The second week of Christmas

Christmas festivities are in full swing around here! Technically we just finished the first week of December, but in the White house it was the second week of Christmas. This week we gave a gift on Friday night and another on Saturday afternoon. Giving gifts is so much fun! It helps spread one of the best gifts that Jesus gave us: LOVE.

When the kids got home from school on Friday, Jeff and I quickly wrapped Jay’s new watch, Rose’s new running shoes, and Amber’s stilts. When Jay unwrapped the watch, he was so surprised–we replaced the band on my old Garmin 35 watch and gave it to him in the original box. Rose was pleased about her new running shoes because they were just like Jay’s, with memory foam cushion inside. She had been complaining about her feet hurting when she ran, so when we decided to give Jay my watch it made sense to give Rose new running shoes.

Amber’s active gift was good old fashioned stilts. She figured out how to use them in no time and happily clomped her way around the house, wobbling and tipping every few steps. She let me try them but the plastic bent alarmingly when I stood on them, so I only took a few steps before handing them back to Amber.

After the gifts were opened, Jeff went on a run with Jay and Rose to try out their new running gear while Amber and I stayed home to make pizza dough. Friday was the first time in months that I have actually MADE pizza, and I only made the dough–Jeff did the rest! He loves his bacon mushroom cream pizza so much and is always willing to make it if there’s a crust waiting for his special sauce.

Post-run victory picture.

Oh winter, when it is virtually impossible to get a non-blurry picture indoors after 4pm.

Saturday dawned cold and gray. My weather app said “snow in view” so I peeked out the window with high-flying hopes. Nothing. Oh well. I got my running clothes on and went on a run while Jeff and Rose made crepes for breakfast. When I stepped outside this time, IT WAS SNOWING! I was giddy. Freezing, but giddy. I love running in the snow. It is so quiet and fluffy and pretty. It only snowed for about half an hour, but it was a beautiful half hour. I came back from my seven mile run to a house full of cousins. We crammed our kitchen full of cousins and crepes. It has been a while since we had the cousins over and the kids ate, frolicked, and played.

Eventually the cousins went home and we wrapped more presents. Each kid got one gift from us parents (Saturday’s gift category was “just-for-fun/individual interest,” aka no category). Rose gave her gifts to everyone. Amber and Jay both gave me gifts. I gave a gift to Jeff (boring, but useful: new shoes for work). It felt so Christmasy! We lounged and opened presents and played with the presents. Alexa played us Christmas music in the background. It was a slow, pleasant, glowy-happy family time.

In order to help our kids give more meaningfully, this year I told Jay and Rose that they were on their own financially for giving gifts to their siblings. In the past we have paid for the gifts they give each other, but it seemed like a good time to stop that. They have a modest income from running, so it seemed possible.Rose opted to make gifts for Jay and Jeff, and buy gifts for Amber and me. Jeff and I still paid for the kids’ gifts to us, and I ended up letting Rose pay for half of Amber’s gift, but we are on our way to more mindful thoughtful giving.

On Saturday night, went to our ward’s Christmas party. We had dinner and then Santa narrated the Christmas story (still scratching my head a little on that one). During the narrated Christmas story, the primary kids and the youth each sang two songs. I played the piano for the primary’s two songs, and it was my least nerve-wracking performance yet. I was still tense and all that, but I was facing away from the gym full of people so it felt safer. Our chorister accidentally skipped a verse in the five-verse Nativity Song, though, so I ended up playing it through once at the end after the kids stopped singing. Since my back was to the room, I couldn’t see the chorister and the last two verses to the song have words written at the bottom of the page of music so I couldn’t follow along as well and they sang the verses out of order anyways so I forgot how many times I had played the song through. Oh well, it was fine and the kids started shuffling off the stage about halfway through my extra play-through.

Other pictures:

• Making crepes
• Running: snow in view! Blurry because of the dark clouds and I was too happy to care.
• Crepes and cousins in the kitchen: a loud jubilant, hungry gathering.
• Jeff’s attempt at teaching Jay how to wrap a box in wrapping paper was hilarious. Jay kept crumpling the paper over the corners over and over rather than folding them. But it didn’t matter because I opened the gift ten minutes later.
• Rose drew a picture of herself giving Jeff and present. Homemade gifts really are the best.
• Using my suggestion, Rose made Jay a small box of coupons for things like “a game of chess” (she usually doesn’t want to play him because he always beats her) and “free killing me in Minecraft 10x use” (Rose gets SO MAD when Jay kills her in their joint Minecraft computer game, so she gave him a free pass for it).
• Rose gave Amber a Wonder Woman watch. Walmart has a whole wall of different character watches, and Amber’s watch band lights up when she presses a button.
• After all of that giving, Rose was very enthusiastic about opening her gift from Jeff and me: a Lite Brite for her artistic eye.
• Amber approved of the Lite Brite.
• As for Jay’s just-for-fun gift, I swallowed my dread and got him the game Risk. He was THRILLED.
• Giving Amber her present…Diana Prince/Wonder Woman in her fancy stolen blue dress! There’s a hidden sheath for her magic sword in the back. This was so perfect for Amber, since she always carries a weapon with her princess dresses.
• Amber gave me a book I’ve been wanting, written by one of my running idols, Kara Goucher. Rose gave me a book of Disney piano music (not pictured).
• Childlike Wonder. (pun intended)
• Amber kept saying “where’s Wonder Woman?” She couldn’t remember the scene where Diana steals the blue dress to disguise herself at the fancy party, so she found her own Wonder Woman Halloween costume and put Diana in that. It was a tad too big.
• Jay gave me two rolls of stick-on LED lights (Jeff gave him the suggestion). We stuck them to our ceiling on Saturday afternoon. Alexa can turn them on and off and change their color with a voice command. Our family room was like a bowling alley with all the different colored bright lights! When we got back from the ward Christmas party that night, however, the lights had lost their sticky and fallen from the ceiling. We are currently still brainstorming ways to hang them with minimal holes in the house.
• Rosie hurt her foot while helping move the stools around for us while we hung the lights. She said “I’m NEVER going to be able to walk AGAIN!” Dramatically, of course. She was fine an hour later.
• The primary kids sang two songs at the ward Christmas party on Saturday night. I played the piano (in this picture I am at the piano, mostly obscured by someone in a Santa hat)
• Trying out Amber’s stilts. Isn’t it so funny how playing with other people’s gifts is ok, but the minute other people want to play with your gifts, it is NOT ok? Rose did not understand this at all. Amber actually was ok with it, as long as she could sneak in some time with Rose’s Lite Brite…
• Oranges go with Christmas.
• Sunday afternoon, we promised to play Risk with Jay. So we did. It was my first time ever playing that lengthy game, and it really was much more enjoyable than Dungeons and Dragons, which we have played twice as a family for Jay. The main problem for me with Risk was how long it took. We played for 90 minutes and then cut it off, counting armies and territories to determine the winner (Jeff, by a landslide, although I was positioned for a major push for Europe and Asia that probably would’ve won me the game in another two hours or so). After our game was over, I joked on Instagram that my labor and delivery of Amber was faster and less painful than our family game of Risk. The labor and delivery actually was faster, but sitting on a folding chair for 90 minutes is way less painful than giving birth, so I guess I exaggerated a bit.

I take 100 pictures an hour because every couple of months I get one of these treasures. Heartburst, Jeff is such an excellent father to his daughters.

Merry Christmas again!