Merry First Day of Christmas!

Merry Christmas! 
It's the first day of the 12 days of Christmas, and I've resolved to celebrate each and every one of those 12 days. Ok, so some might accuse me of lazy parenting. Not all of the gifts have arrived. Not all of the gifts have been made. A few gifts haven't even been shipped. But hey, we have 12 days to get it all in! And the girls are only opening 1 gift per day, so they won't miss the missing gifts for at least a week. 

But as I mentioned in my last post (hey, 2 posts in 2 days?!?!? What's going on?!?!), I'm appreciating the church calendar more and more, and think it's silly to limit Christmas to one day when it's allotted 12. Too much buildup and letdown. We're attempting a long-lasting joyful simmer instead of a Christmas morning explosion. 

Despite my previously-mentioned Pentatonix obsession, I won't fill each day of Christmas with a new Pentatonix song. But I will highlight one more Christmas song (that they happen to sing) that I've always loved, and to me demonstrates the hopeful joy of Christmas and the resolution to Advent's watchful anticipation. O Holy Night has always had the power to make me cry. I never could explain it before, other than it was just a really beautiful and touching song. But recently I realized how it so perfectly explains the joy and relief of Christ's coming at Christmas. 

O Holy Night
The stars are brightly shining
It is the night of our dear Savior's birth
Long lay the world in sin and e'er pining
'Til He appeared and the soul felt its worth
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.

Fall on your knees O hear the angels voices.
O night divine O night when Christ was born
O night divine, O night, O night divine.

What was it like to be the shepherds that received the good news first from a multitude of angels? What was it like to be Anna or Simeon meeting the week-old Christ child for the first time at the temple? What was it like to be the Wise Men seeing the star, realizing that the long-anticipated sign had finally arrived? What does the thrill of hope feel like?

I suppose we could ask Syrian refugees finding out that they're being welcomed into a safe community in which to raise their children. I suppose we could ask a military family what it's like to hear that their loved one will be shipping home from a war zone tomorrow. I bet a wrongly-imprisoned inmate who just got their sentence overturned would understand. And certainly prospective parents who get the news that, after years of tense waiting, a baby was born yesterday, theirs to meet tomorrow and adopt. 

Long pining, weary from hoping and waiting. The good news brings a new and glorious morn. The waiting is over. Certainly their hearts are overwhelmed. They can fall to their knees, they can jump for joy. That which they feared is gone. Their worries are gone. The news changes everything. That is the news of Christ's birth. It changes everything. The waiting for a Savior is over. He has finally arrived. Advent is over. Christmas can begin.

I pray that Christmas is a joyful season for you all. All 12 days of it!

Last Day of Advent

Today is the last day of Advent. We celebrate it with Christmas pageants and candlelight services. Most people know of today as Christmas Eve. The day before Christmas. So the last day of Advent.

What is Advent? Well, Advent is to Christmas as Lent is to Easter. (Anyone remember their old SAT analogies?) In other words, it's a time of preparation. It's a time when we focus on how sinful and depraved we are, and how desperately we need salvation. 

The world has made this easy lately. What do you see in the news? People kill each other because they are the wrong religion. People kill each other because they are the wrong skin color or nationality. Or because they just had a really bad day. People kill each other because they want to be famous. People kill children because they're too full of drugs to be responsible adults. People kill children before they're born because they happen to be inconvenient. 

Or just look inside yourself to find more sin. Your goals are more important than how you treat other people. Your comfort is more important than sharing with others who are in desperate need. Your need to be right is more important than others' feelings. If someone doesn't agree with you, they're obviously wrong and not worth listening to.

We're selfish. We're lazy. We're slow to truly empathize with and listen to others. We sin. Consistently. On a small and grand scale. By what we do, and by what we don't prevent. The world is a sick, sick place. And we all share the blame in making it sicker.

Who will fix it? Sorry, not Bernie. Not Trump. Nor Clinton. Nor Cruz. No politician can turn the world around. No single human can fix it. No group of humans, no matter how large or well-funded, can fix the world. Sin is insidious, and creeps its way into the core of every person, no matter how well-intentioned or righteous-seeming that person might be. We can wipe out murderous caliphates, but sin will still remain.

