Before I begin: yes, I know I have failed in writing for twelve consecutive days. Alas! But I will see the twelve posts through all the same- hopefully by the end of the year! I will take today's post to show you a little bit of our family Christmas so far.
We started off at a gingerbread house decorating event at Lily's preschool. I had never decorated a gingerbread house before, so it was fun for everyone. It was sometimes a struggle to get the candy on the house rather than in her mouth, but she did pretty well considering the temptation.
Decorating the real house has taken place in multiple phases, but the overarching theme has been honoring my late grandfather. Of all of my wonderful grandparents, he is the one I associate most with Christmas, partly because we spent most of our childhood Christmases with him in Texarkana, and partly because his birthday was December 26. He had many traditions, some of which we have incorporated into our family life since we were married: giving special Christmas Eve pajamas, reading the Christmas story from Luke on Christmas Eve, and having a Jesus Cake to sing Happy Birthday. But some others are new for us. Bompa always decorated his house in all blue lights. He would also drive us around on Christmas Eve in his big conversion van to look at lights throughout the city, and I always liked how his blue lights were pretty unique. Last year was the first year we had gotten to do lights at all, and I opted for multi-color, but this year, we added more lights and did the porch all in blue. We will do it every year as a nod to my Lawley heritage, so to speak.
We were also honored to get some indoor decorations from my grandparents' house. First, we got a wonderfully retro Christmas tree lamp. That tree says Christmas to me because Mema always put it in the same spot in her hallway. The hallway made a "T" shape where the vertical line had all of the bedroom doors, and the horizontal line went right into the kitchen and left into the entryway, both of which connected to the living room. The tree lamp sat right where the two lines of the "T" met, making it the "do not cross" point for us kids on Christmas Eve. If we ever peeked out into the hall, there was the tree sitting down at the end, glowing like the green light in The Great Gatsby, telling us that beyond it lay our desires. There is no spot quite like that in our house, but it does sit near the bottom of the stairs now, so the kids will still see it when they come down Christmas morning.
And then there are Mema's Christmas dishes. How many happy Christmas dinners I have had on them! How many Santa cookies we put there on Christmas Eve and how many black eyed peas on New Year's.
I also got to introduce Lily to a special holiday tradition of my own when I took her to the Nutcracker for the first time. I danced in the Corpus Christi Ballet Nutcracker for six years, and I have seen productions of the Nutcracker in Houston, New York, and Washington, DC. I did not go to the Austin Ballet this year; the venue is large and the tickets are pricey, and I didn't want Lily to freak out. Instead, her preschool teacher had two daughters dancing in a small ballet company's production at a local private school's theatre. The show was entirely cast with students, so that even the Sugar Plum fairy was high-school or early college age, and it was shorter than usual since the small company could only pull off so many dances and since there were no males above elementary age, making some Act II solos unnecessary. Lily was afraid at first, as I had expected, but once we got past the Mouse King, she was enthralled. She has been pretending to be the Sugar Plum Fairy for several days now, and, for the record, Corin likes the Waltz of the Snowflakes.
This Wednesday was also Lily's preschool Christmas program. She got to wear Christmas pajamas to school, and she did a good job singing all of the program songs. I pretty much knew what the storyline was going to be going in because Lily had been singing the songs around the house for several weeks, but it was cute all the same. We also got to see the Christmas art projects she had been working on, the best of which was an ornament featuring her original telling of the Christmas story. While hers was not the funniest (that would be the boy who had Mary reply to Gabriel, "I don't even know what you're talking about!"), it had noticeably advanced syntax and a coherent narrative. That's my girl!
Last, but certainly not least, we have also been preparing for Corin's birthday. We put a second Christmas tree in my office to be The Birthday Tree. I made a garland for it out of felt, and the plan is to put The Birthday Tree up every year and put Corin's birthday presents underneath it. He's too young to care right now, but I hope he appreciates it when he's older. We are having the neighbors over for cake and ice cream tomorrow, so I'll be sure to put pictures up soon.
We started off at a gingerbread house decorating event at Lily's preschool. I had never decorated a gingerbread house before, so it was fun for everyone. It was sometimes a struggle to get the candy on the house rather than in her mouth, but she did pretty well considering the temptation.
Decorating the real house has taken place in multiple phases, but the overarching theme has been honoring my late grandfather. Of all of my wonderful grandparents, he is the one I associate most with Christmas, partly because we spent most of our childhood Christmases with him in Texarkana, and partly because his birthday was December 26. He had many traditions, some of which we have incorporated into our family life since we were married: giving special Christmas Eve pajamas, reading the Christmas story from Luke on Christmas Eve, and having a Jesus Cake to sing Happy Birthday. But some others are new for us. Bompa always decorated his house in all blue lights. He would also drive us around on Christmas Eve in his big conversion van to look at lights throughout the city, and I always liked how his blue lights were pretty unique. Last year was the first year we had gotten to do lights at all, and I opted for multi-color, but this year, we added more lights and did the porch all in blue. We will do it every year as a nod to my Lawley heritage, so to speak.
 |
| Corin thought that decorating was tiring. |
We were also honored to get some indoor decorations from my grandparents' house. First, we got a wonderfully retro Christmas tree lamp. That tree says Christmas to me because Mema always put it in the same spot in her hallway. The hallway made a "T" shape where the vertical line had all of the bedroom doors, and the horizontal line went right into the kitchen and left into the entryway, both of which connected to the living room. The tree lamp sat right where the two lines of the "T" met, making it the "do not cross" point for us kids on Christmas Eve. If we ever peeked out into the hall, there was the tree sitting down at the end, glowing like the green light in The Great Gatsby, telling us that beyond it lay our desires. There is no spot quite like that in our house, but it does sit near the bottom of the stairs now, so the kids will still see it when they come down Christmas morning.
And then there are Mema's Christmas dishes. How many happy Christmas dinners I have had on them! How many Santa cookies we put there on Christmas Eve and how many black eyed peas on New Year's.
I also got to introduce Lily to a special holiday tradition of my own when I took her to the Nutcracker for the first time. I danced in the Corpus Christi Ballet Nutcracker for six years, and I have seen productions of the Nutcracker in Houston, New York, and Washington, DC. I did not go to the Austin Ballet this year; the venue is large and the tickets are pricey, and I didn't want Lily to freak out. Instead, her preschool teacher had two daughters dancing in a small ballet company's production at a local private school's theatre. The show was entirely cast with students, so that even the Sugar Plum fairy was high-school or early college age, and it was shorter than usual since the small company could only pull off so many dances and since there were no males above elementary age, making some Act II solos unnecessary. Lily was afraid at first, as I had expected, but once we got past the Mouse King, she was enthralled. She has been pretending to be the Sugar Plum Fairy for several days now, and, for the record, Corin likes the Waltz of the Snowflakes.
This Wednesday was also Lily's preschool Christmas program. She got to wear Christmas pajamas to school, and she did a good job singing all of the program songs. I pretty much knew what the storyline was going to be going in because Lily had been singing the songs around the house for several weeks, but it was cute all the same. We also got to see the Christmas art projects she had been working on, the best of which was an ornament featuring her original telling of the Christmas story. While hers was not the funniest (that would be the boy who had Mary reply to Gabriel, "I don't even know what you're talking about!"), it had noticeably advanced syntax and a coherent narrative. That's my girl!
Comments
Post a Comment