Christmas 2008

Christmas 2008 was the year...

...we stayed home and celebrated Christmas as a family for the first time.  Last year, I was 8 months pregnant with Anna, so we were really home for that Christmas, too, but Greg's family was with us.  This was the first year we celebrated actual Christmas with just the four of us.  It was nice.  Different, but nice.  We are hoping to stay home every other year for Christmas, so that we can have some family traditions on Christmas morning.  My family was always, and I mean always, traveling for Christmas.  While that was fun, too, I did miss having a traditional Christmas morning experience.

...we played up Santa.  We've always been borderline ambivalent about the whole Santa thing, and I just don't like the idea of lying to my kids about anything...but this year, what with our train ride with Santa, the Santa who rode through our neighborhood on a big fire truck, and the Santas that our neighbors had in their yards...let's just say, Santa came up a lot.  Luke was very convinced that Santa was going to bring him Murdoch the train, which we hadn't planned to get....so of course, we ended up getting it for him.  We also put out cookies for Santa.                            What a lovely smile:).

On Christmas Eve, we read both The Night Before Christmas and the story of Jesus' birth in Luke's Toddler Bible.  Afterward, we talked about how Santa only lives in our imaginations, but Jesus really lived on earth, and how He was born here so that he could save us from our sins.  And how Christmas is a celebration of his birth.  Next year, I hope to emphasize that theme a lot more. 

...we discovered that pictures with Santa are WAY overpriced and overrated.  Greg thought it would be free...like, Santa would be there and you could take your own pictures.  If only.  They did volunteer that while you weren't allowed to take pictures inside of the rope, they "couldn't do anything" if you took pics outside.  So Greg got a few, and we bought one of the cheaper (but still expensive) packages.

...we needed eggs.  First, I needed an egg on Christmas eve, when Luke and I made cookies for Santa.  We borrowed it from a neighbor.  Then, on Christmas morning, we decided to have a pancake breakfast...and, of course, had no eggs.  This time, Greg went to Walgreens, making us "those people" who shop on Christmas.  The cashier said that everyone was buying eggs.  And Greg noticed they were completely out of maple syrup and pancake mix.  I guess everyone had the same idea we did!

...we got each other vacuums...and liked them!  Greg had been wanting and needing a shopvac, and he had found a light, cordless upright that he thought would be good downstairs so that I wouldn't have to sweep so much.  Sadly, we were very happy with these gifts.  How boring is that??

...it felt like spring outside.  After Anna napped, we all walked to a nearby playground in short sleeves and enjoyed the beautiful weather.

...we ate like there was no tomorrow.  Seriously.  I know that it's the holidays and everything, but this year seemed a little excessive even by holiday standards.  I guess I'm not used to so many sweets in the house and didn't know how to handle it!  The worst offenders were my mom's delicious iced sugar cookies, my apple pie, and a red velvet cake baked by a family friend.  Oh, and the M&M machine mom brought for Luke. 

So that was Christmas for us.  We hope you and your family had a wonderful holiday, and a that you have a wonderful year in 2009!

Pre-Christmas Christmas

Luke and Anna actually had three Christmases this year, lucky kids:  one with the Kirby's at Thanksgiving, one with my family on Dec. 22, and then the one on, um, Christmas.

We really enjoyed the visit with my parents and brother, as evidenced in the pictures below:

 

Is that my dad watching a movie?  And a 3D movie (the Polar Express, a gift from my Aunt Linda), at that?  Now, that is a sight you don't see every day!

Luke was excited to start opening presents:).

By this time in our prolonged Christmas season, Luke had opening presents down cold.

He liked his doctor kit from Gaga.

Anna wasn't as excited about the present as she was about the challenge of lifting it by herself!

Success!

Luke was so good at opening presents that he helped Uncle Mike open his:).

It was so much fun getting to celebrate with my family!  We are truly so blessed to have not one, but two wonderful families to be apart of.  And my children have some amazing grandparents!

Train Ride with Santa

Wow...the Christmas season really got in the way of blogging about the Christmas season, but now I'm going to try and catch up a little.  First of all, Greg's parents came up on the weekend of the 13th to take Luke (and the rest of us) on a train ride with Santa in the little town of Winnsboro.

This picture serves as a reminder not to take pictures where people are staring into the sun.  Oops!  I thought it was funny, though.

Anna and Gigi in the train station.

Here comes the train!

Getting ready to hand the ticket to the conductor.

The tickets kept Anna very busy!

Enjoying the view.

Giving Santa a high five.  When asked what he wanted for Christmas, Luke's said, "I want a train, sir."  So polite!

Luke and Anna very much enjoyed their train ride...and Greg and I enjoyed getting to spend a weekend with his parents before Christmas!

Tradition

There are some traditions that you carefully plan, and some traditions that just happen.

