December to Remember

 Boy was December a whirlwind, with lots of memorable happenings.  

The weekend we got back from Thanksgiving, we began decorating for Christmas.  I was so happy to get a few moments of everyone putting ornaments on the tree to the sounds of Christmas records playing in the background.  Ahhhh.

Then we had our traditional family split for the first Sunday in December, as half of us go to the Hillsborough parade and half to the Hunger Games lacrosse tournament in Kernersville.  This year, Julia got to cheer in the parade, just having made the winter team a few days prior.  It was a warm-ish evening to sit and watch and we enjoyed hanging with some Moores and Bakers, cheering on the Running of the Elves, looking for folks we knew in the parade and finding friends in the crowd of spectators.  The boys had a great tournament with Matt there to cheer them on and help, then had a nice dinner out with some lacrosse people.

Next up was Allie's holiday concert, which is always super cute.  This year, we had asked that Allie not be stuck behind someone tall and it turns out they decided to arrange everyone in height order to avoid that.  Allie brought up the rear as they marched down the side to the stage.  She did a lot of singing, a fair amount of chatting, and plenty of watching to make sure she didn't miss a thing up there on stage.  Maddox sweetly waited for Allie to rejoin us so he could give her a little tree.

Meanwhile, I had subbed for my teacher that day (planned) only to learn at the concert that she wasn't feeling well and would be out again the next day.  She ended up out the whole week and it was such a blur, as I had to get the kids' final projects done without her and do a whole lot of improvising.  I didn't sleep much, just trying to keep everything in my head to do a good job, plus manage everything at home, but we got it done.  

Not pictured: a few days after Allie's concert, the girls and I went to the OHS chorus concert, which was really cute, though a little stressful getting there, as Julia had her first basketball game to cheer for which went longer than I planned for and though we arrived to the concert just in time, I forgot my cash at home and had to call in to Robyn in the audience to bring some out so we could get in!  Rush, rush, rush was the name of the game that week.

Friday was a particularly hectic day, as I needed to leave school at lunch to join in the lacrosse "signing day" festivities at the high school.  It was so nice to see many students and some staff come out to support Joshua and his friends and really sweet to have him do this with some of his closest friends for many years.  

Somewhere in that week, both girls got to celebrate a friend's birthday too and every Monday the boys had box lacrosse games, plus sports practices most weekdays.  It was hard to fit in our usual one celebration a day, so often the weekdays were sparse and the weekends packed.

Events for that weekend:

Habitat build with some church friends.

Watching Gray in his first winter track meet, which happened to be a couple minutes from the Habitat location.  He started out strong and finished strong!  He really looked great out there and I think he felt good about his first time with the 500.

We finished that night with a visit from Sawyer and a walk through the neighborhood to see lights with friends.

On Sunday, Allie participated in one of my favorite songs for Christmas- Welcome to Our World; we had our "blessing day" where we do things to bless each other at home (for me, that meant doing a lot of people's laundry!), and we finished the night with one of my favorite traditions: the Christingle.  (Thanks, London family!)

My last week of school passed in a mess of tissues and "sleeping" in the recliner, as I came down with a cold.  I managed to push through and do all the usual things, plus I suppose we did some Christmas traditions too, though it's all a little fuzzy.  We did have our last community group meeting at our house and spent much of it singing Christmas songs, which was a nice time, though Julia and Matt missed most of it due to her band concert. 

Somewhere in there I also was getting labs done because of some abnormal liver results, and trying to shake what I thought was a weeks-long case of a UTI, which may be something chronic.  And we got news that our proposed closing date of Dec 15th wouldn't happen due to our buyer's contract on her house falling through.  I really felt like a mess there for awhile.  But thankfully, Jesus meets me in my mess.  Every week of advent, I had my Bible Study girls over to do a special Christmas study.  Keeping up with the workbook each day was so helpful in orienting me rightly when everything felt wrong.  I made it through the last week of school and was reminded again how much I love being in a school during the Christmas season.  There is so much joy and excitement and this year I was particularly thankful because my class is so sweet. 

Friday night, our church had a really nice Christmas party in Chapel Hill.  We ate, talked, and played games.  It felt a little odd to me because Matt and the boys left early due to getting last minute free tickets to a hockey game, so I ended up "stag" for a lot of the party.  Allie played ping pong with Ava for the group game time and Julia joined the little girls, so I was in a group with one couple and several other folks who were either single or without their spouse for the night.  It was fun though.  And the boys loved their hockey game with teammates.

The next day was quite full, with the girls and I going to see Addie and Katelyn in the Nutcracker on Ice, then having the Stewarts over for cookies and ornaments, then our family heading to Chickfila and Target for the kids to buy each other gifts.  As always, some of us took longer to decide on gifts than others.  There was a little more spending this year, with the boys having been gainfully employed awhile now and Julia getting some babysitting/dogsitting money here and there.  Gray was especially generous to pick out a lego car set for Joshua.  We later learned he came upon Joshua studying it at the store while everyone had split ways and Gray just grabbed in and put it in the cart...so no surprise there.  Also, no wrapping since Gray remembered halfway through Christmas morning that he still had the gift on his desk in the Target bag.  Oh well, it's the [initial] thought that counts.

