Catching Up...Part 1

Ok…time to catch up on Christmas.

Abby LOVED Christmas! And it wasn’t even the presents that were the highlights for her…oh, she liked those, but it was the Christmas tree, the lights, the gingerbread house and baby Jesus that seemed to fascinate her.

Our Christmas celebration began the day after Thanksgiving with our usual trek to the north to cut our Christmas tree. We do this every year (we even drove home from our visit to family on Thanksgiving Day because we weren’t willing to compromise on this tradition!). We cut our tree, eat at Sonic and pull out the decorations. Of course, we have to put the tree up, fill the stand with warm water and then we wait until Sunday evening to decorate… it has to settle! (That’s Scott’s story and he’s sticking to it! LOL!!) But hey, now it’s tradition!!

Abby LOVED decorating the tree, but much to my dismay, I realized that we didn’t have any ornaments with her picture or a special stocking just for her… YIKES, that was one I didn’t anticipate very well and Abby noticed too. So I made a big deal that we would go shopping and she could pick her own special stocking and she was happy with that, but what about the picture ornament.

Well, on Monday after school, she disappeared into her room for a while, she didn’t want me to see what she was working on and she emerged with her own homemade picture ornament (yes, it is carefully stored for next year!). I love how she doesn’t stand on the sidelines but just jumps right in… She’s right where she belongs and she seems to get that!!

Unfortunately, we didn’t do such a great job of choosing our tree this year…we cut one off of a hill and couldn’t see how crooked it was and it fell three times and of course it was the biggest tree we’d ever had so it was a nightmare dealing with it when it fell. Thankfully it always fell against the shutters, so it could have been much worse.

I loved how Abby interacted with the nativity scenes… She was always checking out baby Jesus in the gift box and I found Bitty Bear on the camel!

But one of my favorite nights was a night that Scott had to go somewhere with the boys. I took the girls to Chick-Fil-A and after chicken and fries, and of course and Ice Dream Cone (Abby loves, I mean LOVES, ice cream) we set off to look at the lights.

I drove forever through neighborhoods (of course we were in the new Jeep so it made it doubly fun for me, that is the funnest car to drive! I almost forgot, my van was dying...9 1/2 years old, almost 160,000 miles so we took the plunge and bought a used (new to me) red, I mean RED, Jeep Commander!! Now the boys are no longer embarrassed to be seen riding with me!!)…

Anyway, Abby got excited over every light we saw! But the highlight of the evening was in a neighborhood of cluster homes with postage stamp yards. We found a house that had gone all out and not only did they have a yard, porch, and roof, packed with lights, they had synchronized it to all of the fun Christmas songs.

So I pulled over in front of the house, rolled down the windows and the next thing I knew… Abby was singing at the TOP of her lungs! I was laughing so hard…I hope the mom or dad (probably dad) who did all of that work could hear her!

This year we decided to try making a gingerbread house! YIKES…that has never been my thing, but we had fun, even if it was a HUGE mess!! And then Abby found a kit for making reindeer out of candy canes and so we now have a family of reindeer candy canes!!

With Mama H....my grandmother...you would NEVER believe her age! She looks AMAZING!!

On Christmas Eve, we have a tradition of the kids opening one Christmas present. Abby was so excited, she talked about it all day long and naturally I assumed that she wanted to open one of her presents. So evening came and the kids were playing cards with my grandmother and Abby couldn’t get anyone to go along with her plan to open a present.

I tried to educate her in the ways of plying her daddy… “Abby, go and give him a big hug with a sweet smile and say, ‘Daddy, can we pleeeeeeeease open our present?” Abby’s translation… She walks over to Scott open her arms and says, “Ok, howg me! Now open present?!” Yep, we have some work to do on that one!

But when the time finally came to open a present, it wasn’t her present that she was excited about! She had made a present for Scott and I at school and couldn’t wait for us to open it! It was a wonderful calendar that she had made!!

She really has such a sweet, generous spirit! We saw this many times over Christmas in such simple ways… Wanting others to open their presents first…offering her candy or snacks to whoever was around…bringing me a pillow one afternoon when I laid down on the sofa…even watching me play with my new toy, my IPO*D Touch, she brought me her stylus from her game to try and help me. She always seems to be watching to see how she can help someone else. It’s a special treasure in her heart that I hope we can foster and grow in some really special ways…

More in a day or so about the rest of Christmas…