Christmas 2006

At the MNI (Mom's Night In) I was working on an evening's work, while I teased everyone in the room. Ruthann is such a good sport. I gave it as a Christmas present before anyone got a chance to see the finished project, so I thought I'd show it to whomever cared. The middle flower is actually a baby blue, but the colors got messed up in the pictures somehow. It looked even cuter on my neice. This is the pattern I used from Lion Brand Yarn. I crocheted from about 8pm - 1pm (poor Lisa - I didn't leave her house until 1pm!) Dd10 suggested I sew a vine going around the crown of the hat. I liked the idea alot! (What a creative girl!) My FIL posed for a picture with the hat - he didn't quite do it justice...

This Christmas I've been wrapping presents in all my dad's paper and his cheesy stick-on bows that I inherited from his house. It's with joy of the continuation of his life and sadness at my loss and hope for the future that I do this. Every wrapping session has brought tears and lots of emotion. Each time I stick one of those bows on (I'm a curly ribbon kind of girl myself) I can't help but think of him. I've got one more session to go, and I'm sort of putting it off.

All this emotion has really helped me examine my own parenting and focus on the areas that are lacking. So far, I haven't made much progress which is emotionally draining to see all my faults and not be able to push past them to "just fix it". I am continuing to pray about it and am confident that Jesus will walk hand-in-hand with me to accomplish this most overwhelming task of learning to love as He does.

We are doing the O Antiphons, but I couldn't find a house to do it with, so we're just singing them with our Advent Wreath lighting at dinner. It's a lovely prayer - finding new (although old steeped in tradition that I never knew - so, new to me) names for Jesus. www.wdtprs.com/blog/

There is a little-known fact about the order of these ancient O Antiphons. This
is not apparent in English, but it can be seen clearly in the official language
of the Roman Catholic Church: Latin. The Latin versions of each of the titles of
the Messiah: Sapientia (Wisdom), Adonai (Lord), Radix (Root), Clavis (Key),
Oriens (Dawn), Rex (King), and Emmanuel (Emmanuel). Take the first letters of
each of the titles and write them backwards, thus counting down the days of the
feast: EROCRAS or "ero cras." This means in Latin "I will be (here)
tomorrow".The song "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" is simply a slightly modified sung version of the seven O Antiphons.

Many questions have been going around about Christmas plans. We usually have Christmas with Dave's family early because one of his brothers takes his family out of state. We did that one last weekend (thus the hat). We'll try something new and see if it works for us. Dave and I will split up for Christmas Eve. I'll take the girls to my step-dad's family and Dave will take the boys to his Grandma's celebration. There's things we each like about each of the parties, but going to all of them is too much for us. I'm not exactly sure why, but I've been better at saying 'no' this season to all sorts of things. I think I'm still pretty busy dealing with pain from my dad and only have so much space in my brain to care what anyone thinks - therefore I end up with what I think is best weighed with what I actually want. Trying to please people doesn't even weigh in this year. Good or bad? I'm not sure - but more relaxing! I'm not sure if we'll go to Christmas Mass (it sounds so redundant since the original meaning of the word Christmas was really Christ's Mass) before we open presents or after - or in the middle. After Mass and presents at our house, we'll end up at my mom's about 3pm. Dave has the next day off, so we can rest and enjoy each other. Then we have a Christmas party with my extended family the next weekend, friends over New Year's Eve and my neice will spend the night that week before school starts.

So.... we're not as busy as in past years, but still a little busier than Dave and I prefer. It makes January a lovely month, along with the fact that dd10 will become 11! OH, and we'll take a few days up at an Inn that we love then, too. Actually, the kids are paying for it with their combined allowances they've saved since July.