One Clark Griswald sized Christmas tree that is beautiful but way too big for our small house…check!
One fire roaring in the fireplace (If you are like us and cannot afford to buy more wood, feel free to burn wood scraps from your shop as seen here)…check!
Old school Christmas music crackling on the record player…check!
Three mugs of hot chocolate with extra whipping cream…check!
One little urchin who is up way too late for Christmas tree decoration…
and who is ready and willing to shatter anything in her grasp…check!
One little elf who is so excited about her hot chocolate that she is acting intoxicated…
but is also very willing and able to help…check!
One beautiful tree…
With the flash off for effect…check!
Merry Merry!
Today is my Mom’s fiftieth birthday. I know she is having a big party somewhere, I just wish it were here. That phrase, the title of this blog, was one of Mom’s favorites. Her love language was gift giving, and she did LOVE a present. Big or small. Thoughtful or if it just “looked like her.” It didn’t matter as long as it was a surprise. While this may sound a little…greedy or something, the saving grace is that she enjoyed giving presents even more than she liked receiving them. She used to go Christmas shopping for her four girls with a TAPE measure. Can you imagine looking beside you in Banana Republic and seeing a little blond woman with a tape measure, stretching it across a pair of pants and eyeing every inch for possible defects? She didn’t care if she looked nuts, it was a gift she was buying and she wanted it to fit perfectly.
Almost every time we saw her over the first two years of Pace’s life, she had a gift for her. I can see her, standing at my door, her face in a big grin and her hands behind her back, gripping the surprise she was about to lay in my lap. She loved to see little Pace, wearing sweet outfits…that she knew I couldn’t afford. She loved to see her playing with the toy she had labored over picking out. She just loved joy, and that was what gift giving brought her. Since she has been gone, I discovered a few gifts she had bought for Pace and stored away in a closet for the time when they would fit her. It has been a way I’ve kept her alive with Pace…pulling a gift from the closet and saying, “You know who got this for you?!!!” and then hearing her squeal, “Bebe!!” Or, as I dress Mary Aplin in all the sweet little dresses that used to be Pace’s and saying, “Pace, Bebe bought this for you when you were a little baby, and look, now Mary Aplin gets to wear her love too.”
The dress that Pace is wearing in these pictures is the last gift from the closet… She wore it to church on Sunday and then I let her wear it while we both cuddled up in my bed for her nap. As I lay there and felt her soft, warm body crumpled up next to mine, as I watched her rosebud lips pursed in slumber and heavy lashes laying on her cheek, as I looked at this little pink dress draping her now 3-year-old body, it made me hurt to think that Mom would never get to see what this present looked like on her little Pace. But, it gave me joy to think of her eyes and her hands, pouring over all the dresses in the store until she decided on this one and to imagine the warmth of her hands just having left the fabric. I felt a peace come over me that she can see how Pace has grown and how sweet she looks in her present.
Happy birthday Mom…
Since Jeremiah was on call/at the hospital all night last night…since he still wasn’t coming home in the foreseeable future…I decided we girls needed to do something to make us feel like it was SATURDAY and not just another day of the week. So, I wore this (recognize it Mal? :))
And these (I would HIGHLY recommend you adding a pair of these Ugg bedroom slippers to your wish list this Christmas. John David’s Mom gave us all–four sisters–a pair for Christmas last year and I have hardly taken them off these chilly months)
Oh how the sugar and coffee brought joy and energy to my morning! Then, I did the only thing one can do with two sugar-loaded, sticky children–I put them in here:
While they were playing happily in there, I did a little of this (can you tell I’m sitting on the commode…but don’t worry the lid is down):
And my favorite verse was this:
In case you couldn’t read that, it’s John 14:21 “Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him.”
I was enjoying my little devotion so much that the girls soaked a little longer than normal–leaving twenty tiny fingers and twenty tiny toes looking a lot like this:
So, we dried off and dressed in some comfy, cozy outfits:
Because the rest of our Saturday held this–Christmas decorations (I know it’s too early. I know you are supposed to wait until after Thanksgiving. But I know I’m about to go out of town and won’t be back until after turkey day. And then there are blogs like this, from my friend Kellie, who have made me feel like I’m behind if it’s the day after Halloween and I haven’t even taken the first step to prepare for Christmas :))!!!! Are you all impressed by the sheer organization? Kellie, I know you’re horrified and want to come over and help me make things right 🙂
Anyway, all those decorations had to be carried up from here–the scary crematorium (Our house used to burn coal before it had central heat and air, and this was the coal room. I lovingly named it the Crematorium long ago–feeling sure that people must have died in there since it is so frightful.)
And then all those decorations had to travel up these, by way of my sorry arms and legs:
Jeremiah did manage to make it home sometime during that hub-bub, but he looked like this:
After spending all night in the OR fixing some crack-heads (literally) who were running from the cops and ended up having a head-on collision with them. SO all he wanted to do was get in here:
We let him. Lord knows he needed it, and we were having a pretty nice little Saturday all on our own. 