christmas was an absolutely wonderful time around here. i stayed in my pajama's for 24+ hours and reveled in jack's delight and wonder over the whole affair. we enjoyed some new toys, chinese food and a few glasses of wine. one of john's xmas presents to me was that he sat and watched an entire episode of the real housewives of beverly hills with me while jack napped. merry christmas to me!
we had quite the week of celebrating, kicked off by an overnight visit from a college friend of ours who now calls the grand state of texas home. that's right, texas teal came home to iowa. we had a lovely visit, complete with sushi and lots of reminiscing about old memories. it was too short, as every visit is, but i was so happy to see her! love you, teal, and thanks for making dubuque one of your stops!
we donned some festive christmas apparel on friday night....
and welcomed our friends whitney and bart back to dubuque from tampa, fl. whitney is a former colleague of mine, and a very dear friend. she about broke my heart when she left the firm in september to join her husband in florida, but at least we're only a plane ride away. it was great seeing the two of them and great seeing how happy she is down in florida. the best christmas gift you can receive is the knowledge that your friends and family are as happy and blessed as you are! it was a great night, complete with lots (and maybe too much, as the case may be) holiday cheer!
saturday we hosted christmas eve with my family, and it was a great night, as usual. i don't have many pictures because i was too busy enjoying every single minute of it, but, suffice it to say, everyone put up with my elaborate holiday celebrations/decorations/etc. and i am grateful for their good sportsmanship. it was especially nice to see my brother chris, someone who claims to be annoyed by christmas, embracing the holiday spirit. he played not one but TWO christmas carols during the night, and he also read jack "twas the night before christmas" before the wee one retired for the evening.
we continued a few of our favorite family traditions... chicken on christmas eve & the end-of-the-year confessionals, and added some more. first up, the confessionals. every year on christmas eve, everyone shares something naughty they did over the past year for which they receive immunity from my father... as in, he's not allowed to ground or otherwise punish anyone based on what is revealed during the confession. it's not as important for me anymore since my father's jurisdiction doesn't reach outside the confines of his home, but it's always a pretty entertaining conversation in which we all learn a little bit more about each other. my brother chris, in grinch-like fashion, usually refuses to share any confessions, but this year, he shared several year's worth, and it was quite satisfying for my sister and i to have him participate. john revealed that, by some fluke or miracle or what-have-you, jack had, earlier in the week, managed to tear down one of the paper lanterns hanging above his crib. he proceeded to shred the lantern and john discovered him giggling about this shennanigan. they both feared what might happen if i learned of the lantern's demise, so john carefully placed it in the trash under other rubbish, and figured it could be their little secret... til the christmas eve confessional!
thinking about the confessionals reminds me of the great times my family has at holidays, everyone gathered around the table, laughing, drinking, sharing a meal. we are blessed beyond measure, and i am eternally grateful for the blessings that touch my life on the daily. i have a warm place to live, a beautiful, healthy family, a job i love, the opportunity to advance in my career. thinking about all the things i have that i sometimes take for granted made me think that i really wanted to do something this holiday to help my family remember how good we have it. usually i scour the pages of my favorite cookbooks, looking for elaborate appetizers to prepare and serve with cocktails for the first hour or two of the night. this year, i set about trying to find some way to give back to those less fortunate in our community.
i divided the nine members of my immediate family who would be joining us for dinner into three groups of three, and wrote little instructions on sheets placed inside envelopes. when everyone arrived for dinner, we gathered in my living room and i handed out the envelopes. the deal was that no one could open their envelope until the group got into their car. everyone was supposed to follow the instructions, then meet back at the house to share what they'd done. my dad, jack and i took five bags of groceries to the teresa shelter, which is a local shelter for battered women and children. john, my mom and my brother, clayton, handed out gift cards to wal-mart, and my sister, jessica and brothers, marty and chris were supposed to buy hot chocolate and take it to salvation army bell ringers. i think that this will become a new tradition in my family because everyone enjoyed it so much. the surprised look of the woman who answered the intercom at the shelter was so touching, and when my mom described the response of the little girl and her mom who received one of the gift cards, i couldn't help but shed a few tears. because that's truly what christmas is all about: spending time treasuring your blessings with the people you hold dear. (from the mouths of "babes," my brother marty's initial response to this event was: "of course stephanie would have us participate in some elaborate event on christmas eve. remember when she made us take that long hike into the woods to find out that jack was a boy?" haha. they know me too well!)
after we had all shared lots of laughs and drinks and opened some presents, it was time to play santa. there's something about a house on christmas eve, the lights all twinkling so sweetly, the tree looking perfect, the presents all arranged underneath. the warm feeling you get observing the whole scene makes any pre-holiday stress worth every minute, right? totally. so i stuffed all the stockings and made my way to bed...
