Christmas in June

June 15, 2015

Christmas in June

Catch Up…Not that anyone wants to think about winter

As always, I am all about good intentions. I wanted to post about our family Christmas and that obviously didn’t happen. Before the memory of it is completely lost, I thought I’d put something down. If the photos of snow are just too painful to look at, just scroll past… I get it. Why think about the white stuff when it is FINALLY green and warm outside?

Every Christmas Jake and I lament that we would like to do something different. And every year we do all the exact same things. And while they are good things, and fun things, they always leave us with that all-too-familiar slightly hollow feeling. Determined to make a change, we decided to head up to “the cabin.” (It belongs to a family friend who so graciously lets us use it time and again)

So about a week before Christmas we headed up there. It is about four hours north in Fifield, WI. Jake’s parents-Mana and Papa- and my mom-Grammy- joined us. Before they got there, the four of us went out on the land and cut a small “Charlie Brown” tree. We sat by the fireplace and watched Christmas movies and made ornaments for it. We strung Christmas lights around in the main part of the cabin.

Jake and I have been up to the cabin a number of times, but this was a first for the kids. They absolutely loved it! They got busy playing and exploring and making Christmas decorations which they taped up all over the place. Ayla unfortunately had a pretty bad cold, so she relished the couch by the fireplace and constant stream of Christmas movies. She embraced the concept of “relaxing” (maybe for the first time in her life ever)

The cabin is on the Sailor Creek flowage. We spent a lot of time out on the frozen flowage playing in the snow. That was especially fun and Christmas-Spirit inducing because there was ZERO snow around here.

When the Grandparents joined us, we had a “Christmas Day”-opening presents, eating Christmas cookies and even made a nice Christmas Dinner! Zeke got all the Minion stuff a kid could want and Ayla got a Nintendo 3DS.

The last day we were there (all the grandparents left a day before us) it snowed big fat, fluffy Christmas snow all day. We spent hours out in it making a snowman, having a snowball fight, and trudging through the snowy woods. It was amazing.

We headed back knowing this all was just what the doctor ordered. The rest of Christmas was just a bonus. Ayla was Mary in the Christmas pageant at Church on Christmas Eve. Zeke was one of three insanely cute shepherds.

I have to say that out real Christmas morning was just like it should be. I think the kids have finally reached the age where they can truly anticipate and embrace it with full childlike enthusiasm! We were up before dawn and in full play-with-all-my-new-stuff mode by 8am. We watched movies, we ate cookies. We listened to the Charlie Brown Christmas sound track for the one millionth time. It was awesome. I am thankful.

Oh yeah, one more thing I meant to put down. We are a very musical family. At any point in a day you could walk around our house and hear four people humming four different songs in four different rooms. ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’ was the song that kept being sung around our house this Christmas season. (I’m sure that was because it is the end song on the Charlie Brown Christmas Special which we only watched 184 times) The kids don’t know all the words but I heard some great made up lines I’d like to share.

During the part of the song where you sing, “Join the triumph on the skies,” I heard “Join the Lord with blubs and Kyle” and “Join the tribal of the tribe.”

And at the part of it where you sing, “With angelic hosts proclaim,” I heard, “Come and sing the sing song now.” Ha! My kids are awesome.