7 Quick Takes Friday - Christmas Catch-Up

one.

Genevieve was asked to be Baby Jesus for the Nativity play that the kids do during the homily at the Christmas Eve Mass.  And since "Mary" and "Joseph" were 7th graders, "Baby Jesus" was going to need a guardian angel in the form of an adult.  Which would be the only reason I would put on an altar server robe and stand up in front of 3500 people.

Yup, that's us, in the middle of the sanctuary for Christmas Eve Mass.  See all those faces up there in the balcony?  There were lots more of those all around.

She actually did lay in the manger for a few minutes, which was really sweet.  And it was worth it, since Baby Jesus' need for being close to the altar earned her whole family a reserved pew front and center, for the busiest Mass of the year.

two.

This was Genevieve's real Christmas Mass outfit:

 

Minus the little white sweater I was knitting her, that I had planned to have finished by then.  

(In my defense, Sebastian pulled my needles out halfway through the second sleeve and set me back a bit.)

(Also in my defense, it IS finished now.)

(See?)

 

 

three.

 

I implemented a new method for decorating our tree this year.  

I call it:  Let the Children Do With It What They Please and Look the Other Way When You're Tempted To Fix Anything. 

It looked like this for most of Advent:

 And then like this after pulling out the real ornaments on Christmas Eve:

I did move some ornaments from one spot in the bottom left corner, where someone (I'm guessing by the height, Sebastian) had managed to hang 47 of them in 12 square inches.  Other than that, it was theirs to have-at.  I made a little paper snowman!  I'm going to put it on the tree.  This gummy-bear garland would look so cool on the tree!  On it went.  I'm not this laid back about everything, but the kids loved it and it was one less thing for me to worry about.

four.

I'm going to use my better judgement here, and NOT post the picture of the child who interacted irresponsibly with the advent wreath and ended up with slightly shorter hair.

(You're welcome, Mr. Smith.)

five.

Along with going as a family to the evening Mass, the older boys served at Midnight Mass, and Mr. Smith went with them.  I stayed home and finished up with food/presents/stockings/baby-who-wants-to-nurse-continuously.  Christmas morning is a little bit of a blur, but it looked something like this:

My parents came later in the day, and that looked mostly the same:

six.

I thought we had gotten a decent picture of our new nativity set, but I guess not.  You can see it here, where Blake practices his piano one-handed, and Genevieve plays with her toes.

Mr. Smith bought it for me.  Mostly because he's nice to me, but partly because I didn't let a day pass without hinting about it from the time we first saw it at the store.

seven.

Fast forward to the Epiphany.  We started a couple of new, simple traditions for this feast.  

We had a star for dessert:

It's not exactly pretty, but it was really good!  It's just crescent rolls arranged like a star, with raspberry pie filling spread on top.  I used a few leftover bits of the dough to make the decorations on top, baked it, and then drizzled a powdered sugar glaze over it.

After dessert, we watched this movie as a family.

It was a wonderful Christmas season, but there is something very peaceful about Ordinary Time!

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