If you are friends with me on Facebook, you might have picked up on the fact that I have a bit of an obsession with the vocal group Pentatonix. This might be because they happen to sing some of my favorite Christmas music. They also sing one of my favorite Advent songs, O Come O Come Emmanuel. They only sing two verses of a longer hymn, but those two verses have settled into this Advent perfectly:

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, O come, Thou Lord of might,
Who to Thy tribes, on Sinai's height,
In ancient times did'st give the Law,
In cloud, and majesty and awe.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

Who is Israel? Us. God's people. God's people waiting for peace, waiting for deliverance from the evil depravity of our life on earth. There is much to mourn. It's all over network and cable news. Death. Destruction. Hatred. Sin. Selfishness. We need to be ransomed from our captivity here, our exile in this sinful world. 

The second verse is the verse that the children of our congregation helped sing a few Sundays ago in the worship service. We practiced it at home to help them sing it more confidently. I explained that the convoluted language was actually talking about God giving Moses the 10 Commandments, the Law that would help us follow God's will for us. They've been learning the 10 Commandments at home and in Sunday School, so I thought it was actually a good verse for them to sing. 

I did a horrible job of following my Advent prep plan this year. We never did manage to read one section of the Christmas story each night of Advent. So the other night, I read a big chunk while they munched on Christmas cookies. I read the beginning of the Christmas story in the book of Matthew. Now if you're not up on your comparative Gospel Christmas stories, I'll tell you that Matthew starts with the genealogy of Jesus. It starts at Abraham and the ancient Hebrews, and works its way through kings David and Solomon until it finally gets to Jesus. It's a long journey, a heck of a mouthful to read, and full of names that I'm pretty sure won't make it onto your baby-naming list. Unless you want a son named Azor, Zadok, or Jeconiah... Now the book of Luke does a better job of including the narrative we're used to seeing in Christmas pageants. But Matthew highlights the theme of Advent. God's people waited for Jesus' birth for a long, long time. They wandered in the desert. They were taken captive as slaves. They waited, suffering, hopeful, for many generations. Many many generations. 

And so now we wait. For many many generations, we wait for our Savior to return, to ransom us from our captivity in this cruel depraved world. To dwell on the waiting, the need for deliverance, that is Advent. To realize the sin we carry with us wherever we go, to realize how we can't completely rid ourselves of it, that is Advent. 

I'm gaining a greater appreciation as I get older for the cyclical liturgical seasons of the church year. Advent is a necessary precedent for the hopeful joy of Christmas, just as Lent is a necessary precedent for the exuberant joy of Easter. You can't appreciate a Savior unless you realize what you need to be saved from. 

Thank you media for painting the world in horrific colors. Ok, maybe not. No one should revel in the violence of the world as much as our news outlets do. But it does a good job of helping us remember what we need to be delivered from. And how badly we need our long-promised and long-awaited Savior. 

Blessed last day of Advent. I'm certainly looking forward to Christmas! We've been waiting for a long time!

Thanks 2014, it's been nice to know ya!

Disclaimer:  Yes, this post will serve as our family Christmas card, a much-needed blog update, and the final blog post of the year. Yes, you can call it "lame", if you'd like. I prefer "efficient". And if you're a family member looking for our Christmas card and haven't read my blog before, check out the "Cast of Characters" page down to the right. I've given the girls all pseudonyms to ensure plausible deniability when they're older. But I'm sure you can figure it out.

2014 was a year of ups and downs, as they all tend to be. We worked. We played. We traveled a bit. But we are all healthy and together at the end of the year, so I call it an overall win. We truly do have much to be thankful for. As I've written before, we are rich. No, we don't have our dream house yet. No, we haven't won the lottery. But we have a comfortable snug home with heat that we can turn up in the winter. We have warm clothes to go play outside in. We have more food than we should probably eat. We have a high-quality and safe school to send our girls to. We have loving parents and siblings that live too far away. We have a loving family of close friends that live a bit nearer. We have friends and family scattered across the nation that pray for us, cheer us on, and bring smiles to our days. We are rich.

