It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like You-Know-What

It's that time of year again...that time when everything happens at once, and the holidays press down on me and my free time is either sporadic or non-existent. Just the way the blog has been lately! But at least I have time to put up a few pictures and say a few words before Christmas is upon us all.

As Burl-Ives-as-a-snowman said in the Rudolph animated special, "Ah, how I love this Christmas-y time of year." The kids are happy; the music is great; the lights on all the houses are beautiful (the picture above is just one lovely example from our neighborhood); the food is delicious. The flip-side to all this, of course, is the steadily building stress as you desperately try to check off everything on your holiday to-do list.

Luckily, I've managed to avoid getting too swamped this year. Most of our family's holiday shopping for 2014 was done by the end of Black Friday. I'm starting to actually like shopping on Black Friday (not the crazy midnight sales, just the daytime sales). True, it can be a long, tiring day, but it is a great relief to me when the presents are bought and accounted for before all the other holiday-related activities really start to accumulate. Having most (or all) of the shopping done early helps me enjoy the other events and traditions a lot more.

I spent most of the first week of December shopping, shipping, and wrapping. Luckily, everybody mostly stayed out of my way so I could accomplish these tasks with a minimum of fuss. With the girls' help, I also managed to get up most of the Christmas decorations just after Thanksgiving weekend. However, we waited another week or so to get our tree:

Lorelai (not pictured in her entirety) was able to lift it up herself; apparently, that made the tree worth purchasing.

 

In the future, I may not want to use that as our primary criteria for buying a tree; it actually ended up being a little scrawny (many of our ornaments stayed in storage, since there was no room for them on this smaller tree!). In addition, there was a large obvious bare patch on the tree that we had to endeavor to hide. Plus, a lot of the branches were already missing a bunch of needles. Can you tell this was not my favorite Christmas tree selection ever?

But the girls loved it anyway, and oohed and aahed over it as we set it up and started covering it with our lights, our ornaments, and our love.

And wouldn't you know it, once that little tree was all dressed up, it looked gorgeous after all! I guess the Christmas spirit can infuse objects with unexpected beauty and radiance.

I was reminded of Linus in The Charlie Brown Christmas Special, when he said that Charlie Brown's beleaguered little tree "just needs a little love." It's amazing what a little love can do, and how much it can beautify your living room (and the smell doesn't hurt, either!)

On December 6, we were invited to our friends the Nielsen's annual ugly sweater Christmas party. We have been attending for three years now and we always have a wonderful time. It is great to see how creative so many people can be with their wardrobes.

Here are our friends the Robinsons, with their matching "Christmas tree" sweaters; I liked the presents on their feet!

 Nathan and I didn't win any ugly sweater awards, but we had a great time anyway, visiting with friends and eating delicious food and having a white elephant gift exchange (for the record, we received a cactus-shaped pinata; I'm still trying to decide what we should do with it!).

Nathan's looking pretty fetching in his old-lady sweater, don't you think?

Here was my personal contribution to the refreshments:

This is a pumpkin pie cheesecake with a gingersnap crust and toffee bits and whipped cream on top. It was incredibly delicious, but also incredibly rich. Unfortunately, it didn't all get eaten. Fortunately, we had friends and family and missionaries help us finish it off throughout the following week.

After eating a slice (and lots of other junk besides), I had to take a late-night walk after the sweater party to work off my huge caloric intake. It had been really fun to laugh and goof off with friends, and enjoy the lighthearted side of Christmas. However, walking around the quiet neighborhood, looking at the beautiful lights and listening to soft Christmas carols on my radio, reminded me of the night in Bethlehem when the Savior of the world was born. It was nice to take some peaceful alone time and reflect on what Christmas is really celebrating, and why it is important to remember the Savior in our celebrating. I am always grateful for that reminder, no matter the occasion. Even though the rest of our holiday season is still quite hectic (as you'll see in future blog posts), my quiet walk in the night will be one of my fondest memories of the Christmas season of 2014, for the wonderful spirit I felt at the time.

Our family letter is coming up soon, as well as more December news. Wow, the year's almost done!