... when i was awakened the next morning by excited baby squeals. of course jack didn't really understand that it was christmas, but he's pretty excited about waking up most days, and christmas was really no different. we shuffled down the stairs, and upon surveying the scene, he let out a "ohhhhhh, cooooooooo," which is jack speak for "awesome. cool. mom & dad, you're the best." haha.
jack is thoroughly enjoying his workbench, particularly the drill, which he seems to have quite a grasp on how to use...
he's also been preparing many a delicious feast for john and i, and luckily they're low in fat, high in imagination content...
i was sort of worried that these gifts might be a little too advanced for the wee one, but he's been enjoying them non-stop since he discovered them... totally a "jack" of all trades! oh, and as you can see from above, while some of us refused to change out of pajamas, some of us refused to wear clothes at all. it was christmas after all. and who am i to stop him from naked celebrations, if that's what floats his boat???
it was the very first time in all of our years that neither john nor i spent the day with our extended family. it was just the three of us. and it was so wonderful. i feel like i truly got to hit "pause" for a little while and just enjoy my sweet little baby boy. while i did miss being with our families (we did get some skype action in, and of course a few phone calls to loved ones afar), it was really nice to stay put. we had traveled every single weekend of december, so the couch in our living room was really begging for us to cozy up and veg for the day. i have to hand it to my husband. it was really his idea for us to stay home this christmas, and i'd be lying if i said that initially i didn't feel some pangs of disappointment to be missing seeing my sisters and brothers and parents and aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents. john reminded me that we make a great effort to spend lots of time with them throughout the year, and that we needed to start making our own holiday traditions. so i reluctantly agreed, and he couldn't have been more dead on. it was a lovely break with old traditions, and a sweet beginning to some new family memories of our own. of course, we did pay homage to an old fueger family favorite a la "the christmas story:" chinese food! no stress, no fuss, chinese food take-out on the christmas china. nothing says happy birthday, jesus quite like that!
so anyway, we were blessed with a wonderful, relaxing holiday, and i hope you were, too!
as for my twelve christmas crafts... how did i make out?
well, (surprise, surprise) my pinterest boards were a little too big for my allotted spare time. such is life. i did complete a few more christmas inspired things...
we traveled to michigan to see my sister, brother-in-law and their new puppy lemmi the weekend before christmas. i was admiring my sister's pottery barn initial ornaments that she had hung from the chandelier in her dining room. (i can't find a picture on PB's site, but i did find a similar version on this blog:)
the ornament reminded me of a coaster, and i remembered that i had saved several coasters from trip to the hofbraus haus in munich, germany in 2009. i added some glitter and jute and voila! my very own PB knock-off ornaments!
i also half-assed a christmas table runner. it wasn't my intention to be so lazy. i bought the holiday-inspired fabric over a month ago. and i folded it and set it on my dining room table, with a burlap runner over top. and i very much intended to hem the edges and take the fabric from remnants to runner, but i just never quite got there. and it was approximately 1 hour until my family was set to arrive on christmas eve, and i was all like, "john, i'm just going to quick hem this, and..." and he was all like, "NO! absolutely not. your family does not care about hemming table runners. are you insane?" and with logic like that, how could i argue? so, yeah... the next christmas craft is the tale of a trip to joann's that resulted in 2 yards of fabric that i folded to make it look like a sweet table runner. no one said a word about my no-sew faux pas; aren't they well-mannered? (i might never sew my runners again....)
and now... for my favorite christmas craft... john's gift (which, coincidentally, i can enjoy, too!) i've been wanting an old sign to hang above the window in our living room that faces the gallery wall (which we've discussed ad nauseum on several prior occasions). and after deciding that i had to have an old sign, i encountered about 99 more problems... (1) when would i find the time to hunt down an old sign at an antique store? (2) once i tracked down a sign i loved, how would i afford it? i could always sell my first-born son, but i've been growing increasingly fond of him... (3) i feel about signs the way i feel about tattoos. what should the sign say? we don't collect things (except dogs and burlap - and you can't very well make an old sign that says "wayward pet home" or "hi. i have a burlap addiction.") i wanted the sign to be meaningful, but the changes of finding an old sign that was in my price range and meant something to me were slim to none. so i headed to pinterest, where i found several old sign tutorials. and i enlisted the help of my father, who agreed to find an old crappy piece of barn wood for me to turn into an old sign for john for christmas. once the sign was safe and sound in the recesses of my garage so john wouldn't suspect a thing, i googled around for an old-fashioned free font i liked, downloaded it and printed out the letters i needed in 300 point font. i used an exacto knife to cut around the letters to make stencils and then painted the words on the sign. it's worth mentioning that i promptly ignored all the sign-making tutorials i found on pinterest because i was lucky enough to be given an old piece of wood (many of the tutorials show you how to make the wood look old using cider vinegar and other potions. i highly recommend checking out the other pinterest methods, if you're so inclined. the only drawback to my method is that my authentic piece of barnwood weighs like 30 damn pounds!)
anyway, without futher ado, here she is:
i really like the way it turned out, and i think john was touched. he's always surprised that i've pulled something off without alerting him to my schemes. he also made sure to point out that we could totally fit an "s" at the end of "son" if need be!
i also prepared a bunch of holiday treats from new recipes, including THIS fabulous one. ummm, white chocolate + raspberry + pecans = make it right now, and love it as much as we did! it's supposed to be a three layer torte, but i made a two-layer torte and had one thin cake, which, i told myself, totally cut down on the calorie quotient (don't read the nutrition facts at the end!), but really my three layers were starting to lean dangerously!
ok. so. in summary: i didn't quite pull off 12 christmas-related crafts (but 10 is pretty good, right???), i had a great holiday... and i hope you did, too! merry christmas to all!
No comments:
Post a Comment