bad either. It just doesn't really taste. So I made a carrot cake. I love carrot cake.



Thanks to Doug and Barb for hosting, providing the food and all your work. It was a wonderful way to celebrate a year of this little person.
Happy First Isaac!

back home

the Crystal Lake building looks exactly the way I remember it

We are back from a whirlwind of a Midwestern road trip. We logged over thirty hours in the car with three little boys. I feel as though I visited every phase of my life in the past weeks. I had a delightful dinner with this lovely college roommate here in DC right before we left on our trip. I then went to stay with Grandma and Grandpa Fredin, visited Crystal Lake where we saw good friends and I took Luke on a trip down my memory lane, and then headed up to Madison where it seemed like nothing had changed except for the satellite dish that someone put on my house.

I waded through all the emotions and nostalgia and came out feeling a deep satisfaction with where I am at now. I love all these places and people from my past. I've been blessed throughout this journey with great people to love me along my path. I have a life full of treasured memories and happy relationships.

It also makes me want to love and appreciate the right now so much more. I am sure a few years from now I will look back at this place and these people with the same love and nostalgia. I'll never get back this stage of my children's development. I'll never relive this Christmas season. Kindergarten will pass so quickly. Isaac will soon be chattering away like his brothers. Noah will leave me for preschool before I know it. We will move away from this neighborhood with all of its charms. When we get there it will all be wonderful and right. But for now I will just slow down and absorb Isaac's snaggle toothed smile, Luke's endless curiosity, and Noah's constant pretending. I will appreciate the trees that line the path to Luke's school. I will embrace our current proximity to Nat's work and the fact that he can sneak away to help me put groceries away on his lunch break. I will make time to spend with the people I love here. This is what I have and it is enough.

Here's to the blessings of right now.

Inspiration

We've been on the move lately. We have spent countless hours in the car, seen lots of states, spent time with good friends and family, and have put Linette, our trusty GPS, to the test. I have loads of pictures to sort through and eventually post but in the meantime this post was so interesting and inspiring to me. I am starting to think I might get some creative juices flowing in time for Christmas.

Brothers

I love these pictures and those two little boys. They fell asleep on each other last Friday during our walk. This relationship has been interesting to watch unfold. Noah loved Isaac as a newborn and loved watching him develop new skills right up until those skills got Isaac into Noah's space. There was a rocky stretch where Noah took Isaac way too seriously. When Isaac reached out to bat at Noah he was accused of hitting and when he crawled near Noah's toys-- just forget it. This was (thankfully) short lived and with Luke at school Isaac is now being groomed as a playmate. I hear Noah giving instructions like, "you are the ewok and I am going to be Han Solo," or "follow me over here, Isaac." There is still some frustration when Isaac's lack of Star Wars knowledge interferes with his ability to play or when Isaac has his own idea about how the blocks should be set up. For the most part, though, they are figuring each other out and well on their way to being partners the way that Luke and Noah have been since Noah was about nine months old. It's a privilege to watch this friendship emerge. When Luke gets home, however, he is still the boss.
Oh, brothers.