Decorating the Christmas tree

A Gracewatch Christmas morning

Decorating the tree on Christmas Eve.

Waiting to go downstairs.

Opening presents.

Jingle bells!

An infinity scarf!

Playing Uno!

An Easter egg hunt in the snow

Two weeks after Easter, and we still can't hold a proper Easter egg hunt in actual green grass...but that didn't stop the kids from having fun with their cousins this past Saturday:

Christmas

Here is our annual "coming down the stairs" video of Christmas morning. Before the kids can go downstairs, we have them stop to pray by the baby Jesus in the manger; we read the Magnificat, and the littler kids sing "Happy Birthday" to Jesus. Then they head downstairs.

The most charming thing about this year's Christmas morning was the way the littlest kids (Alleluia Boy and The Music Man) don't rip though their presents, but kind of get stuck on the first thing they see. They are pretty happy with whatever, you know? They don't have preconceived expectations about Christmas...for now!




My favorite moment of the day, though, was the forty minutes or so that I spent with Jubilee Girl and Alleluia Boy out on the sledding hill. It was very cold  and still, and being late Christmas afternoon, very quiet. (Actually, twenty-five years ago, that sledding hill would have been crowded with kids sledding with new sleds.) The sun was setting, the moon was rising, and the air was heavy with ice crystals, so that the last rays of the sun sluiced through a kind of crystalline haze that diffused the light in the sky above us...all pinks and oranges and blues and purples. And the kids just went up and down the hill together over and over, just like this, and no one even ended up crying. Beautiful.

Halloween

All right, here's the mandatory Halloween post! As I've mentioned before, Halloween has never been my favorite holiday...but I love taking the kids trick-or-treating around here. The neighborhood just comes alive in a way that you never see any other time of year -- pretty much everyone is home, and out and about. The kids have to keep prompting the adults to keep moving, because we're so busy talking with the neighbors we haven't seen all year!

Mouse went as Juliet, Jubilee Girl went as a lollipop fairy (her own invention),
The Music Man went as a tiger, and Alleluia Boy went as Thomas the Tank Engine.

Trick-or-treating with the residents at a local nursing home...another favorite
thing to do.

Pumpkins by (bottom to top) Alleluia Boy, Jubilee Girl, and Mouse.

Some neighbor was handing out big candy bars!

And here is a short clip of the kids trick-or-treating in the neighborhood:

Easter

We did the whole Easter Triduum as a family, from Holy Thursday's
foot-washing (above) to the two-and-a-half-hour Easter Vigil. We
had multiple people come up after the vigil to compliment the kids'
endurance! They were definitely on their best behavior, and enjoying
everything from the bonfire to the baptismal rites and the unique music.

Easter morning. Peeps and beans! And a few Christian music CDs.

Alleluia Boy was VERY happy to finally be singing "Alleluia" again...he perked
right up when we sang it during the Easter vigil. Several times a week when we
sang a song for family prayer, he would interrupt with loud cries of, "NO!
ALLELUIA! ALLELUIA!!!!" The kid's destined to be a bishop. Or a liturgist.

If ever this boy is ordained, this picture will come out. This is his cousin's...he tried it on himself,
without prompting. Also, he likes doing the orans gesture like he sees Fr. Jim do.

Of course we're squinting into the sun! Oh well. This was taken during our quick
run up to the Twin Cities on Easter Day, where we enjoyed a very relaxed Easter
dinner at my brother's house.

Advent and Christmas 2011

"For just as lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will the Son of Man be...." --Luke 17:24

A really good Advent sets up a really good Christmas, and we had a really good Advent this year. As we usually do, we set up the Christmas tree with a few strings of blue and purple lights (Advent colors), but nothing else. Actually, Jaybird had fun coloring and cutting out and hanging up Jesse Tree decorations, so for most of Advent our nearly-bare tree was decorated with those. In a nutshell, Jesse Tree symbols summarize salvation history leading up to the birth of Christ -- each symbol represents a different biblical story or episode.

We also lit the Advent wreath most nights; we sang a new verse of "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" every week, until we were able to sing the first four verses reasonably well. Even little Alleluia Boy was singing along in his own way by the end! Of course, we have read the Scripture readings for the day from the lectionary for years, so that was good too -- hearing all those very hopeful, poetically beautiful readings from Isaiah over several weeks leading up to Christmas.

We went to confession as a family, Advent being a penitential season and all.

