Four Christmases?! Amateurs...

Merry Christmas, my loyal followers (all 5 of you)!

So, I heard about this movie "Four Christmases", starring Reese Witherspoon & Vince Vaughn. All I could think was, "JUST four!?"

This year is an oddity for us, as we're cutting out our annual trip down Monroe ways to Ida for my cousin's Christmas Eve bash. It's usually the biggest family gathering of the year for my side of the family, with anywhere from 20 to 30 people in attendance. The only problem is, it's in Ida (a good hour's drive). After totaling my car, nearly killing myself and family, and spending the wee hours of Christmas morning in the ER, we figured maybe this was the year we decide to forgo that piece of the holidays and spend Christmas Eve at home.

Usually, this is how Christmas plays out for my family...

Christmas #1)
Christmas Eve, I'll innevitably be working for at least the first few hours of the day. I'll head home about 3ish and we'll spend an hour or so packing up gifts, fudge, cookies, and kids to head to Ida. We usually get there later than most of the family who had the entire day off, but we have an absolutely WONDERFUL time catching up, eating fabulous food, singing carols, opening gifts from extended family, and enjoying the festive atmosphere my cousin manages to muster up every year.

From there, we'll head home, and (when the weather and mode of transporation cooperate, anyway), shuffle the sleepy younglings into the house to lay cookies, fudge and milk out for Santa (along with a few carrots for Rudolph). Then we'll spend the next couple hours filling stockings, wrapping presents, having a drink, and hit the hay.

Christmas #2)
Christmas morning is at home. The kids wake us up at some sort of reasonable hour, having worn themselves out playing with extended cousins the night before. We'll open gifts, have breakfast, maybe watch a Christmas special, and play with our gifts a bit. Afterwards, we'll start gathering more gifts, kids, and a contribution to the next piece of the Christmas Mele...

Christmas #3)
We'll drive to the in-laws' for The Wife's family Christmas. We'll pile though the door and unload the gifts to the already huge pile under the tree. Before we start tearing into wraping paper, we'll spend an hour or so eating the Ferris Traditional Candy Cane-Shaped Coffee Cake as Mom-In-Law & The Wife do some can't-wait-till-later prep for the dinner with her cousins later in the afternoon.

Finally, we'll start the gift-giving. We do this one gift at a time (which drives me nuts, but the kids seem to be fine with). When all is said and done, the kids spend the afternoon with ther toys and we finish prep for dinner. The Wife's cousins come over about 4 and we socialize before dinner. We'll often play some board game or something, have the Ferris Traditional Christmas Pudding and head home about 10ish.

Christmas #4)
Sometime the next afternoon, we'll head to my grandfather's to have Christmas with my more immediate side of the family: mom, uncle, grandfather, & sister. We usually order pizza, open gifts, and just enjoy each others company.

Christmas #5)
Usually in the evening the day after Christmas (sometimes a day or two later) we'll head to my great uncle's place for ANOTHER gathering with my extended-extended family. We'll see cousins we only bump into here, munch on more great food, and catch up a bit. This one I'm not always so fond of, because the inevitable questions arises, "So how's that degree coming?" I'll cite the usual excuses for being a gnat's hair away from my degree, which is usually met with the typical pitiful look of dismay. Ugh. Regardless, we usually have fun and the kids will get some nice little gift from my great aunt and uncle that they'll enjoy much more than anticipated (or at least show polite enthusiasm toward), and we'll head home about 8 or 9.

We've followed this pattern to some degree of reliability for the past decade or so, with the occasional kink in the plan that we'll usually roll with. Every year we say that next year we'll scale it back and forgo some piece of it. This is the first year we're actually following through with it. I'll miss the gathering in Ida, as it's the one piece of Christmas left from my childhood (and several generations back) that has remained fairly consistent throughout the years. Still it'lll be nice not to have the mad dash out the door and frantic scurrying on Christmas Eve.

This year will be different, but families change, traditions form and evolve, and life goes on. I fully expect a wonderful and relaxing Holiday season.

...especially with 5 days off in a row. Haven't had that in a LOOOOOOONG time!

Trees, Trinkets, and Traditions...

So it seems I have a few minutes here as I sit at my favorite repair shop to have my brakes looked at.

