Christmas 2013

Merry Christmas!

Today we celebrated the nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ!

The children were awake before 6:00, but it was close enough--"Don't wake us up before six o'clock!"--that I let it slide. They came tumbling downstairs to open stockings.

Then we paused for Christmas breakfast of Daddy's French toast and bacon with coffee and hot chocolate.

You've got to love Daddy's wrapping job for the children's gift to me!

I am so tickled by my new Brown Betty tea pot! Even better than a truly new Brown Betty, this is an old Brown Betty, made in England from the special clay, as opposed to the current "Brown Betties" (I must give them quotation marks) which are made in China not from the special clay, and I understand their quality is much degraded. The children and I have afternoon tea, snack, and reading several afternoons per week, and using a proper tea pot will be so much lovelier.

John has asked me numerous times over the last year for elbow and knee pads so that he feels more protected while riding his bicycle. He was so pleased with this (modest!) gift and this is what he thanked me for again at bedtime! He's our little serious man and, true to form, paused in the middle of opening Christmas gifts to get a baggie and put into it stocking items like lotion and Jesus-loves-you bandages, "So I can have a first aid kit in my bedroom for anytime I need it!"

Joseph didn't know what was going on, but good-naturedly crawled around at great speed among the cacophony and flying paper. When he got a hold of this box, he let out a long 'ooooohhhhhh' of astonishment, which had me in stitches.

I don't know what was going on with the lighting and lack of focus in most of our photos today,
but this was the best official family photo we captured.

After the gifts were opened and breakfast dishes washed, we got ourselves spiffed up and left for Christmas day Mass. There was no traditional Latin Mass being offered in Charlotte, so we drove nearly two hours to attend the one o'clock at Our Lady of Grace in Greensboro. It was a beautiful Missa Cantata with Renaissance polyphonic settings (music lingo which I don't understand, but I surely enjoyed hearing!).

Being gone for most of the day meant I sure had to plan ahead, but it went off almost without a hitch: I had cooked the entire meal in the days ahead and set the dining table the night before. Grampa Neil stayed home and warmed the dishes according to my written notes, so all I had to do was walk in the door and spend twenty minutes on the final touches. My menu was:

Ham 

Sweet potato casserole

Spinach Gorgonzola casserole

Mashed potatoes

Leftover fettuccine Alfredo

Dinner rolls

Whether we attend Mass closer to home next year or not, I am making a mental note to self that it was really relaxing and organized to have the meal cooked ahead of time, leaving me able to spend Christmas day out of the kitchen (where I feel like I've been living for days), so I'd like to try that again next year.

I hope my blog readers enjoyed a wonderful and spiritually fruitful Christmas!