It has just kind of happened that we have a tradition of hosting the Jr. High Christmas party, and I love it.  Contrary to popular belief, Jr. High kids are a lot of fun.  In fact, they just might be my favorite age group.  One reason is that they are not too cool to play all sorts of cheesy games, like the time-honored open-the-present-with-mittens-and-a-goofy-hat game:

Another apparent tradition is that my children take their first step in the presence of two teenage girls and myself.  Luke took his first step in a cell group meeting that I blogged about here.  Anna has been standing on her own since she learned the trick at a youth rally the weekend before Thanksgiving.  She can stand alone all day long, but she has flatly refused to take a step.  Well, last night shortly before our party started, she took the plunge.  And by "took the plunge," I mean, that while she was standing on her own with me cheering and encouraging her to walk....she took one small step with her right foot.  She then froze in that position...grinned...and slowly lowered herself to the ground.  Such a risk-taker!  Greg was like, "Anna!  Could you not wait until I was in the room???"  For her daddy, she then repeated the performance exactly one time.  This time, she gave a big laugh as she took her step and re-steadied herself.  Then...she slowly lowered herself to the ground.  And she hasn't done it since!

Not that we've had much time to practice.  Today, we went on a train ride with Luke's Gigi and Papa.  More on that later!

Bleeding-heart Liberalism and Faith

I've always heard that having kids will bring you so much closer to God.

For me, this was not true.

Okay, in some ways it did. I certainly pray a lot more now and beseech God on behalf of my children. I think about my actions so much more, knowing that I have two little souls who are watching and learning from me.

But motherhood also made me realize how different I am from God. When I became a mother, my empathy toward children skyrocketed to the point where the thought of a child being neglected or abused does serious damage to my psyche. It saddens me, horrifies me...I mean, it seriously depresses me. For real, do not talk to me in public about abused children, especially babies, unless you want me to start crying on the spot. I'm tearing up right now, see?

And so while in the past, I was able to reconcile myself with the idea of human suffering through the intellectual thoughts of myself and especially others, it just didn't work that way any more. And I found myself asking, "God, why would you let some poor, innocent baby be born into the world only to be horribly neglected and abused? What possible good can come from that?" I knew that as a parent, there was NO WAY I would ever let that happen, so how could God, whose love is so much greater than mine, and who has the power to stop it?

Oh, and in regards to the title of this post, these thoughts also apparently made me a bleeding-heart liberal. See, I read somewhere about this study that determined that a big difference between liberals and conservatives is that conservatives are okay with the thought that "life's not fair," and they don't expect, or apparently want, it to be. Liberals, on the other hand, want everything to be fair, and all the unfairness and suffering bothers them. So I guess I'm a liberal. I will say this: the idea that Life Isn't Fair does not comfort me at all.

So anyway, like I said, God has helped me through this several times in the past through the use of logic and intellect, but this time, I guess He thought I needed a picture. And whaddaya know, He used parenthood to teach me, and, yes, bring me closer to Him:

On Wednesday, through an unforeseen chain of events, I ended up mopping the Family Life Center at church with Anna. She was supposed to be at a friends house/in Greg or Katy's office/asleep in her carseat, but it didn't work out, and now here she was awake in her carseat screaming at me. The problem was, not only was she in her carseat, but she was in her carseat in the foyer, while I was ten feet away in the bathroom, quickly sweeping so I could mop. As I hurried, I started to imagine Anna's feelings, completely bereft and alone, not knowing where her mama was or why she was essentially left to die strapped in her carseat.

And I wanted to talk to her. I wanted to say, "Anna, I'm right here. I'm right on the other side of this door. Why do you cry like I abandoned you? You know I would never leave you. And furthermore, everything that I'm doing, I'm doing for you. The money I make from sweeping and mopping pays for your health insurance. And I know the concepts of sickness, serious injury, hospitals, and medical bills are completely beyond your ability to grasp, but they all play into what I'm doing here. I'm helping you right now, even in the time that it seems like I've abandoned you.

And you know what? Furthermore, Anna, this particular situation wasn't supposed to happen. For one thing, you got too tired to stay at my friend's house, and then you got woken up by a paper shredder in the church office. Your daddy is out running errands, and so, due to the free will of many different people, including yourself, you are in this particular situation. But frankly, it's not even that bad of a situation. I know it seems like an eternity to you, but it's really just a few minutes."

Now, while you could make many analogies connecting my particular thoughts to Anna to some possible reasons that God lets suffering happen, that wasn't what struck me. Frankly, none of those reasons hold up in my mind to situations like lifelong abuse or starvation or so many other atrocities that happen. What struck me was the degree to which all these reasons were completely beyond Anna's grasp. Even if we spoke the same language, which we don't, her mind is simply not able to understand things like HSA's and jobs and scheduling breakdowns. And the difference between her mind and my mind is nothing compared to the difference between my mind and God's mind. He's told me so himself in Isaiah 55:

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,"
declares the LORD.

"As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts."

Again, these ideas are not new to me intellectually, but seeing it so starkly as a picture was really helpful on an emotional level. Another new dimension was the immense love I felt for Anna the entire time that she was wailing to me about my unfairness.