Sunday we set up the tree. Sonya and I have the same debate every year: real vs. fake tree. We’ve had an artificial tree in our shed for several years since our friend, Leigh, donated her old one to us. It’s been through the ringer a bit, after several previous owners, but it still has all of it’s parts and most of the branches are intact. Still, we don’t get it out every year.

Don’t get me wrong, I love having a real tree in the house. The traditional feel and the scent definitely add something to the holidays. In our house, however, it just doesn’t always make sense. I’m not a fan of the prep and expense involved in getting a decent real tree. First, there’s going out in the freezing cold, checking multiple lots for selection and prices, and spending well over an hour once we find a lot we like choosing a tree we can agree on. This one’s too skimpy, that one has a bald spot, the other leans too much, and most are just too fat and have too big a footprint for our tiny house. Then there’s the expense of a decent breed. We (okay, I) don’t want a Scotch pine anymore, despite their rock-bottom price. They were fine when we were young, but they’re too bushy, the ornaments don’t hang well, and they dry our a lot faster. We always go for a spruce, which of course, is about twice the price.

Once we finally find one we like and can afford, there’s tying it to the car, hauling it home, hacking off the end of the stump, wresting it through the door, lifting it onto the stand, and of course, the subsequent clean up of needles that seem to find their way into every crevice and hang around for months. That’s not even mentioning the maintenance of watering and trying to keep my brother-in-law’s visiting dogs from drinking it dry. We also have a nasty habit of procrastinating on getting the things down, so it’ll often stay in our living room, drying out for several weeks after Christmas.

Artificial trees are so much easier. The one we have is fairly tall and thin, and thus has a pretty small footprint. Liam just adores the assembly of, as he calls them, “puzzle trees”, and it gets him more involved in the decorating process. There’s also the wonderful feature of being able to position branches to fill in empty spots and create spots for ornaments to hang better. Clean-up’s a breeze and there’s no worry about the fire hazard of a dried-out, formerly live tree once we’ve forgotten to water it for a couple weeks.

I won (or more appropriately, she acquiesced), and we did the artificial tree this year. Money and time are tight, so it just made sense this year. We assembled the tree Sunday with some welcomed help from Leigh, put the lights up Tuesday, and decorated it last night. We invited Leigh over for some FABULOUS pea soup (courtesy of Sonya) and to help with the decorating.

Decorating the tree used to be one of my favorite parts of the holidays. I always dread the necessary loading and unloading of the stuff, but the actual placement of the ornaments really gets me in the Christmas mood. This year, however, I spent much of the time on the couch. I put the star on first, being the tallest in the house, but with our tree tucked into a tight corner of our living room and 2 eager kids, Sonya and Leigh going at it full force, I just sat back on the couch and watched most of it. I reserved my set of resin Victorian marching band statuettes to put on after the crowd had dissipated.

As I sat there munching on a candy cane, the XM Christmas Traditions station piped through the stereo via my laptop, I caught that Christmas Spirit once more, but for different reasons. Watching my kids, now old enough to be efficient help rather than slow down the process and get in the way, I started to appreciate the holidays on a parental level. This is the magic time. Both of my kids still believe in Santa and the magic of Christmas. I don’t care how jaded you are, watching kids get into the Christmas Spirit is infectious.

Later, after the kids had been in bed for a while and Liam was sound asleep, my daughter got up and was whimpering a bit. She wanted to fall asleep in mommy & daddy’s bed. She does this on occasion, appreciating the softer bed and roominess. I direct her to a potty break on the way (her accidents are few, but truly frustrating when it’s in our bed) and prep the covers for her. As I pull up the comforter, she walks in with a sheepish look on her face, knowing it’s well past bedtime, holding a Christmas Advent book with flaps and pop-ups she can flip.

“You want me to read that to you?”

Her sheepish look fades to a delighted grin and puppy dog eyes. “I duss wanna Trissmas book so I tan doe to sleep”

I give her a warm smile. “Okay. Hop in and snuggle up.”

She excitedly hops into bed and nestles close to me. As I snuggled with my baby girl, reading a Christmas book and recalling images of my kids gleefully attaching baubles and kitsch older than they are to our “puzzle tree”, I had a moment – a moment of parental pride and Christmas cheer. Despite how tight our budget is this year, I am more appreciative than ever of the greatest gift a man can have: his family.

Maybe we'll get a real wreath for some fresh pine scent for the holidays, after all.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all, a good night…