Holiday Nights

It was the weekend of our annual Christmas outing with our good friends. Calvin spent Saturday night with his grandparents while we enjoyed cheese, fruit, wine, scallops, an evening of festivities at historical Greenfield Village, and, finally, more fruit, cheese, wine, and dessert.

This evening is magical very year for us. It was frigid this time around, temperatures dipping to near twenty with a brisk wind, but the sky was clear and the moon was full. We all have a great time together with good food and lots of laughs, and there is something very beautiful about Victorian Christmas traditions, or really anything Christmas and historical. And making creme brulee together was a lot of fun.

Calvin also had a great night, and has yet to stop talking about the shaped pancakes his grampa made for him this morning (including a liopleurodon, apparently—we'll never be able to top that).

holiday shenanigans

I've had to take a couple of days away from the computer to enter into the magic of old-world holiday life—a Christmas celebration in our little downtown on Saturday, and tonight our annual Saint Nicholas party. These things always fall on the same weekend, along with the Messiah performance, which I'd love to see sometime, and Christmas at the historic farm in Waterloo, which we'd also like to see sometime. But we had a great time in town yesterday, and a wonderful, warm evening with family tonight, and thankfully tomorrow is just a normal day, followed by a couple of normal weeks, when we can maybe take a break from all the holiday shenanigans and do things like laundry, and reading, and Legos, and...

Homemade ornaments

More sewing today, among other things. We ran errands all day yesterday, but first thing this morning the boy announced a serious interest in a second go at the sewing thing. As it would happen, a couple of years ago at the local fair he won a felt critter sewing kit. At the time he was too young to make good use of it so we put it away. Thankfully my memory was working well this morning, and I was able to find it.

Two hours, one blunt needle, lots and lots of thread and untangling later, and he's now the proud creator two off-color frogs (that I failed to photograph).

Then we returned to ornament sewing (or...orniment sewing, as it may be). He even drew up some instructions for those who might be interested. Or you might be interested in the instructions I used originally, an those can be found here (we altered them for the feathers—no ric-rac—and the penguin—no horns, plus I embroidered the date on the back).

Surreptitious owl...

dated owl...

Penguin in a tree? How can that be? No worries, he's good pals with the hippo...

His hand is a lot bigger than it was in 2007...

Tree in the house

Part of our weekend plans had been to find this year's Christmas tree, but a full day of rain made us push the plans back until this afternoon, so after a morning of good books, Christmas carols on the piano, and some journal writing, we headed out to hunt our tree.

Cutting a fresh Christmas tree has been a part of my Christmas traditions for as long as I can remember. In recent years we've gotten our tree from the same local, family owned tree farm just twenty minutes away. It was a little warmer this year, and a little quieter, since we went on a weekday. We picked a tree quickly and enjoyed some giggles with the young lads of the family while they shook and wrapped the tree. Apparently in their family if they didn't know the difference between a pine and a fir by the age of six they were in trouble. And they love Rudolph (which is apparently on TV tomorrow night) and A Claymation Christmas (which is our all-time favorite).

So the tree is up, and that means we'll have a chance to get the last of the decorations off the floor and up where they belong—a crucial step in getting the house neatened up. Hopefully we'll get to that tomorrow.

Wrapping up and getting started

With the first of many holiday weekends drawing to a close Calvin is conked out early in bed while Jon and I sit here on the couch relaxing amidst a hazard of decorations that are half up and half still in boxes or strewn around the floor. We had a whirlwind of a weekend that started with the traditional events of Thursday and Friday, and continued right into the weekend with a crazy football game, another great family dinner, more shopping, more decorating, and a local model train show.

The game was great fun. It was the last game, and thus the last tailgate, of the season, so we had a great time with good friends we won't see as often until next fall. And, after many seasons of questionable football, it was fun to finally win the big one, and even more fun to be at the game with family when we did so. I'm still hoarse today from all the yelling.

Calvin's love for trains is still going strong. We haven't been to a show in several months, but the train spread out all over the floor in our front room was evidence enough. At the show this weekend he enjoyed the HO displays, but he was also seriously intrigued by the Lego train display. We spent a lot of time there, and some more time on our own when we got home.

Tomorrow we get started on gift making and preparing the house for Sinterklaas Avond, which we'll celebrate a day early next Sunday. Plus there's swimming, there's the homeschool group gathering, there's a Christmas party at the old school house...it promises to be a great week. Busy, but great.