The idea that "life isn't fair" definitely doesn't help me sleep at night. But the fact that there is an all-powerful and all-knowing God who loves all of creation...does.

Gingerbread House Party

This past Saturday, seven of Luke's classmates and seven of their siblings descended upon our house to decorate gingerbread houses!

For some reason, I've really committed to the idea that, every year, we need to have a gingerbread house party where all of Luke and Anna's Sunday school classmates are invited.  Anna's class is a little young this year, but I thought Luke's age would have a blast.  So we took the plunge and decided to start at age 2!

As I started preparing and looking up how to make gingerbread houses, I made an interesting discovery:  gingerbread houses are most commonly made out of....gingerbread!  This seriously has never occurred to me.  Gingerbread houses are made out of graham crackers attached to milk cartons, of course!  That's how my classes made them at school.  That's how they were made for church parties growing up.  That's how they were made when I was working at Youth Encouragement Services in college.  I mean, c'mon!  I guess I was just seriously deprived as a child:).

Because I didn't have time to learn how to make gingerbread houses out of actual gingerbread, I just went the faithful graham cracker and milk carton route this year.  Now that I've been educated, however, I totally want to make real gingerbread houses next year.  We shall see.

The kids didn't seem to mind the lack of authenticity, however.  They loved decorating and devouring their houses.

The whole event was aided greatly by the teen girls who helped look after the babies, take pictures, watch kids in Luke's room, and basically do whatever else I asked of them.  Thanks, guys!

Hopefully, this will become a yearly tradition...a yearly tradition that will one day involve, um, real gingerbread houses!

A Lesson in Perseverance

Thanksgiving Week, Part 2

On Wednesday, we headed up to Murphy, NC, to visit Greg's family.  It was the first time all five cousins were together at once, and they had a great time.  Grace and Amelia were so sweet to Anna, and Luke and Jack bonded over their love for Papa's trains.  All the cousins got along beautifully, and it was really fun to watch them run around and be silly.

Because we wouldn't all be able to get together for Christmas, we went ahead and had "Christmas" on Thanksgiving...and a day or two after (holidays tend to get stretched out at the Kirby house:)). 

Jack and Luke figure out the cool Melissa and Doug puzzle/maze that Uncle Ken and Aunt Victoria got Luke.

An intense game of Princess Checkers.

Grace teaches Luke and Anna about Anna's new stacking toy.  For instance, you can look down through the hole (Luke thought that was an awesome idea.)

Anna just likes the fact that you can make them into balls. Anna got to meet Uncle Rob for the first time on this trip. Random pile-on, lovingly re-created for posterity:).

Luke thanks Grandma for a gift.

Papa introduces Anna to the joy of Lionel trains.  To put it mildly, she is a fan.

Thanksgiving Week

Wow, I am so behind on posting, and if I don't start catching up now, it's not going to happen!  Christmas is just getting busier and busier.  Here is a sampling of our schedule:

Dec. 6--Luke's Gingerbread Party (evening)

Dec. 6--Christmas barbecue at church (evening)

Dec. 7--Greg has a flag football tournament in the afternoon, and another youth group comes through in the evening, necessitating a joint devo and dinner together at Moe's:).

Dec. 8--Greg and I go out for my birthday, which was the 5th...but we were too busy getting ready for Luke's party on the 5th.

Dec. 9--Luke and Anna's Mommy and Me Christmas Party.

Dec. 10--Discovery Toys party

Dec. 12--Jr. High Christmas Party at our house; Greg's parents come in town

Dec. 13--Greg's parents take Luke (and the rest of us) to a Train Ride with Santa in a town a couple of hours away.

Dec. 13 (evening)--our neighbors set up a big screen outside to watch Christmas movies, while roasting hot dogs and making s'mores.

Tons of fun...but very busy!  Note to self:  Next year, all Christmas shopping, supply shopping for Luke's gingerbread house party, Christmas pictures, and Christmas cards need to be handled BEFORE THANKSGIVING!  It is just too crazy afterwards.

Oh yes...Thanksgiving.  We had a very fun week, starting off with a trip to Jacksonville, FL, for the Oasis youth rally.  This is the second year we've gone, and we really like it.  This year, it was just for the Junior High, so we took a smaller group, making the trip much more low stress.  Plus, it's nice to get to go along with Daddy and spend some good time with him.

While in Jacksonville, Anna learned to stand up all by herself.

Afterwards, the group went back to SC, but we drove up to Macon to see my family.  Of course, we all had lots of fun...especially Luke, who fell in love with Gaga's M&M machine, and carried it with him everywhere.  Both he and Gaga wanted us to take it with us when we went to visit the Kirbys in NC, but we knew the other parents would kill us for bringing a steady-stream-of-sugar machine.  Such things fit under the category of "Only at Gaga's":).

We didn't get many pictures in Macon, but we got plenty in Murphy with Greg's family.  In fact, I think I'll make that a separate post.