And on the day before Christmas Eve, the kids and I ran around town donating things. We saw this story in the Winona Daily News about the 600 families who received a free holiday basket from Winona Volunteer Services. Actually, a friend had driven past on the pickup day and then Facebooked about the line that stretched six blocks. Here's a picture from the Daily News:

That was the prompting we needed to head to the grocery store -- each child got to pick an item to donate. Mouse wanted to donate a 15-pound ham! I nixed that only because I wasn't sure whether they would accept perishable food, so she chose two jars of pickles instead. (Turns out the ham would've been okay -- oh well, next time!) Jaybird donated a bag of potatoes. And Bear donated a can of pineapple. We ran all that over to the food shelf, where it was weighed; we also dropped off a check. Then the kids got a five-minute tour of the food shelf. (Or as Mouse corrected: "Actually, we just stood around while you talked to the lady.") We found out that, indeed, nearly 1,000 families in our area rely on the food shelf once a month or more. That's nearly one in five families in this town. And that, frankly, is amazing.

We also donated a whole bunch of stuffed animals to another charity. Then it was off to Pizza Hut for a bit of a reward!

It was a buffet -- and this being Winona, that meant it was absolutely packed. But the kids enjoyed it anyway. The other thing we'd done in the week leading up to Christmas was to go through all their toys (again!) to organize them and to get rid of some of them. It was a lot of work (again), so the pizza out was well-deserved. By me especially. : )

That night we went down to La Crosse to see the Rotary Lights display in their park along the Mississippi River. This year, Alleluia Boy was properly impressed -- he kept looking around, wide-eyed, pointing out the "light, light!" We think he enjoyed it. And it was unseasonably warm and ice-free this year!

Bear's friend came along for the ride -- far left.

Christmas Eve morning, we decorated the tree with "real" lights and "real" Christmas decorations. It's a wonderful tradition...it really feels like a turning point, like we've come out of this period of darkness and penance into this time of light and joy.

The kids watched "A Charlie Brown Christmas" on DVD in the afternoon -- their one and only Christmas special. I have a special place in my heart for that special, because of Linus's speech on the true meaning of Christmas -- the birth of the Christ child. It was fun to hear the kids all laughing like crazy at Snoopy's antics. Some things are just classic!

Also Christmas Eve afternoon, our next door neighbor came over for a small gift exchange and cookies and milk. I shouldn't say "small," since she is always VERY generous with gift certificates to the local book store and Godfather's Pizza.

Another Christmas tradition for our family is Christmas Eve dinner at the local Catholic Worker house. Dinner was great -- ham, turkey, stuffing, and lots of great sides, including a wonderful squash soup. People were a little subdued, for understandable reasons, but there was still a lot of camaraderie and laughter. Bear and I ate with a new guy who regaled us with wonderful and amazing stories of his 19 years working as a carpenter in the Alaska wilderness.

We eat there every week, of course, so many of the regulars have become good friends. I persuaded them to pose for a picture after dinner:

Then it was homeward to get dressed for "Midnight" Mass -- at 8 p.m. (which is good, 'cause we couldn't do any later!). The girls dressed in their Christmas dresses:

Mass was wonderful -- the high point of Christmas, as usual. Although...

...Christmas morning was pretty nice, too.

This little guy had no idea that it was Christmas, but squealed with delight on
seeing the "horsey" anyway.

There is a story about the little prayer book Mouse is holding. I actually "hid" this gift and a few other small religious items too well -- and ended up spending about an hour and a half searching for them on Christmas Eve night, meaning that I didn't actually get to bed until early Christmas Eve morning!

The kids enjoyed all of their many gifts, as you can see in the video below.

We took time out for a walk in the nearby Trempealeau Wildlife Refuge just to get out of the house and to enjoy the beautiful weather. Everyone was in good spirits.

Here is the video of Christmas morning:

One of the highlights of the season for me was listening to Brother Mann, president of Saint Mary's University, deliver some brief remarks before the SMU Christmas dinner. He offered one of the best reflections on the Christmas season that I have heard in a while. The Scripture quotation at the beginning of this post was part of his remarks. I was really struck at the imagery in this quote, especially in the way he connected it to the incarnation.

The Gospel of John gives us that wonderful image of the Christ child as a light in the darkness, but I also like this image of Christ as a bolt of lightning spanning the sky. It really captures just how radical the Incarnation of God is...because if you really are so crazy as to believe in a God whose love for humanity is so great that he becomes one of us in order to draw us to him, then the Incarnation changes everything, absolutely everything. Like a flash of lightning in the night, it lights up our world and our lives, so that we see them as they truly are...and that is a good thing.

