December: Part 1

Here comes December, are you ready? Here we goooooo...

Part one of the December posts comprises the first two weeks, and everything we squeezed into those two weeks before we took off to Idaho. (Hey, Garg-o-philes, did you see how I used "comprise" correctly?)

1. Church breakfast/picture with Santa: I have no picture of my kids sitting on Santa's lap because I was too busy chatting to realize what was happening. Witnesses report that Antonia asked for a doll stroller (she later apprised my mom of her plan to get three strollers by asking Santa, mom and dad, and grandma each for a stroller) and Charlie asked for a football.

Christmas breakfast with Santa, on a really static-y day

2. Lori and Sean welcomed Sonya Elinor to their family (little sister to Dorothea.) Obviously this was not an activity in which we actually participated (thank goodness!) but worth mentioning, all the same. The kids were really excited, even though there was already one baby laying around. I couldn't even count the number of times Charlie asked when he would be able to go to the hospital and see Baby Sonya. But not because I can't count very high; just because there were so many times that he asked...

3. Will and I jointly superintended the annual December recital for our private music students, as well as Lorraine's (who was prevented from attending, see item #2), all of whom did a fabulous job and it was a fabulous recital. Which is a big feat considering there were 25 of them. That's a lot of opportunity for failure. Kidding! I love my students, they're so much fun. My goal is to get my all-time favorite student to perform next year, I just need to think of a bribe awesome enough to entice him, or a threat fearsome enough to terrify him into participation. On a related note, does anyone know a good way to calculate the proper amount of refreshments for a large gathering? I can never get it right. Last year I had WAY too many cookies, and this year not enough. Next year I want to hit the nail straight on the head, so that I'm eating the very last cookie just as we're heading home...

4. Will also has a big band concert in December, on top of which his jazz band has various performances. This year was the first year that I made it to the jazz band's performance at the mall.  That's a fun thing. Malls have good acoustics. And jazz band Christmas music is so jazzy. Charlie loves to watch the jazz band perform, and even Antonia and Dorothea were attentive and interested through that whole performance. Which is more than I can say for their mothers, who may or may not have been chatting during the performance. Hmmm, I'm starting to notice that I might have a problem with inauspicious chatting.

Here I should also note, because I don't talk about Will much on this blog, or toot his horn (he can actually toot his own horn. Literally.) that Will is really good at what he does, and what he does is awesome.  Of 50+ middle school bands in our school district, he has the largest program, the responsibility for which he doesn't share with any assistant directors (if ONLY he had the funding for that...) He started the jazz band program at his school a few years ago, and now has two auditioned jazz groups. And the kids love him. I've been on a lot of trips, I've been around the kids quite a bit, and I can tell that he's universally liked and respected, which is no small feat for someone teaching teenagers. But really, what's there not to like?

Mr. Dizzle doing his thing with the jazz band

the next generation of musicians, soaking it in...

5. Betwixt Will's events and my goings on, there wasn't a lot of time to just enjoy the Christmas season, but we did make it over to Lori and Sean's to make gingerbread/graham cracker houses. Graham crackers are the perfect medium for the kindergarten/preschool crowd, a demographic which is mostly concerned about the candy anyway. Plus, Sean, it turns out, is a closet graham cracker architect, and we got to see him work all kinds of magic on his graham cracker house. I'm not sure what was going on with Antonia's tree, which you can see is decorated with significantly fewer m&ms; all I know is that every time an M&M "fell off," she would ask so sweetly and innocently if she could eat it that I had to say yes.

Charlie's mid-century modern with a pool in the backyard

Antonia's Swiss chalet

6. One of the fun things about having a kid in school is holiday programs. As I mentioned in the previous post, we missed Charlie's Thanksgiving program, and we weren't really sure how the Gingerbread program thing was going to play out. Charlie had been assigned a speaking part, which only heightened our suspense. The secular holiday program was called "The Gingerbread Kids" and was basically a reenactment of the story of the gingerbread man, which prompted me to ponder what, if anything, can be learned from the experience of an egotistical cookie man who gets eaten by a wolf. I think the moral of the story is supposed to be "pride goeth before the fall" or something like that. I'm guessing the theme was selected because it is seasonally relevant but not religious (and NOT Santa Claus!)  and gingerbread men make cute costumes. And Charlie proved he knows his way around the business end of a microphone, a feat I would have captured on camera if the boy with the rather bigger heid wouldn't have moved too far to the right at just the wrong moment.  It was a big moment for the kid who is sometimes too shy to talk on the phone.

Gingerbread Kids

After the program was over all parents and siblings were invited to the classroom to make--wait for it--more graham cracker houses! These ones were preassembled and supplied with only a finite amount of candy, and those kindergartners made short work of the job.

Charlie and his table co-captain, Tenley, who is adorable.

7. As the ward choir director, it falls to me to organize the Christmas program, which is probably the number one most stressful thing I do every year. It involves putting together spoken word, musical numbers, and choir numbers into the best Christmas program anyone has ever seen. It's that last part that really gets me apprehensive. And it somehow ends up every year that I'm drawn into multiple duties during the program itself. This year I was playing the organ for the congregational hymns, directing the choir, and playing the piano for every special musical number (here I'll mention that one of those musical numbers was a women's quartet arrangement of "How Can I Keep From Singing" in which Lorraine participated not but a week after having a baby. Go Lorraine!)
Said a visitor who saw the program to someone who told me this later: "Who is that little girl running around up there doing everything?" I suppose he must have meant me, even though I'm sure that I was a picture of sophistication and maturity as I performed my tasks. Especially when I fell headfirst down the step on my way to the organ and landed in a graceful pile on the floor. Yes, that really happened. And if you were lucky enough to see it, I hope the memory of it can cheer you one day when you're feeling downhearted, because it was FUNNY.

8. Somewhere in the midst of all that craziness, we tried to do some regular Christmas preparation, ie buying presents and whatnot. Also, my family has a tradition of making a present for someone each year; while neither Will nor I had time to start making any gifts before school was out for the break, it was very stressful to think about NOT doing it. Is it more stressful to worry about the things you're NOT doing, or be actually doing them. I guess it depends on what it is. If it's making a gazillion treats to give to neighbors and friends, then the doing is the stressful part, because of the baking and such. But I really wanted to give treats to all of our neighbors this year, if only to help to make sure we had lots of friendly eyes and ears on our house while we were gone for two weeks. (I'm kidding! That thought hadn't even occurred to me...)


And what was Eve doing to pass the time while the rest of us reveled in a flurry of holiday activities? Sucking her thumb, most likely. Or drooling. Or both.

Exhibit A: thumb sucking

Exhibit B: drooling

Some funny interactions with the kids:

Antonia: Mom, do dolls have hair, usuawy?
Me: Yep.
Antonia: Do they have hands, usuawy?

Charlie: A kid at school told another kid that his dad got burned.
Me: Burned? In a fire?
Charlie: No...(reconsidering his choice of words)...I think he got fired.

Antonia (yelling from the other room): Mom! Will you help me get this mustache off?
-She'd been drinking hot chocolate and had some on her face.

After dropping Charlie off at gymnastics, I needed to run a couple of errands, but I was harried and distracted and kept flipping u-turns to figure out which way I needed to go. Antonia kept asking "why are you going this way? Why are you going this 'nother way?" Finally she said, "Mom. Do you need to stop and think?" And yes, I did need to stop and think.