The kids had two days of school before break, but I got to be home.  I enjoyed a day to do some special things- deliver gifts to the Head Start program that our church supports, have tea out with Lisa, and wrap gifts with Jeannie.  Jeannie brought over her 4 gifts she needed to wrap and then helped me wrap half of my gargantuan pile.  I was happy to get time with her since they would be gone to London for Christmas.

We always love our adoption group Christmas party and this year was no exception.  We gathered at the Mussers for good food and a relaxing time to talk to these good friends we've lived life with for many years now.  We had a 12 days of Christmas activity where young and old were paired to make an ornament, then we did another fun game where teams competed to get themselves in a particular order, and then we finished by doing our white elephant gift exchange a fun dice-rolling way.

A new tradition this year was a lego gingerbread house competition.  

It took several days for some to finish, but turned out cute and each one unique.

We made sugar cookies, of course.  And as usual, not everyone managed to decorate theirs the first night.  And many went uneaten.  I don't remember this happening when I was a kid but the boys especially tend to drag it out.

Somewhere in this week, we also went to several dentist/doctor appointments, which feels like a good choice to not miss school, but is never fun when you're trying to relax/celebrate the holidays.  Also not pictured, an epic game night that ended up spread over two nights as it involved teams of two in our family competing in 5 different games of various types.  Julia is not much for games generally and was especially not thrilled with playing pool, but ended up making the winning shot to push her and Joshua to an overall tournament victory.

We enjoyed going to Jackson's graduation party.  They had some speeches, really nice video, and lots of friends and food.  I was so happy to get to see an old friend from our small group at CGS.  What a sweet person she is and it was good to catch up and see her kids, who apparently now spend a lot of time with Jack.

Sadly, Cindy got COVID so we went to their church Christmas show at DPAC without them.

We did our traditional candy cane hunt, but outside this time and the result was the same-- there were a couple of candy canes that could never be found.  Everyone blames me and they are probably right.

On Christmas Eve, Matt had to work, but Mimi and GrandGene joined us for our church service and Mimi brought some handmade ornaments for the kids.

Christmas breakfast...always a hit!

We also read some of "Mary's First Christmas".  Though we started our Jesse tree devotions 4 days early, we didn't even make it day 10.  We didn't read many Christmas stories and I forgot to start the Mary one till Christmas Eve, so we didn't finish it because it's so long.  We didn't watch The Very First Noel, which we've done every year for years, because I got an app that we could watch Veggietales on and the boys were really into watching some of their childhood favorites.  But Christmas still came.  We still celebrated and we still didn't do Jesus justice, but can we ever?  I did find myself thinking during some of the songs at church over the season, the contrast of so few people giving him worship at his birth, aside from the praise of the angels, with the many, many singing to him every year now.  It's not enough but I think one day we'll really know what it is to give him the glory that he is due.

After breakfast, we opened lots of gifts.

Mimi and GG with gifts from the Moores.  Mimi, we are waiting to see that purple hair dye in action.  GrandGene, we'll let you keep those long johns for your eyes only. :)

Allie was most thrilled with her converse and flair jeans.

Julia loved her new Hydroflask that I was able to get engraved with her name.  Hopefully she doesn't lose this one!  She also liked her converse, speaker, airpods, and other gifts.

Joshua with the lacrosse head he picked out.

Gray spent much of the day working on this stocking stuffer- a crazy rubix cube.

Matt got some stuff for his truck.

Joshua drew Allie's name and was sweet to make her a treasure hunt where each little gift was hidden with a sticky note clue for the next gift.

The kids are getting so big that their pictures in front of the tree almost completely eclipse the tree.  :)

The afternoon was spent with everyone busy with their legos or games. We finished the night with steak dinner and games.

Not pictured: the day after Christmas was rainy and we decided to go see The Boys in the Boat in Chapel Hill.  It took us two tries due to the intended show selling out, but in the end, we were so glad we went and everyone enjoyed it so much that no one even fell asleep in those comfortable Silver Spot seats.

On the 27th, Mimi and GrandGene gave Julia some birthday gifts and headed with the boys to Florida, which turned out to be an 11 hour trip!

In the meantime, the girls and I readied the loft for Julia's party with her school friends.  She meant for it to be a movie-watching party, but they quickly abandoned that idea and turned to line dancing and other silly things that had them all squealing and laughing.  I don't even want to know!  She had a great time and I'm happy for her.  Middle school girls can be so mean and friendships are often so full of drama. It was refreshing for her to have a party with a big group of girls who had nothing but fun together.  

By 10:00am the 28th, Joshua was sending us fish-catching pics.  

After fishing, they headed to the Pop Tart bowl to sadly watch State lose.  

Meanwhile, Allie, Matt, and I drove to Roxboro to sign the closing papers on the Roxboro house.  The buyer had thankfully found a back up offer to the first one and they were ready to close quickly.

On the way home, we dropped a house-warming gift on the porch and thankfully said goodbye to this property where we all (but mostly Matt) poured in a whole lot of blood, sweat, and tears this year.  Thank you, LORD, that this project is complete!!

Julia opened her gifts from us a day early and loved this Taylor Swift album.  The celebrations for her continued, with a trip to the mall accompanied by Cindy and Addie.