And the rest? Well, we're working on a little concept called "contentment".

The girls are just getting bigger and better every day:

HeyMama is 6. She loves to read, loves to do math, and says she wants to be a scientist when she grows up. And no, BestestHusband didn't tell her to say that. But he might be a bit proud... She started playing the piano, and is quite diligent about practicing. She gave a short concert of Christmas music at our friends' house on Christmas Day, and is anxious for lessons to start up again in the new year. She enjoys gymnastics more than ever, and can frequently be found hanging upside down or jumping from things. And she is the most perceptive, doting, and sweet big sister a baby sister could ever hope for. And she likes to talk. A lot. I'm still trying to find a way to bottle her energy. Or just find a mute button.

MeToo is 5. She loves to do whatever her older sister is doing. So she's into reading, math, and maybe being a scientist too. Or a unicorn trainer. Or a dance teacher. We might need to start dance lessons first... She is a child of wide-eyed wonder, finding magic in the most mundane of tasks. "Mama! Come look! I pooped a 7!" And she was right, it really did look like a 7. Other letters and shapes eventually followed. MeToo will interrupt dinner with, "Guess what! I'm having a dream inside my head RIGHT NOW!" She's full of fun ideas and whimsy. She's currently lobbying us to trade her to a neighboring family so she can have a brother.

LittleDebbie morphed into HurricaneDebbie, and is typically a Category 5. At 16 months old, she is already the strongest personality in the household, and that's really saying something... She has quickly learned to communicate her wishes, and this week has decided to do that via sentences:  "I need milk!", "I need Uppa!", "I need Daddy!" She has also learned quickly how to climb up to the top bunk, rock standing in the rocking chair, retrieve things from the middle of the dining room table, let herself out the door to outside, and undo an hour's worth of cleaning and organization in 2 minutes. According to BestestHusband, she is a living example of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. And she makes me want to drink. Good thing she's so dang charming and cute...

The dogs continue to add love, fur, and noise to our household. They have become skilled opportunists, seizing on the chance for a belly rub any time one of us sits or leans over to the floor. They even demand belly rubs from the girls. And you know what? It works. It's sweet to see them develop relationships with the girls, and see the girls take more responsibility in their care.

BestestHusband started a new job at a tech company downstairs from his previous job. What's a guy with a PhD in Chemical Engineering and a background in discovering oncology drugs doing working at a tech company? Something Very Different from what he did before. But he still has the same bike commute. (Some call being a one-car family being "cheap", again I like to call combining a commute and exercise as "efficient".) In his spare time he plays the role of SuperDad, stalks Boston real estate for our future house, tends a good-sized garden, makes out-of-this-world mexican sauces, and helps reign in the chaos that has become our household norm.

I'm still doing many of the same things as last year. I work per diem at local rehab hospitals a few days per week. I shepherd the girls to and from the bus stop. I try to keep up with a kamikaze toddler. I started running again this past year, mostly to improve my patience level. And I started baking sourdough bread. And at the end of the day, when the house has been destroyed by my kamikaze toddler and my patience has been destroyed by everyone else, I at least have something tasty to show for my time.

So if you're in the area, stop by for a slice of fresh bread and a glass of wine I'll be ready to pour. We have a guest bedroom, and plenty of mayhem to share. We are truly blessed by what we have, but are pretty much constantly exhausted by it. And we look forward to a new year of exhaustion, love, joy, tedium, exasperation, and blessings in 2015.

With love,
The Bundles Of Joy Family

Getting into the Christmas Spirit

You can't have Christmas without Christmas music. To me, the two are inseparable. BestestHusband likes to tell the girls that our church choir helps us get a glimpse of how wonderful Heaven will be. I like that idea - I could spend all day singing, if only my pipes could hold up that long...