Happy Halloween! And All Saints Day!

Well, this post is past due, but better late than never, right?

We celebrated All Saints Day before Halloween this year, since our church's ASD party was on the Sunday before Halloween. It was very similar to last year's format -- family folk dancing followed by a potluck and "guess the saint" costume contest -- so I won't repeat all of that here. This year, Mouse went as St. Elizabeth of Portugal, Bear went as St, Paul Miki, and Jaybird went as St. Julia Billiart. Another girl went as St. Julia the fourth century martyr, which took her by surprise. Mudpuppy went as Juan Diego, except he refused to wear the tilma that Starling made for him.

The girls made their own pumpkins, by themselves, this year.

 Halloween was little weird. We visited the Kensington again; that is my favorite part of the whole night. The residents dress up and sit behind tables in the dining room; the kids go along from table to table collecting treats while the residents smile and say nice things about them, always urging them to take more candy. I love seeing how happy it makes the residents when the kids visit. They especially liked little Mudpuppy, who went along in his little pumpkin costume, cautiously taking the candy -- and then trying to put it into the basket held out by the next resident in line, or taking more than one piece, not out of greed but because they're pretty. He was getting into the swing of it by the end!

We promised to stop by the Catholic Worker for dinner, but before we did, we swung by the parish rectory at the invitation of Fr. Jim, who loves M&Ms.

Yeah, this picture isn't the greatest, due to the dim light and
excited kids.

Then we headed over to the Catholic Worker, where we shared in sweet potato soup and black beans and rice, all of which the kids barely touched. That was weird because we ended up being the only guests (besides one other guest living in the house).

Then Jaybird wanted to stay for the Halloween party, so we left her at the Bethany House (the other house, where the party was -- not the house that we had dinner in). Several of the former live-in volunteers said they'd watch her. She carved pumpkins with one of her friends (a guest at the family house and a classmate from school), had lots of cake and brownies and cookies, and watched "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!" on the front porch. She actually preferred that to trick-or-treating.

Jaybird with her friend at the party

That left Mouse and I to go around the neighborhood; Bear is "too old" at age eleven, so he stayed home and answered the door, and Mudpuppy had had it anyway. As usual, trick-or-treating in our neighborhood is part moveable block party -- a great way to reconnect with people we haven't seen since June (at the actual block party) as well as our older shut-ins. This year, Mouse went as a Snow Princess, which she had to explain to everyone, since she was wearing a long, blue gown. Also, she carried a ball that had a floating eyeball in it, and that lit up when you bounced it. She was very talkative with the neighbors, stopping to chat with everyone.

Our pumpkins. I especially
like the one on its side. Sadly,
they were nibbled on by
squirrels before we even lit them.

Despite working alone, Mouse managed to bring back quite a haul. At three pieces a day, they're still only halfway through it!

"Amazing Grace"

Lately the kids have been singing "Amazing Grace" to Mudpupp -- don't ask me how this started, I'm sure I have no idea. In any case, he really likes it, and demands that they sing by repeating, "Song! Song!" until they do.

Stranger still, he has started learning the song himself. A few times now, he's sung the entire first verse all the way through -- although only when we're not paying direct attention. If we ask him to sing, he just looks at us silently, smiling. His pronunciation lacks a great deal, but he gets the basic shape of the words, as well as the melody: "Amazin' 'ace, sweet ah sound, ah save ah wretch lie me!" and so on, all the way down to: "...was los', now ah see!" It gave me goosebumps the first time he did it -- while I was changing him!

Mudpuppy likes to swing on the big-kid swings

Picking pumpkins last weekend - he was a little intimidated
at first by all the pumpkins, but enjoyed seeing a real cat
close up.

Helping with the pizza dough. He believes in being VERY liberal
with the spices!

Mouse and Jaybird carving their own pumpkins. Bear is
"too old" for such things.

Grandma hanging out with the kids on a sunny fall day by the lake.

This afternoon we were prepping the kids for our All Saints party at church -- Bear went as Paul Miki, Mouse as Elizabeth of Portugal, and Jaybird as J8ulia Billiart. We helped them find symbols of their saints to use as hints in the "guess the saint" game. At one point, I asked Jaybird to pick something up in the bathroom, and as she did, she cheerfully said, "Well, I am going to be a saint someday."

"You think so, huh?"

"Yeah, 'cause a saint is just someone who loves God a real lot and is dead. And I think I will love God a real lot when I am grown up!"

That's the hard part, isn't it -- the loving. The dead part, not so much.