Season of Wonder

Raph getting ready to play outside in the cold, all bundled up and eager to earn his hot cocoa afterwards.

They did a good job of this little craft. Their little fingeres smelled so fragrant, citrus and herbal.  

We picked Aaron up at work early that Thursday so we could make the show at the Tacoma Dome at 7:00, and beat the hellish traffic Tacoma is so well known for.  Andres had no idea what we taking him to, but we told him he would love it.  Here we stopped in a train station converted into a novelty mall for some Thai food on the fly before the show.  

At the Dragon Show!   Andres finally figured it out when were walking into the dome and saw some posters.  He was excited, but nothing could prepare any of us for how awesome it was going to be.  

Dragons flew over our heads!

This was a great gift from grandparents this year.  We all loved it.

I'm so glad Aaron got shots of the boys doing a great job decorating the tree.  Someday I'll have the most perfectly decorated Christmas tree and there won't be any one to pluck the ornaments from the hooks and pitch them to the floor where they shatter into a million shards.  And I doubt that tree will be as wonderful as this one, with five bulbs clustered so lovingly onto one branch, and I'll mis these little hands making the season so merry and bright.

Because wasn't Jesus born to deliver us from the Dark Side?

The boys LOVED this gingerbread playdough recipe, and they played for hours with it.  Andres made elaborate gingerbread men, and Raph made babies and covered them with blankets, and said "nigh-nigh, baby."  It was so fun, and this recipe was super good.  The aroma was amazingly delicious,  better than real freshly baked gingerbread men, and the texture was out of this world.  

Andres' gingerbread playdough gingerbread man.  He's pretty good!

Gingerbread decorating with Tia Kissy!  We had dinner of gyoza and rice, then set about to making our little edible arts.

Tia Kissy was a gingerbread making machine!  We loved her artistic skills here, and laughed at how each one had it's own expression, as if he didn't know what was going on.   The bored one.  The confused one.   The sneaky one.  The depressed one.  The too-much-tv one.  Each little cookie had his own story.  She did a fabulous job making these little guys look classic and yet individual!

Aaron was a great sugar guy, after Cris and Andres piped, Aaron was working magic with the sprinkles

Raph liked watching and he got to eat some of the first samples hot off Tia's assembly belt.  

I was so proud of Andres for working his own piping this year!  He was adamant that he could manage it himself, and to my surprise, he did a great job piping on the orange scented buttercream.  His first attempt fell short of his artistic vision, and he had a mild setback that he had to overcome as he adjusted to this new "medium," but he found his stride and hammered out some really cute gingerbread men.  

When I was little, December was marked by frosty earth, naked trees, sky the color of milk.  School was preparing  us for Christmas concerts (when Christmas was still allowed in school), and there was a buzz of anticipation in the air of the upcoming holidays.  Before my parents slit, my family didn't go to church, so we indulged in secular foci, and mostly having very little if anything to do with Christ or the Mass of his birth:  Santa and elves, reindeer, cookies, trees, tinsel, stockings, more cookies, visiting grandparents, presents, lights, ornaments, and did I mention cookies?  The first time I heard the word Advent I was married to Aaron.  So my Christmas memories from childhood are rather saccharin-loaded empty calories.

I still get excited as soon as our Thanksgiving turkey leftovers are sealed in saran wrap and tucked into the fridge, waiting to become enchiladas or soup or sandwiches, because for some reason that's the tolling bell of Christmas season.  There's so much to do, and so little time.  I enjoy it.  I do.  I always wish I had more to give more.  So I do what I can, as ever, trying to be more creative with homemade gifts.  Including cookies.

These were so cute and fun making as a family!   Our favorite one was the red-eyed guy that wasn't too merry,  but the golf-pants dude isn't smiling either, so I adore him as well.  

I loved how we created little caricatures of each other, Cris with her long black wavy hair, me in a brown shirt, and Andres with a red-lipped smile and a batman shirt.   

Raph will help more next year with the cookies, this year he was the cheer/taste squad.  We have Aaron in glasses  playing his guitar, and Raph is in his striped shirt with curly hair.  

As a mom, and a person of faith, I've been trying to wrap my head around what I wanted Christmas to be like for my family, for my children.  I think Aaron and I have done a fine job of breaking traditions and creating our own, both exhausted and wary of the "this is always how it's been done" practices that we were raised with.  So since Andres' birth we've never had many traditions carried over one year to the next, still wondering what should be carried on, and what definitely needs to be changed.  Since we attended Columbia, we've been more intentional in Advent, and that is one thing that has been number one on our "keep" list each year, although it looks different each year as the boys grow, traditions are slippery at this stage when you're creating them as you go along.  The decorations, however, shrunk down significantly this year.  We had a tree, the Nativity from Granny's home ceramic business in the 60s, a fresh evergreen wreath on our door, and on Christmas Eve,  after our friends and their children left after dinner and cheer, we got out the stockings and left them under the tree.  Nothing else.  Partially because we don't have room in this smallish dwelling.  Mostly because my attention was split, and I was distracted from all the frills of the holiday as I worked hard to wrap up the first draft of my script to send it in to my teacher by Jan. 31.  I wrote 141 pages in about 5 weeks, which was a brutal pace, but I made that deadline by the skin of my teeth.

This December was a departure for us, even when compared to the previous fifteen years of departures in Christmas traditions.  We still lit the tree up, listened to Crosby and Sinatra, watched us some Merry Christmas Charlie Brown, had the elf on the shelf get into all kinds of mischief,  went driving around to look at Christmas lights, decorated sugar cookies and gingerbread men, played games and laughed with friends, feasted on roast beast, and still prayed around our Advent candles.

But for the first time, I'm beginning to evaluate what Christmas really means to me personally, and what I hope to bestow on my children.  I don't want it to be hustle and bustle and materialist commercialism,  although I'm not judging, after all it's exactly how I was raised.  But it doesn't work for me now.  I felt it start to overwhelm me one day early in December when I had a bazillion things to do on my list when I called a friend about some urgent church business and she seemed so calm and collected.  "How you holding up?"  I had asked probingly, wondering what her secret was.  "We just don't make a big deal about Christmas." The response both shocked me and challenged me.  I was asking myself for days afterwards how much more we as a family could omit to keep Christmas as pure and pointed as possible.

One thing that I was championing this season was a reduction in toys.  My children play with anything.  Dryer sheets tied onto pencils are superheroes.   Acorns and bottle caps unearthed in the bark chips at the park are boats, or get away cars for the bad guys.  Aaron and I scaled way back on the toys this year, and, after months of waiting and watching for Dreamworks How to Train Your Dragon live show to arrive in Tacoma, we sent an email requesting grandparents pitch in as a gift to the boys.  That's one of our family's favorite movies, and we love it dearly.  I even tear up every time at the end.  So the dragon show seen live with super large animatronic, real fire breathing dragons made for a special memory as a family together, and allowed us to do something that we wouldn't normally be able to do.

This year (and granted it may change next year) I wanted my family to feel Christmas is magical, a season pregnant with great anticipation, and joy, a time of wonder and reflection, family, magnanimity, music, humility, humanity and community.  And small.  Very small and simple.  Tiny Tim small.  Or lonely shepherds small.  Or sleeping newborn baby small.  Not insignificant by size or volume, but precious and treasured because something so massively valuable is incomprehensibly tiny and fleeting.