A friendly reminder to myself - in my silly, injured state (cut my thumb doing chores and now have five stitches and a non-workable thumb) - and to all the mama friends trying to make Christmas magical for their families.. don't be a Grinch in the process.

Slow down. Take a breath. Maybe five minutes. Turn off the lights and stare at the Christmas tree. Kiss your husband (maybe twice). Remember the last funny thing your child(ren) did. Laugh out loud. Drink some tea. Forget about the commercials and self-induced anxiety of too-high expectations.

“Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before! What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store. What if Christmas...perhaps...means a little bit more!”
― Dr. Seuss, How the Grinch Stole Christmas!      

Welcome back, Naomi. It’s been so long, Naomi. What have you been doing, Naomi?

Actually, I have a funny little quirk about people who spend more time apologizing for not blogging than they actually spend blogging. Blog-writing is a luxury – not a right, and I am resolving in 2014 to treat it as such. Blogging because I want to share my life with friends and family, not blogging because I want to maintain a certain image or gain a following… because really, my life is a little too polarizing, a little too boring, a little too common-quiet-homelife-not-glamorous to gain a following. I am certainly okay with that.

Our life ebbs and flows to the schedule of Penn State University. I wouldn’t go so far to say that it revolves around PSU (as it does for many Penn State football fans. hehe), but for sure, the seasons of our year are strictly defined by the college schedule. We push through the deep mire of mid-terms and spend the evenings surrounded by textbooks and math scribbles and lab reports. The truth is that Brandon presses through and I spend my free moments picking him up from class and packing lots of food to get us through the day – because he has to work late, so we pack both lunches and dinners. Makes for some long food prep at night, but that’s what this season demands so we both work to make it through the season. By the end of the semester, we are tired and feeling more than a little deprived of rest. We are always grateful for Sundays – the one day of our week that is sacred. Set apart. For rest and for worship and for time spent with each other, but in the deep dark semester nights, I long for those Jewish festivals that no one celebrates anymore… for Sabbath weeks! Yes, days upon days of rest and feasting. Doesn’t that sound amazing? Really, really amazing. The closest we get to such things is Christmastime. The semester breaks just in time for us to come to a crashing halt from our daily life and rest and worship and spend time with each other.

Oh Christmastime.

Christmastime for us is always bittersweet. In the sugary-sweet-Hallmark movie times, I am constantly reminded of the loss we suffer. Because of the estrangement from our family (due to the church that he grew up in), Christmas is the time that I am most aware of the family traditions that I am not apart of, that I have never (formally) met Brandon’s parents, that we are excluded from those family gatherings, that I should have friendships with my mother-in-law and sis-in-law, that there is a little nephew that I’ve never met, that those silly-awkward-funny family jokes I only hear about when Brandon is in a reminiscing mood. Don’t get me wrong, folks – I’m not complaining. We all have our own trials in this life – our own crosses to bear. I do not think that our particular trial is the worst of all. I’m just saying – Christmas is when it hurts the most. Christmas is when I cry for grace the most. Christmas is when I think about forgiveness daily.

This year was especially painful because of the recent loss of my uncle. My dear aunt and cousins travelled to Pennsylvania to spend Christmas with us, and it was a sweet, fun, happy and sad time—all rolled into one. And Brandon and I spent even more time than normal up ‘on the mountain’ (our silly little phrase that refers to my parents’ home on the top of a mountain). Family Christmas dinners and slow Christmas days and get-togethers.

Christmas gifts time – we are ALWAYS happy to get coffee, especially when my parents bring it back from a business/vacation trip in Costa Rica!
Little nieces received prairie dresses for dressup! – also love the golden retriever photo-bombing. (note: no face shots in respect for hiding little kids’ identities on my blog)

Puzzle time!

My cousin, Michelle, handcrafted these amazing dolls for each of the little nieces. I was in awe. And so were the little girlies!



Even the boxes were specially handcrafted!

Speaking of hand-crafted, I “made” one gift for a family women’s gift exchange and my sister was happy to end up with it. Naomi’s tea-time recipes cookbook! Because I like tea-time and making food to go with tea-time and taking pictures of such things, so it made sense to create my own little cookbook.

Our times together were filled with eating (of course), winter-walking (a.k.a. hiking – which I did not participate in, but Brandon had fun!), Apples-to-Apples playing, fireside chatting, tea-drinking, and in typical family fashion – Christmas carol singing!

And because it’s so rare that my siblings and I are all together and forced into taking a picture, here ya go!

