Abundance

We made some wonderful memories over the holidays.  I also spent  much of my break helping my father, who was diagnosed with Alzheimers this year. Things I want and need to take care of for him but are quite time and energy consuming. What I thought would take a day took the better part of my week off.  But it needed to be done and my Mom and me made a lot of progress towards finding him a place to live and getting his affairs sorted out.

So, I may not have been able to fit in as much rest, relaxation and time catching up with our friends. But we did manage to build on our family traditions and have some great fun.  Here's an attempt at my favorite 10 holiday moments.

1.  Christmas Eve preschool children's service and pageant.  The church does a wonderful job of orchestrating services for all the ages. As the kids get older they have choir services and then of course the midnight mass which I love but it not realistic for our family at this time.  We used to go to Midnight Mass once I was seven or so, I was allowed to pick out a present before, and would size up the boxes and find the baby doll so I could take it with me.  Another favorite Midnight Mass memory was my senior year in college when I spent the winter break in Spain with my Mom and two friends.  My mom and I walked down the quaint, lantern lit cobble streets of Marbella and experienced the most beautiful candle lit mass in a tiny beautiful church surrounded by the brightest stars.

Good Shepard pageant. We made it about half way through Christmas Eve mass this year with our four wiggle worms, not bad, baby steps.  Typically they have Sunday School, it's just holidays that they join the service in the main church.

Lily Clare was a reindeer.  Will changed his mind after the photos above and was a Shepard with Evan, ushering the two year olds decked in lamb garb.

This little lamb calls me Mamma Shug, because I have taken to calling him Sugar or Shug Shug.

2.  Christmas Light tour.  We packed the car with popcorn bags and hot cocoa, hot vanilla for Will who doesn't like chocolate.  Then proceeded with bedtime routine and pjs, but when it was time to get in bed we surprised them with a driving trip around the neighborhoods to look at Christmas lights.  I knew it would be a hit but they were blown away.  We got several. "You are the best mom and dad ever!" comments.

3.  Our lights. David always does a great job climbing the roof and our big oak tree to deck our house with lights.  Now that we have kids we switched from the elegant all white to the more whimsical colored lights.  I love those old fashioned large light bulbs that we use to trim the house and dormer window.

4. And Christmas Tree. The man at the tree yard selected this fabulous tree for us. I think the children's excitement was contagious. It was in the 6 ft section and when rolled up was nice and fat, he thought it would be a keeper and when it unrolled we were all amazed. Much larger than 6 ft he offered us the same price, we were not sure if we could even fit it in our house but had to try and we just barely managed it by trimming a bit of the top.

So naturally we had to fill it with plenty of presents. Actually, we tried not to go overboard, each child got three presents from Santa and one from GG. But with four children, that's still quite a lot of boxes under the tree.  We were also lucky enough to see boot prints left behind by Santa!!

I love seeing our mantle full of stockings and the children's ornaments decking the tree.  One of my favorite things to do on Christmas Eve after the kids are in bed  is sit by the fire and the tree, have egg nog and relax with good conversation. Maybe get into Santa's chocolate brownies too...

Evan's Tree Ornament

Angel by Lily Clare

Tiny hand and footprint ornaments we made when the triplet's were three months old.

Holden's hand and footprint Rudolph.

Hand knitted Joseph, Mary and baby Jesus that my neighbor made for us.

6. Christmas Feast at Grammy and Papas.  It was so nice to have us  all together this year, My parents at David's parents. His only sister Christy with his parents and their son Jack.

The Caffrey Clan

Evan captures a silly face.

7.  Playtime.

Bike Riding on a sunny winter day.



And Flying paper airplanes.

Tea Parties, 'chink'.

8. Silly time.  I love our silly moments the best. One that comes to mind is an evening we all settled down after dinner with blankets and pillows to watch 'Dispicable Me'. The movie has a great soundtrack and and ends with dancing, all the kids joyfully joined in and entertained us with their moves.

9.  My organized closet, ahh.  My mom organized my closet from top to bottom as one of my Christmas gifts.

10.  Ushering in the new year.  We started off the evening with grilled fillet Mignon and good wine.  Then had a small celebration at our neighbors house, the kids watched a bit of The Grinch, and then we all set off fireworks. The big boys were most delighted and the next day at breakfast were naming all the various kind by names and picking their favorites.

Whew...that was a long one. Off to bed.  Goodnight ya'll. Wish you and yours a wonderful 2011.