It was beautiful!
Today and tomorrow our weather is so warm that the snow is melting and everything is all wet, melty, mushy, and very foggy.
Quite a nice finale for 2010, I would say! We are looking forward to a weekend of relaxing and celebrating the beginning of 2011!
Every once in a while during the holidays, I get lonely and blue about the fact that I'm so far from home (Texas) with most of our relatives more than a thousand miles away. My entire family--except for my mom, of course--is in Texas, and two of Bill's siblings live in Philadelphia; we rarely get to see them. When I want to start really feeling sorry for myself, I mope around about my kids' startling shortage of grandparents--with my dad and both Bill's parents deceased, it makes us extra thankful to have my mom here with us.
What a contrast from my own childhood, surrounded by grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and my parents who had grown up together from childhood. There certainly was no shortage of relatives around for the holidays in those early years!
But now, here I am in the frozen arctic Midwest, far from home and family. If I let myself think about it too much, I could get sad about the fact that our holidays regularly consist of just our party of seven, plus one grandma. Sometimes we get Bill's sister and her husband and daughter, and the kids love it when we do. But mostly, we're on our own for making and celebrating family traditions.
And you know what? It's all good. I could get all lonely, blue, and sad about our little party of seven--but when I start going down that path, I just put that out of my head. Our own little family has plenty of traditions of our own, and we're making memories that will be every bit as special to my kids as mine are to me. My kids, after all, aren't comparing our Christmases to the ones I had forty years ago in Texas. Ours are all they've got; and to me it seems that things are pretty awesome around here. To tell you the truth, this year things have been especially beautiful and--hard to say this but--perfect.
I think, when it comes to relatives, that we each have to just make the best of whatever hand we've been dealt. I never would have imagined that my kids would have such a shortage of grandparents, or that I'd live so far off on my own, but that's the way God has set it up, and what else can I do but be thankful and happy? What a miracle, after all, that our party of seven is intact! I think losing my dad when I was 18 has helped me not to take the family I have for granted. I know it makes me more aware that each day we have together is precious.
Sometimes I do dream of having a houseful of extended family for Christmas. Maybe someday we'll move back to Texas and that will be so. But this year, for the first time, I began to foresee a day in the future when I'll surely have that houseful of family. It will come in another decade or two (aka the blink of an eye), when I'm the grandma, and my house is full of the next generation. And isn't carrying things on to the next generation what family traditions are really all about?
"Behold God incarnate! How beautiful it has been to reflect on the very profound mystery of our Savior's incarnation! ...
"Finally, someday in heaven above, we will grasp it fully. There we will celebrate with an incomparable delight this great feast of Christmas."
~ St. Francis de Sales
I am always humbled by people (like my sister-in-law, the amazing master baker and goddess of all things domestic) who can pull together those incredibly beautiful cookie trays like this: 
This year I guess I figured it out.
We have made eight or so different kinds of cookies lately, as well as a huge vat of cranberry-almond-orange caramel popcorn, and it wasn't even hard.
Messy, for sure, but not hard.
I think it has to do with not being pregnant, not having anyone under 12 months old in our family 
Oh yes, and the fact that MRD and KLD can pretty much do everything by themselves now. Here's a small sample of their beautiful creations:
I admit I do still have a bit of a love/hate relationship with Christmas baking. 
Tonight was my turn to drive WWD's basketball carpool. It's just far enough away--about 30 minutes--that it's not worth making the round trip twice, so I planned to just hang out at the gym during practice.
O Come Let Us Adore Him
Christ the Lord!
This is the time of year when, desperate for Christmas gift ideas for our family-of-way-too-much-stuff, Bill and I always kick around the idea of getting a Wii for the kids. I think Wiis are really cool, and I know my kids would have fun with one. So far, though, we've held out and resisted getting any kind of video game at all.In Favor of a Wii:Okay, okay, I made up my own mind again, apparently. Thanks; I'm glad we had this little chat.
- Fun
- Would make a good Christmas gift
- Good thing for the kids to do when friends come over
- Don't be so uptight, Mom!
Against a Wii:
- The kids will totally fight about whose turn it is, at all times.
- Even when they play a PC game on a CD or website, they exhibit irrational behavior, including lots of fighting and meltdowns when their turn is over.
- Video games are just a wee bit addictive. (If you're not convinced about this, just try playing Tetris for one hour--and then stopping.) I firmly believe that the behaviors just noted above result from my kids experiencing media withdrawal. Frankly, I'm scared about expanding this unpredictable drug into our household, times 5.
- One more thing to lose or break
- They should just read a book; there are more books in the world than they can read in their entire lifetime.
- There is plenty of evidence that video games are bad for kids and families.
- I'm afraid that video games will harm their imagination and creativity.
- We. Don't. Have. Any. Extra. Time.
- Life is short.
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