A Holiday Recap

It was a very mellow Christmas season and at moments I found myself wishing for home and the excitement of the five grandchildren under five on my side.  Jim and I have decided that we don't want to be traveling every Christmas as we want to build traditions for our own little family based on the church year.  This year was the first year that I felt like we really succeeded in fully holding the space of Advent, the 12 days and Epiphany.  It definitely is a process adding in these traditions.  I was particularly pleased with Advent this year; once I gave up most of the slew of the gifts I had planned to make I was able to really focus on creating the advent space meaningfully.

As for the twelve days of Christmas and Epiphany here are some things I was thankful for...

:Cinnamon Rolls shaped as a Christmas tree are my family's Christmas morning tradition, but this year I opted out of that tradition and made a very simple breakfast cake (the Blueberry Buttermilk cake from Apples for Jam - Yum!)  I've made rolls the past few years, but it has always been late on Christmas Eve and it has felt rushed and I haven't enjoyed it.  So this year I decided that this is one of the joys of celebrating all 12 days - we had Cinnamon Rolls a couple times, just not on Christmas morning.  I also opted to make turkey dinner for Epiphany so I wasn't roasting a Turkey on Christmas day.

 : Our 12 days of giving quests went well.  The best days were the simplest and most tangible.  At four, giving tinned food to a box in the store isn't overly meaningful.  But, mixing icing for cinnamon rolls and making coffee to surprise daddy was incredibly exciting.   We also particularly enjoyed sharing food with the birds.

: December's 'One Small Change' - We had a paperless Christmas for the first time.  Some things came from family wrapped, but I made bags for our gifts (just sewed on three sides, pinked the top edge and used loose ribbon to tie around the bag - very simple).  The boys loved opening the bags and maybe some year I'll hem the edges and I would love to collect red, black and white folksy fabrics to make more from.

 :Games, Games and more Games - fortunately for us Jonah loves games as much as we do and we played lots of them through the holidays.  Jonah is particularly into chess right now (not Mum's favorite game, but oh well) and spent hours going through his new chess book setting up scenarios and doing chess puzzles.

:Some holiday crafting: I made Jonah a felt beaver for all the Narnia play he's been doing with his tree house.  He is requesting a Mrs. Beaver now... we'll see when I get to that.  

Jonah learned how to knit with a knitting fork - you can see his knitted necklace peaking out from beneath his shirt in the picture below.

:Epiphany - We had a lovely Epiphany to end our holidaying.  Making crowns is always a highlight for us and this year Jonah made the star for us to follow as well.  We have a tradition of following a star on a string through the house singing 'We Three Kings' and then sharing the story of the Magi.