We're blessed with a lot of talented musicians in our congregation. I marvel at that occasionally, but was re-re-reminded of that yet again today. Balint Karosi, our music director, kindly gifted us with a CD of Christmas Music recorded in our church. The musicians are all in-house talent. Audrey, the vocalist, has truly been gifted with an angelic voice. Rosie, our pianist, is blind from birth. Balint, who plays organ and clarinet, has won international acclaim for his performances. And we get to listen to them every Sunday. We are truly blessed.

So for Christmas, I'd like to share them with you. Balint has been uploading worship music to the church website, and much of the music on our new CD can be found there:
http://www.flc-bostonmusic.org/worship-music

Click on the carols, turn up the volume and enjoy. If it doesn't get you into the Christmas spirit, I'm not sure what can.

The Countdowns Begin

It's that time of the year, the time we start counting down the days in breathless anticipation!

Days 'til Christmas:  7
Days 'til New Year's Day:  14
Days 'til the Christmas episode of Call The Midwife:  12!!!
Days 'til the debut of Downtown Abbey Season 3:  19!!!

This truly is the most wonderful time of the year!

Oh, and if you're still not sure what to get me for Christmas, here it is:

Downton Abbey Seasons 1, 2, and 3

I would happily fold laundry all day long if I had these...

Hope your Christmas preparations are going well. I've got holiday biscotti in the oven, and life is good!

The Secret Christmas Peacock

I'm supposed to be earning the last of my CEU's right now. I have 3 more hours to earn before the end of the year (that would be 18 days from now). But I'm quite distracted. I've searched for recipes, read my favorite blogs, and stalked people on FB. In theory, I'd like to brush up on my dysarthria knowledge. For you non-SLP's, dysarthria is defined as a speech disorder with decreased muscle control caused by either muscle paralysis, muscle weakness, abnormal muscle tone, or dyscoordination. 

I know, it sounds fascinating, right? Alas, I'd rather be folding laundry, which I can't do with this CEU course because it's not a recorded seminar that I can listen to while folding laundry. No, it's a giant powerpoint presentation that I have to read and actually learn something from because the tests can have some tricky questions. I have Pandora Christmas music in the background which helps, but I'm still squirmy. Sigh. Am I whining? Come on over for some cheese. We've got some good bacon-studded stuff smuggled here from Minnesota that I can highly recommend. Ok, I'm rambling. I should just give up on avoiding my CEUs and tell you about the new stockings I got today.

Once upon a time, I had time, creativity, and a sewing machine. In our first year of marriage, I made stockings for BestestHusband and myself. (And some pretty awesome polarfleece jammies!) They were pretty simple, made of fabric I had around, and not bad, if I say so myself. I also started a matching reversible tree skirt which did not get finished. It's around here somewhere...the three layers of roll hems did me in... Since those initial stockings (and jammies), I had 2 kids within a year of each other. I still have a sewing machine. But my time and creativity are used up by daily damage control and the two mega-cakes I concoct for the girls on their birthdays. Last year, I asked my Mum to find stockings for the girls. I think she misunderstood. We got stockings for the dogs and additional stockings for ourselves. But our stockings just were not appropriate for little girls.

So this year, we still needed stockings for the girls. And I discovered Meg, a mom at our preschool, and her company, Proof. She makes some lovely and unique things, including stockings. So she agreed to stop by the house after daycare drop off one morning, and we talked stockings. I showed her our stockings, she showed me fabric swatches, we agreed on a design, and off she went with my original stockings as a pattern. A few emails and a week later, the details were hammered out, and the stockings were delivered. I'm thrilled. They're sweet and feminine, without being too babyish. And they're definitely unique.

Here's the back view. The front has the girls' names in contrasting fabric. Trust me, it's super cute.

If you live in the Boston area, check out her stuff at Birch St. House & Garden, a gift shop in Rosi Square. Or Colorwheel Collection. Or check her out on Etsy. She's a work-from-home mom, she can design to your specifications, and she's lovely. Check her out!

I loved the colors in this fabric, they matched our home and other stockings. I wasn't sure about a peacock on a Christmas stocking, though...

So Meg cut the fabric to minimize the peacocks. The front shows no peacocks at all.  And I like the idea of a secret Christmas peacock on the back.