It's been almost 3 weeks since we have posted and boy have they been full! We have loved hearing from many of you- your Christmas cards are a highlight and proudly displayed in our kitchen. Thanks for keeping us in the loop with your families- we love it!
For the first time we hosted Christmas in our home and had the joy of having (most of) both of our families celebrate together. We had tons of fun (I think the adults might have enjoyed some of Ethan's presents more than he did!), laughed a lot and made some great memories.
Ethan is the only grandchild on both sides and he had TONS of presents. He loved to rip the paper off the presents and would gladly open them for anyone else who was a little too slow in opening theirs, in his opinion.
We even had a very special and unique visitor to our house on Christmas morning, don't be too jealous! :D (Video coming soon!)
This is the first Christmas that I feel like he was able to begin to grasp the significance of Christmas- both spiritually and "secularly" (is that a word?). I have mentioned before that we sing songs before bed and this season brought "Away in a Manger" to our bedtime routine. After a couple of days singing it he asked at the end, "Little Lord Jesus have pillow?" We told him no, that Jesus didn't even have a bed, but had to sleep in a pile of hay. You could watch him process that and it boggled his mind, "but I have pillow." It became his favorite song. They talked about Jesus' birth a lot in his class as well and each child even made a "Baby Jesus" to put in the manger the teachers had made. Here's Ethan in full Nativity mode with his "Little Lord Jesus"-
We tried to balance all of the presents, cookies, candy, etc. with lots of reminders and conversations about Jesus' birth. On Christmas Eve, we read the Christmas story out of the book of Luke, had a birthday cake and sang, "Happy Birthday" to Jesus- it's hard to find the most meaningful things to teach him and remind ourselves what Christmas is really about without winding up with a cliche checklist... But even in all of it, I think it's amazing the simple things that kids pick up on that we just get used to and brush over. Like the wonder that he had that Jesus came as a baby and his struggle to comprehend why Jesus wouldn't have a pillow or bed... Even though I love Christmas and really try to focus on what the root is- the miracle of the Creator becoming creation, I often lose the wonder and paradox of it all. Christmas was definitely more meaningful for us as parents this year, teaching this precious boy the TRUE meaning of Christmas.
That was our Christmas in a nutshell! There's lots more going on, inward and outward as we continue to prepare for Indonesia- like bathroom remodels so we can sell or rent our house, the beginning of a crazy process of packing/sorting everything we own and continuing to work on raising the funds we need to actually be in Indonesia in the next 8-12 months!
My kids LOVE Away in a Manger. We sing it all year long, and they both know all 3 verses. This Christmas brought more of the Christmas carols - we had to sing a new one before bed each night, and they started learning more and more of them. Of course that means I get the two-year-old humor into it, too, with renditions of "Joy to the poopy, the Lord is poopy..." with the word du jour being "poopy" of course :-)
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