Entering the Christmas Season

Christmas started the weekend after Thanksgiving. (Well, I had draped lights above the windows in mid-November, ... and started occasionally turning on Christmas music, but it started in full the day after Thanksgiving.) 

We put up Christmas decorations and went with most of the kids to some downtown-Logan Christmas events. (Chalk coloring, a little Christmassy famers-type market, Charlie Brown Christmas at the old theater, etc.) Ice-skaters were happily circling around the outdoor rink, a band was playing and singing Christmas songs, and about every fifth car driving along main street seemed to have a Christmas tree tied to their roof or hanging out of the bed of their truck. And I made everyone stop quickly for a group photo:

Only afterwards did I realize the sign we were happily and excitedly posing under. Haha.

We also had Anders' and Mette's first piano recital at the old Mendon Station. Lots of Christmas songs. (Somehow we've been out of music lessons for several years. Well, that's not totally true. Penny has had some voice and guitar lessons. But covid hit as our older kids were sort of outgrowing lessons anyway. And then we just got busy, and there were lots of needy tiny people demanding most of my focus, and then we moved and didn't know who or where the good teachers were anymore, ... and suddenly it had been four years. But! Summer is learning violin in orchestra now and we've stuck Mette and Anders in piano with a sweet lady in Mendon. And, while it's a bit of a pain to enforce practicing, it's nice to see [hear] kids developing musical talents again!)

Last night was our ward Christmas party. A nativity in the barn of a couple in the ward. My teenagers had been to the barn for nearly all of the last three or four youth activities--spreading straw across the floor, setting up, practicing their parts, etc. (Poor Jesse needing his inhaler and Benadryl every time!)  They assured me, when I wondered how the entire ward could fit in a barn, that that would not be an issue. And they were right! It was enormous! With hay bales set up everywhere for seating. (That alone would have been a huge task!) There was stage-style lighting, and heat, and a stable, and, of course, a camel!) A Christmas party in the Tolman's barn is a memorable thing indeed. It makes me a little sad that we will be in a different ward next year!

Mary arriving on her donkey.

Mette and Hans were across from us sitting up there somewhere where they'd clambered to join friends.

Penny in the angel choir. (Third from the left on the top row.) (I didn't know any of those girls last year! Now, thanks to girls' camp, I know every last one of them by name.)

Anders as a shepherd. (The one at the back.)

The camel!

(Note. You've rarely heard anything louder than a braying donkey in a closed barn. Haha.)

Moving on.

It took us longer than usual to get a tree, but we loaded up this morning and drove to a local tree lot. It's actually in the backyard of someone's home. It looks like the cheeriest family business you could possibly have. Trees being set up on metal stands all over the back, evergreen garlands and wreaths sold by the foot, smaller trees stuck in red buckets full of rocks, the occasional sound of a chainsaw cutting the base off of a tree, and the smell of pine everywhere. (Other trees don't have much by way of smell. Why are evergreens so wonderful? I almost had to dash back into the rows of trees just to breathe it all in one more time before we left.)

I miss getting an enormous tree like we would every other year at the Pleasant View house. (We can barely fit a tree at all in the rental.) But we will have huge ones again at the new house (maybe maybe next Christmas even ... fingers crossed), and, in the meantime, it's kind of nice to not have the lights and red beads be quite such a task! (I really need to get one of the other kids to take over that job!) Here it is--lighted up and ready for the kids to decorate just as soon as the boys get back from pounding in our official address street sign at the farm! (Another requirement before you can build. There's no house, but still, ... fun to have an official address. I suppose I could even order a package to be delivered to the farm. They could just ... drop it off by the metal signpost.)

I like that our tree ends up a hodgepodge of Mike's childhood, mine and our kids'. The red beads were the ones my mom used every year on our childhood Christmas trees. And we have little bows, red balls and knit (crocheted??) Santas, snowmen and carolers from Mike's childhood tree decorations. And of course we now have a host of ornaments we've picked up here and there and that our kids have made over the years. Fun and happy to look at a tree and feel so nostalgic.

The girls have just turned on David Tolk's Good King Wenceslas, and ... if I could just finish up the shopping (still quite a lot to do there!) and get Goldie's Christmas package mailed, it would feel like we could just read Christmas books and watch Christmas movies without a care in the world until the 25th. As it is ... there are still a fair number of cares. Ha. But good to be in the holiday season all the same!