Christmas Pictures Part 2

Here are some pictures taken for our Christmas card this year. Mom took them at her house.

Christmas Pictures Part 1

For now I only have pictures from Mom. I can't seem to be able to locate my own camera...

Holiday Traditions

The traditions of the holidays truly thrill me during this time of year.

- The Christmas tree. Always freshly cut, adorned with multi-colored lights and a variety of ornaments, each with their own story and history.

- Christmas music. The special CDs that only come out for one month of the year get played over and over again and I never grow tired of them. Blaring loudly while baking cookies, or quietly providing background to animated conversation during the family dinner.

- Christmas gifts. Sometimes I spend weeks or months thinking about the special people in my life and what they might desire. I love exchanging gifts to see that person's reaction when they open it - did I make a good choice? Were they as excited to receive it as I was to give it?

- Christmas Eve. We have always made it a tradition to gather together on Christmas Eve and have a dinner together before the evening church service. It is always a fun time and this year we were able to host it at our new house! After the service, we traditionally opened one gift between the family before going to bed. This year we did an exchange of all our gifts - taking our time from oldest to youngest, unwrapping each gift until Christmas morning truly made itself known at midnight when we finished!

- Christmas day. Traditionally we unwrapped all of our presents from Santa as early as possible this morning. As we've grown up and starting sharing the holiday with other families, Zach and I spend the morning unwrapping our gifts from each other. We have a slower pace to the day and we drive to one side of the family's home to celebrate the rest of the day with them.

- December 26th. For years we always drove back to MI to spend the time between Christmas and New Year's with our extended families. We would pack all of our bags, load up the gifts, and smoosh four kids into the van to drive the 9 hours to Trenton. It was always cold and usually snowy, but it was always warm in the packed basements where we had large family celebrations. On my Mom's side, all the cousins would perform Christmas stories from the Bible, share songs on their instruments, and often we would carol in the neighborhood. On my Dad's side, we did a gift exchange in Grandma's living room and later that day, tons of relatives would come over to gather for food, beer, wine, and cookies. This tradition is now one of the past (though the memories remain), but I'm sure it will be replaced with new ones.

- New Year's. Since becoming a part of my husband's family, we have enjoyed a Pork and Sauerkraut dinner every year with his grandparents - a wonderfully delicious meal, oftentimes finished off with an early birthday cake for Zach.

Merry Christmas

To my wonderful husband,

Thank you very much for the dozen roses you surprised me with on Saturday. I know you find cut flowers a rather difficult gift to give, but I appreciate them and find them to be lovely.

I had a wonderful time with you today celebrating my birthday a tad bit early - a delicious brunch at Diener's with Mom, a nice afternoon nap, a trip to York to see the latest Harry Potter movie, and the opportunity to start my holiday cookie-baking marathon! Thank you.

Our birthdays mean different things to both of us, so thank you for making mine so special to me. I love you very much.

Laura

New Piano

On Friday, I received what I consider an early birthday gift. A couple people contributed to the funding of this purchase and I feel very fortunate to finally have my new piano in our new home! Having lived in second floor apartments for more than three years, I just could not logistically manage a piano in those situations, so my patience has finally paid off.

It's a used 1958 Story and Clark piano

So far Zach hasn't gone crazy with my playing, but he did ask what I will play when Christmas is over since all I'm playing right now is music from Christmas books.

Funny!

It's That Time of Year!

I absolutely love the Christmas season! I love the decorations, the music, the time off of work to spend with family and friends, the cookie baking, the fires in the fireplace, and the beauty of freshly fallen snow. For us, the season started two days after Thanksgiving with a tree, decorating the house, and a turkey dinner.

We have a Christmas tree farm not more than a quarter of a mile down the road from our house, so we decided to do our best to find a decent tree amongst the poorly pruned options they had available. We came out with a Blue Spruce that we're quite pleased with. Our ornaments are held on securely and the cats don't bother it a bit, simply choosing to use the tree skirt as their blanket, which I can easily oblige them. As an extra bonus, since the tree wasn't pruned well, we got quite a few extra branches that I used to make nice wreaths. (I also borrowed some branches from trees in our yard for a bit of added texture.) The only down-side to this type of tree is the fact that their needles are so sharp. I actually used gloves for the pruning and wreath-making and will more than likely be using them to remove the ornaments at the end of the season when the needles are all dried out.

In addition to the tree-decorating, we also had a really delicious turkey dinner. Zach didn't want his fresh turkey from work go to waste, so he spent 24 plus hours preparing and cooking the 18 pound bird for the two of us! It was his first turkey experience and I think he handled it rather well.

Since we've been able to use our fireplace more often, the living room is even more popular for the cat's hang-out. None of my cats sleep together, except on very rare occasions. These pictures are of Sam and Wilbur at the end of a busy weekend of tree-decorating and turkey-carving. (Zach took the pictures because I unfortunately missed the event!)