So that’s the extended family portion of Christmas.
Brandon and I’s own little family Christmas was much quieter. It’s always much quieter in our house, since the only small being residing in our house is a kitty. He only meows when he’s hungry or when he just wants to be annoying. For real. Most of the time, he just moves around the house doing this:

Caspian the Kitty experiences Christmas holiday rest all year ‘round. (*shaking my head at cats*). At least he’s not crowding baby Jesus anymore (see instagram for photos).



We read the Christmas story by the twinkling lights of the Christmas tree, munched on appetizers on Christmas Eve (always with cheese – everything wonderful includes cheese or chocolate), and spent long hours in conversation or reading. We joked about the emptyness of our Christmas stocking. We opened no gifts on Christmas morning because we had done our Christmas shopping early and were already using/wearing our gifts… new Old Testament commentaries for Brandon and new black leather knee-high boots for me! But Christmas was filled with happiness and joy and enough precious words that we didn’t feel deprived in the least.

I am blessed. Incredibly, amazingly blessed.

Blessed by life and love and God’s gift of joy that endures through hardship, through long semesters, through family estrangement, through emotional losses, through financial lack and financial blessing, through change, through cold winters and dark nights and tough workdays, through misunderstandings and intentional woundings, through pain and suffering, through simple pleasures and the intricate web of God’s provision, through difficulty and desire, through mountains and valleys, through magnificient strength and utter weakness, through all these things, I do not ever doubt this one truth:
Our God is faithful.

And Christmas 2013 was a perfect time to reflect on God’s faithfulness.
Merry Belated Christmas from us.

We partied hard last weekend. And by “partied hard,” I mean that we stayed home and Brandon studied and I don’t even remember what I did. This is why I should blog more – so that I remember stuff. Actually, did you know that your brain is conditioned to forget things that you take iphone pics of? Yup, it’s true! That’s why your iPhone dying without being backed up is a modern tragedy. Except… now I can’t remember where I read that. (lame)

Moving on. It was our last weekend before finals. The weekend of the first great PA snowstorm! And the weekend of our church Christmas party! AHHHHHHH.

In our church, we have an unspoken {slightly funny} rule. If you make a suggestion, you get to plan it. If you want there to be a Christmas party and nobody else has volunteered to be the general-manager, guess what, kid? You’re it. And by “you’re it,” I mean that “I’m it.” Because I love Christmas parties, it’s the 2nd year in a row that I was the point-person on the church Christmas party. Don’t go and get super-impressed – we go to a small church in a small town. It ain’t no thang. We’re simple folks who aren’t about huge pageants and plays and events and expensive costumes. We basically like Christmas carols and fellowship and the Bible.
The complicating factor of all this is the snowstorm that I was talking about. We watch the weather here and sometimes church is cancelled. I think we’re all a little more wary of the weather since that time when an ice storm hit on Sunday morning and the unfortunate few who were at church early got to slide down the hill in their cars and into oncoming traffic. Including me! It’s only by the grace of God that we didn’t die. It’s a memory that’s burned in our heads and now we’re like, Is church cancelled yet? HOW ‘BOUT NOW?
So yeah, our Sunday morning service was postponed to an afternoon service (giving the roads a chance to clear off) and our church Christmas party would follow. Except our grand scheme of decorating on Saturday afternoon was scrapped as we all stayed tucked in our houses (I wrote out Christmas cards! YES!). But still…. look at those cool decorations! I didn’t do that. That was all Miss Margie ‘s inspiration. She rocks it out when it comes to crafty things.

Note: Wrapping paper makes cheap and awesome table runners. :D
Also, fake snow is my faaaaavorite.
So the Christmas party commenced with carol singing and little children playing the piano and the Sunday School teacher (Miss Bridgette) reading aloud a Christmas book while children looked completely fascinated – I will never fail to be thrilled with the look on children’s faces when someone is reading aloud to them. It’s wonder and awe and joy!! There was a child reading aloud a Christmas prayer, a homily and the reading aloud of the Christmas story.

We ended with singing Christmas carols. It was supposed to be a candlelight service, but last year we discovered that our building’s smoke detectors are sensitive to candlelight and also, they are interconnected. Meaning, you can’t turn them off… So much for ambiance. Our mishaps this year included the wrong wording on one of the transparencies so I sang one thing and the congregation sang another (oops) and then my music fell down in the middle of the last song. I can ‘wing’ it on the piano for a lot of worship songs, but Christmas music requires much concentration and the aid of my chord sheets. Needless to say, we ended a few verses early (though I’m not sure that anyone knew that!).
I was happy as a clam with our simple Christmas service. Also, happy as a clam to carry around little nieces and engage in happy conversation with my friends and family. Fellowship is a precious thing and it’s one of my favorite parts of the Christmas season. I can’t imagine not having a church Christmas party. Christmas always seems to be about family, and it’s nice to take time to celebrate with our family-in-Christ.