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Tuesday, December 24, 2013

thoughts | wonderful christmas

Christmas is tomorrow.

Just let that sink in for a moment.  The happiest day of the year and it's right here, in front of us.  I love anticipation.  Knowing what's coming, the surreal feeling that some thing's coming and the waiting.  As long as I don't have to wait too long!  

We're Christmas nuts over here.  My family tends to overdo the entire month of December.  With no apologies.  We just love Christmas!  My baby sister Gracie is keeping the official count ("How many more days?").  I told Calvin I bought him underwear, Gracie added "Yeah, Plain. White. Underwear!" just to be mean.  Kids can be so cruel.  He was excited anyway, the little guy just loves a present!

I've been to three Christmas parties in the last week, the fourth one I wasn't able to make due to the weather.  I've almost finished my shopping.  Why are men so hard to buy for?  The girls were so easy, but brothers are an extreme level of difficult.  And I feel that gift cards are the easy way out for sibling gifts.  I mean, these are the people that have to put up with me and my shenanigans for the other 364 days of the year, they deserve more than a plastic card with a reindeer printed on it. 

I'm helping my parents pull off a huge surprise tonight for the kiddos (and also the "adultos").  Sorry, I can't speak freely here, as my only two readers on this blog are my 9 year old sister Lydia and my best friend (also, sister) Brooke.  That would ruin Christmas for everyone and Mom and Dad would probably return all of my gifts.

We made more Christmas cookies Sunday night.  Because we've been out for several days and I was starting to feel a sugar deficiency.  Imagine our huge happy family gathered around the table delicately frosting mounds of sugar cookies, the smell of sweet frosting and vanilla wafting through the air, as we artistically handcraft silver snowflake designs with toothpicks and tweezers and the sounds of Ella singing Christmas tunes surrounds us.  Nice thoughts right?  Heehee!  We had a blast, but it was louder than that with a hefty amount of bickering going around, mostly, because I had made one batch of gluten free cookie dough and one batch of regular and thought the best (most classy) option for keeping the batches separate would be to use specific cookie cutters (yes, it was quite brilliant).  Worked great until Daniel went to town on the regular dough and filled another tray full of penguins.  Arghhhh.....  

Penguins were supposed to be gluten free.

It's probably not too late to return his gift, only I haven't gotten his gift yet.  Problem solved, I guess.  After the "penguin debacle of 2013" we sat down to frost those babies.  Using some very interesting colors of icing, because apparently the only box of food coloring we have in the cabinet is a neon combo pack.  Which is mostly fine, but your eyeballs start to burn after about three cookies due to the intensity of the hue of pink.

But no worries folks, we pushed through and our cookie jars are full once again.

Dad preached yesterday on Galations 4, not your typical Christmas sermon, but so beautiful with the tie in to "heirs and sons" and the Son of God.  He spoke of the incredible miracle of the virgin birth and how we often forget to treasure these gifts.  There are so many parts of the story of Christ's birth that send shivers up my spine.  But the most amazing is the prophecies that were fulfilled.  Dad has begun to preach through Genesis and came to the creation of the stars several weeks ago, he mentioned the "Star" that told of Messiah's birth.  This is amazing.  New stars don't appear, they are created by the very Hand of God.  Amazing!  Every year, I see something new in the story of the birth of our Savior, the faithfulness of Simeon and Anna, the purity of Mary, the kindness of Joseph and so many other tiny details that are easily missed.

It's early morning here.  With a busy day ahead.  Uncle Bob is in from DC, we have to think of someway to get mom out of the house for a few hours while her gift is delivered, I'm sure I will need a cup of coffee at some point (we are mere mortals over here and run on strong coffee) and the aforementioned "surprise" tonight.  Can't wait!   I'm making the cover cake recipe from Southern Living's December issue, I'll probably regret that one, but it's so beautiful.  And also, red velvet.  I will never not love red velvet.

Wishing you the Merriest Christmas, may your joys be many on this happy day.

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