Celebration to Celebration!

This is how Mama gets things done!

Well, I survived being the mom on Thanksgiving. Actually, to be perfectly honest, I so much more than survived that it is a little bit pale to even call it "surviving." The meal was a grand success. The food was fine, nothing I personally cooked was outstanding (although props to A on his tiramisu cake!), just good..but the company was warm, the house was bustling and the vibes were very, very good.

A's beautiful rolls, rising.

Nib in the midst of the glowing scene.

I had several grand moments in the party when an individual clasped my hand between two of theirs and sincerely thanked me for hosting them. It doesn't get a whole lot better than that. I was a very happy girl and I sailed out of the event with sparkly visions of all the parties I want to have in the future. It was a pretty great note to begin Christmas season on.

And so here we are, in Advent...the first candle in our Advent circle is flickering away at mealtimes and we're singing, "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" with great vim and vigor. We cut our Christmas tree last night and hauled in and erected the largest Tenenbaum that could possibly be squeezed into our living room. The whole house smells like that wonderful tangy, warm scent of fresh tree and the corner the tree is bursting out of is encroaching mightily on the nearby doorway.

The boys had the first chocolates from their Advent calendars this morning and all the Christmas/winter books are out of storage and stacked heaping in the holiday basket next to the big reading chair. I foresee many cozy afternoons and evenings in front of the fireplace in our future! Next up, decorating the mantle! I need to get out in the countryside with my clippers and hunt up winterberry branches and evergreen boughs. Maybe tomorrow!

Whirling Through December

My mind is kind of a big holiday blur right now. Very active, very awake but not so terribly organized and although positively crackling with life, not a particularly accessible place for most the people in my life. I am bumbling on behind my mental curtain, in some measure "just surviving" this season of festivity and preparation for festivity, but in most ways, much more than that. Although, I am completely unable to string together a very coherent post today, there are a lot of things going on in my brain.

The best I can do today is to share with you some of the things I am mulling over in list form:

•  Going bi-lingual with my children. I speak some Spanish and really want to share the language with my kids. I've decided to stop being chicken and go immersion-style on language "lessons" for a few hours of every day (mid morning to naptime). I need other Spanish points of contact in my kid's lives too.
• Reading about sugar. Sugar bugs me. I want to do some reading about exactly what people think it might be doing to us and why. Bones behind our theories are always good. Anyone have any good suggestions for books?
• I am reading this book on disadvantaged women around the world and it's taking my mind apart.
• This puzzling verse in the Bible.
• Praying at meals. I think I might quit...at least as a hard and fast habit.
• The joy of having a new purse. I change purses about four times a year, just to rotate with the seasons and keep a fresh look. I couldn't find something for fall so I was still carrying my summer bag and wishing for just the right thing and then yesterday in Goodwill...I found a soft teal, leather number with a silver buckle. Perfect.
• The thought that some other housewife walked the floors of our house, worrying about WWII and wondering when it would end. That kind of blows my mind somehow.
• Desitin. My mom has sung it's praises for an age, but I'm a reborn convert after applying it to my poor baby's badly chapped cheeks and seeing insta-overnight cure. That stuff is fabulous.
• The meaning of the colors in the Advent wreath. In our church the candle lighter accidentally lit the rose candle last Sunday which kicked off a discussion about the history of said candle (older tradition has that candle lit this week in representation of joy over approaching the halfway point before Christmas.

Advent Season

This week Advent began, we pulled the first  of the holiday decorations out of the boxes (albeit waiting on the tree which won't happen until Sunday afternoon) and we got our fruitcake baked and began its bathing schedule. The holidays are in full swing...so much cinnamon scented happiness scattered all about.

I am working on ideas for myriad gifts and thinking about all the little things that we'll be doing between now and our departure for Michigan that will help to add small touches of holiday cheer and a sense of ownership for our own little family traditions. I am caught in a land between being the happy child who goes home to my parent's for Christmas and being the beaming mother who fashions a memorable celebration for her own tiny tots. This is my own little way of appeasing the piece of me that is a bit grouchy about always donning the child cap when I so long to also be the mommy who is mistress of my own celebration. The season between now and Christmas week is all mine to plan and celebrate in. This afternoon, while the oxtail stew was simmering on the stove, the boys and I were putting together a pomander. I am sure there were many cloves squished and dropped on the floor and more than a few sticky fingers, which is somehow just as it should be.

This year my cookie baking will be a simpler affair since the neighbor lady just dropped a note in our mailbox to tell me that one of those fabled cookie exchanges will take place at her house on the 12th. I am still pinching myself over the fabulous good luck that I have been really, truly invited to such a fete. I cannot wait. Now I just have to pick a perfect recipe and whip up my six dozen offerings.

I am going out to the garden next to start snipping boughs off of the offending yews, cluttering the front of the house. I plan to cover the mantle with them and then whirl up a wreath for the front door with a big red bow on it. It will be free, festive and those horrible misshapen bushes will have served a purpose after all. That's the way it should be; may all our little obstacles end up as lively, decorative embellishments.