Christmas Day 2011

Irving's Winter Concert

The music teachers at Irving are gifted musicians who work hard every year to produce the winter concert series for the parents.  With five performances over a three-day period, Ms. T and Ms. H direct over 400 Irving students to sing their hearts out.  Thru it all, the parents laugh and cry, and take tons and tons of pictures of their little darlings.

It's the last year I'll have a little darling performing at Irving.  And yes, I cried a bit.

Thanks for the memories.

Christkindlmarket

For the past several years, after our family has finished its annual tour of The Walnut Room, we venture over to the Christkindlmarket.  It's usually so cold and so crowded that we quickly dash in and out.  On the drive home, we promise ourselves that next year, we'll spend a little more time at the Christkindlmarket.   This year we decided to make good on our promise.

The weather seemed more like March than December tonight, but everyone at the market was in a festive mood.  It's hard not to be when there's booths that look like this:

and the kids are happy like this:

I think we've found something else to add to our Christmas traditions!

Early Christmas 2011

For more than two decades, we've celebrated Christmas early with Missy and her family.  We usually hang out at Brookfield Zoo for awhile before heading back to our house for pizza and presents.  This year we changed it up just a bit, as Missy wasn't feeling well, and Steve didn't join us as he suffered a pretty serious accident at work less than two days before.  We had a quiet, low-key celebration.  We skipped the zoo, ate pizza and exchanged gifts, and called it a night.

Happy early Christmas!

Shop til You Drop

Erin and I spent the afternoon Christmas shopping.

We were very successful.

Serenaded at Work

Whole Foods Market invited Calvary Memorial Church's adult and children's choir to sing Christmas carols in the cafeteria today, which meant they were right on the other side of the wall from where I work.  It was so much fun to hear live Christmas carols at work today!

Contrary to popular belief, I had nothing to do with arranging my church's choirs to sing at my place of work.  I thought it was a genius move on WFM's part to have live music at a peak shopping day and time.  Our customers who were waiting in long lines to check out seemed much more patient as they listened to the carolers belt out some favorite Christmas tunes.  I hope this becomes a new tradition!

Frosted Christmas Sugar Cookies

When I was a little girl, my mom pulled a magic trick every year at Christmas.  I'd leave for school in the morning, and when I returned that afternoon, there would be a double batch of frosted Christmas sugar cookies.  The last few would usually be resting on the counter, fully frosted and ready to be devoured as an after-school snack.  All the rest would be tucked away inside a giant metal Schwan's tin, which at one point held an enormous amount of ice cream, but had long since been cleaned out and re-used as a cookie container.

In our old farm house, the family dining room was basically an extension of kitchen, so Mom could keep an eye on our snack-and-homework rituals while starting supper.  While I'd feast on those special Christmas sugar cookies, I could hear the first whispers of a homemade supper coming together in that very kitchen where my mom had worked her magic on the cookies just a few hours before.

Once I moved out on my own, I decided to make my own batch of frosted Christmas sugar cookies.  I mixed up the dough and set it in my fridge.  And that's as far as I got that first year.

At the time, I was working crazy hours at a Loop law firm.  I left my apartment in the dark; I returned well after midnight most nights.  I was just too tired to try and tackle the cookies.  It occurred to me at one point that in the grown-up world, cookies don't just magically happen - someone puts a lot of effort into them.  Over the course of the next two weeks, I wound up eating the entire batch of raw cookie dough straight out of the fridge.

Once Baird and I were married and we moved to the two-flat, I thought I'd try again.  Still working crazy hours at the law firm, I figured that I'd need to plan a little more.  I set aside two hours of a Saturday afternoon to tackle the project.  That was basically enough time to roll out the dough, cut out the shapes, and get the cookies baked.  It did not allow time for frosting. That year, the cookies got baked, but they were never adorned with frosting - I just plain ran out of time.  As I sat eating my half-completed cookies, it occurred to me that this whole frosted Christmas sugar cookie thing was a lot bigger production than my mother ever let on.

Fast forward a few years, and my life was in a different place.  I'd quit the law firm job, we had a house, and the girls were small.  I thought it was the perfect time to spend a Saturday in December baking frosted Christmas sugar cookies with my own daughters.  We worked all day.  Or rather, I worked, and they "helped."  I was so tired by the time the last cookies were frosted, I had Baird make a run to Pete's for supper that night.  As I munched on a few cookies for dessert, I remember thinking, I don't know how she did it.  How did she make all those cookies, get them frosted and clean up the kitchen before we came home from school?  And then make dinner without complaining?

It's been more than a decade since the last batch of homemade frosted Christmas sugar cookies graced my Christmas baking.  I decided it was time to try again.

When the kids came home this year, the kitchen was a wreck.  Yes, the cookies were made, and they were all frosted, but the remnants of my work lay scattered about my counters, and I had several containers sitting around.  I was trying to figure out which container would work best to hold all the cookies, since I don't own one of those fabulous Schwan's tins.  Once again, I found myself thinking I cannot figure out how Mom did it.  I did, however, manage to throw a respectable dinner together without complaining.

All I can say is: I'm getting closer.

Tree Time

Something strange happened this year with our tree.  Nothing went wrong.   That may make you laugh, but over the past 22 Christmases, we've had some tree disasters of epic proportions.  There was the year the tree fell on top of Kelsey and pinned her underneath.  I heard her little voice saying, "Mom, help me!"  I ran into the living room to find the tree lying on top of Kelsey.  The tree engulfed all but her sweet little two-year-old head.  By some sort of Christmas miracle, she was not hurt, and not a single ornament broke.

Then there are the years that I like to describe as "lighting disasters."  That's where it takes days and days to get all the lights to work on the tree.  There was one year where our tree sat unadorned for ten days, patiently waiting for us to figure out the lighting issues.

This year, none of that happened.  We found a tree without much hassle (meaning, the kids agreed fairly quickly on which tree they wanted).  It's firmly secured in the tree base.  The lights went on without a hitch, and the tree was fully decorated before suppertime.

It's turning out to be a fabulous Christmas season!

Second Sunday of Advent

This year the Advent calendar is a bit confusing.  Since Christmas falls on a Sunday this year, that made the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend the first Sunday of Advent, from a church perspective.  Starting Advent in November, however, throws off every piece of Advent ritual around my house.  The little Christmas tree that sits in the middle of our dining room table this time of year has 24 ornaments.  The Advent  Book that we read every night presents us with the same dilemma.  All this confusion led us to put up the manger scene early this year, but not start our nightly Advent ritual until this past Thursday.

Anyway, for this second Sunday of Advent, the children's choir at church sang.  It hit me while Drew was singing that this is another "last" for me:  after 13 consecutive years, it's the last time I'll have a child singing in the children's choir at Christmastime.

I love this time of year!

More Zoo Pics

Brookfield Zoo is Erin's home-away-from-home.

She spent a good part of her day today at the zoo...

...before jumping into costume and entertaining hoardes of visitors this evening at Holiday Magic.

(She's the leopard)