We had an interesting Christmas. I sometimes feel bad because I don't do a lot for our family for Christmas. Some years I am more ambitious than others. But this year we did less. A week before Christmas I came down with a sore throat (swollen lymph nodes, really) that lingered for three weeks, so that limited how much I could do because I wasn't feeling well. Plus Ryan has been busy trying to get job applications turned in and get his presentation for the AAS conference ready, so he's been going to his office every day to work when normally he would spend more time at home over the break.
It's hard to be away from family for Christmas, and we've stayed here for all eight Christmases we've lived here. For some reason this time was hard. Maybe it was partly that we haven't visited any family since 2014 when we went to Utah, so it's been a year and a half. So in lieu of being with family I made my mom's wassail and drank a lot of it (which was helpful for my sore throat too). We also made Grammy Jenna's cheese ball twice.
On Christmas Eve we reenacted the nativity and sang Christmas carols. The kids also drew pictures for the Christmas journal (a tradition we started last year, the idea being that we can write our testimonies of Christ in it every year). I was feeling really frazzled from being sick and busy with the kids and missing my family, so I was looking towards these two traditions with a get-it-over-with attitude, but on Christmas Eve I drove past a nearby Catholic church and saw all the cars of people going to mass, and I realized that I actually did want to make our Christ-centered traditions significant, so we put more effort into the nativity and the Christmas journal and it was really special.
We tend to delay putting up the Christmas tree until later because it's stressful to deal with the kids playing with it, and this year we have a toddler again, so we weren't in a hurry to put up the Christmas tree. We finally got out the tree and lights a week before Christmas. The next morning we discovered that Kevin had been playing with the lights and he pulled one out, which meant that the first segment of lights didn't work, so the tree came in the bedroom for a day. Ryan tried to replace the broken lights and discovered that the wrong replacement lights had been put in the box, which meant that the first segment blinked while the rest didn't. My parents had several years where the lights were like that and I swore I would never have my lights like that, but at this point I have more pressing issues and I realized I didn't really care if the lights weren't the same, so we dealt with it. This was the tree's last year anyway because it was getting really scraggly (we may have made several comments about Charlie Brown's Christmas tree). Then we didn't put any ornaments on until I finally felt bad enough about it that I put them on the tree on Christmas Eve. I only got around to getting a couple of the nativity sets out, so that was kind of sad.
It took a bit of thinking to decide what to get the kids for Christmas. We already have lots of great toys that the kids play with. They each ended up getting a toy from Santa and a toy from Mom and Dad, and they got lots of books. I think I chose well because the kids have been playing with all the toys a lot. Kevin got a Marble Run set, Heidi got a doctor set, and Ann Marie got a pink teddy bear and a doll. Ann Marie carries her presents everywhere and cries real tears when she can't take them out of the house or hold them at mealtimes, so I consider that a big victory. It's been so fun. We also got some CitiBlocs from Ryan's sister Tiffany, and we've all been building with those a lot. Ryan got me a victorio strainer (so now I can finally make applesauce and tomato soup!) and a set of Rubbermaid containers, and I got him the Nausicaa Valley of the Wind boxed set. We got a lot of other nice things from family.
A couple of months ago one of my friend shared a documentary about how a lot of cocoa is produced and harvested by slaves, and Hershey's, Nestle, and Mars haven't done much to avoid using slave-produced cocoa in their products. They interviewed a man whose six-year-old son (the same age as Kevin) had been kidnapped and enslaved and still hasn't been found, and when I saw that scene I knew that I couldn't support those companies until they make sure all their chocolate is Fair Trade. I knew that I would have to change some Christmas traditions to keep that commitment because we usually have Reese's and other chocolate in our stockings for Christmas. But I found out that Aldi and Trader Joe's chocolate is fair trade (apparently Costco's chocolate chips are too), which meant that I can buy their chocolate and make my own chocolate treats. First I made Marshmallow Fudge with mint extract (it was delicious, but it never got very hard). Then I made homemade Take 5 bars based on this recipe. I used caramels instead of Rolos, but next time I'm going to make my own caramel because the caramels got too hard after being melted. I'm also going to try making a "Good as Reeses" peanut mixture next time I make Take 5 bars instead of doing the recipe's peanut butter mixture. Then for New Years I made Oreo truffles using Trader Joe's Jo-Jos, which are a lot like Oreos and about the same price (I think I actually like the Jo-Jos better). The Jo-Jo truffles are really easy: You just crush a whole package of Jo-Jos in a ziploc bag, then mix them with cream cheese in a mixer. Then you shape the mixture into balls, let them harden in the freezer, then dip them in melted chocolate. So amazing. We brought those when we went to our neighbors the Dunns' house to play games (Forbidden Desert, which was really fun) on New Year's Eve.
I realized that I can make do without my favorite candy bars. It was more work, but I was able to make a lot of chocolate treats that I liked just as much as my favorite candy bars. I probably shouldn't make this many next Christmas, though, because I ate way too much chocolate!
With kids things always seem to happen so fast and it's hard to get good pictures and enjoy the moments too, but here's what I got:
No comments:
Post a Comment