Christmas 2011

You know that panic you get when you accidentally put a new file folder somewhere strange on your computer and you get worried for a moment that you may have lost 100s of photos because you weren’t paying attention…. that just happened to me. Luckily, I found the Christmas photos. Whew.

 

Don’t tell me you are already sick of all the beach photos I post on here. Too bad. What did you expect when we moved to Maui?!

Anyway, here’s Ana on a paddle board on Christmas Eve. Our friends invited us to join their traditional Christmas Eve at the beach get together, and we were happy to go. (Even if it hadn’t been Christmas Eve, we badly needed a break from our daily attack on the new house.)

As luck would have it, some of our neighbor friends from Sequim called us the day before and told us they were on Maui and wanted us to come see them in Lahaina. We invited them to come paddle boarding at the same beach that our local friends had invited us to and whala! it was a big ole’ party.

 

Poem is really becoming a little toddler. She really adores her beach time (and all of our friends who cuddle her and play with her). She has also begun climbing on to every beached surf board or paddle board she finds and testing her balance… it’s pretty cute. She thinks she’s a surfer already.

 

Cam and his friend Ethan. Cam still sticks to the boogie board, even when his friends are surfing. He has been getting much better on the skateboard though, so I’m sure he’ll try surfing someday.

 

Elsie and her friend Sophie. I really think they are the two blondest girls on Maui. (I could make a blond joke here, but she’s my daughter, so I better refrain.)

 

Ana and her friend GraceThey are wearing shells on their chins in the photo on the left. We had Grace’s family up to our house for Christmas dinner and then they hosted us for dinner this week and had Ana spend a few days with them in their fantastic condo on the beach in Lahaina. Lucky Ana! Actually, we were all so lucky to have them come visit. We really enjoy their family and had really missed them since we left Sequim.

So Christmas Eve wasn’t totally traditional for us, but it sure was fun! We got home somewhat late from the beach (especially because we saw humpback whales jumping out in the water on our drive back home… they must have been trying to get Santa’s attention), so we just read our last few  Christmas books, including The Nativity story, let the kids open one small gift, and sent them to bed. Jonah and I were pooped and fell asleep immediately.

 

Lucky for us, Santa found our house and the kids sang carols in their room to wake us up at 8 am so they could go see the goodies. The youngest kid gets to go first, so little Po waddled out into the room and found all the other kids’ presents…. Santa didn’t actually bring her anything of her own, but she didn’t notice.

 

Elsie was a little miffed that Santa didn’t get her the one little specific present she had asked for (explained exactly in person and by letter to Santa about twelve times: “the Barbie Ariel [mermaid] doll with the pink mimi covers [bikini] and the sparkely pink tale and with a little pink sparkely dolphin too”) because Santa said someone else had already bought it for her for her birthday, but I also wonder if Santa went to Walmart too late and they were sold out, but then when he had figured out something else to get her instead, they got that present back in stock but Mrs. Claus had relayed the wrong message to Mr. Claus and he didn’t get the original present. Mr. Claus was mad that Mrs. Claus was being so flakey about the one little present Elsie had asked for, but Mrs. Claus had already got the other present and didn’t understand what Mr. Claus was trying to explain to her during the noisy cell phone call from Walmart and just wanted him to get out of there and come back to the North Pole to help get the reindeer to bed in their reindeer stalls. That’s what I think actually happened.

But, Elsie is a great little girl and she was still pleased as punch about what she got from Santa and never complained one bit and was so so grateful for what she got.  She especially loved the Goldfish crackers and Fruit Loops and Pringles. She loves her some good junk food. Mmmmm.

 

Cam is just the cutest little guy when it comes to Christmas presents. He had asked for a somewhat expensive, hard to find present on his letter to Santa the night before, and since he never told Santa ahead of time (remember, he only gives high fives to Santa but won’t talk to him), Santa didn’t bring it. BUT, he looked at his great presents and said, “Santa is so amazing. I think I want something, but instead he brings me something that he knows I will like even better!”

 

Ana wasn’t really expecting anything from Santa because she said she has everything she needs and it was okay if he just brought her something small, so imagine her surprise when she found a brand new American Girl Doll from Santa! I don’t know how he did it. Those things are expensive! Maybe his elves shop on Craigslist and have some gnarly negotiating skills or something. Santa is awesome. Except I was a little mad at Santa for bringing the kids such great gifts because Ana said, “Santa is pretty generous. You only got me one gift, but he got me a whole bunch!”

Santa was generous in an inexpensive but showy way. He knows the way to these kids’ hearts is through one or two nice gifts that may or may not be pre-loved, some sugary cereal or Doritos and lots of candy in the stockings.

 

The best part of Christmas morning is always how excited Ana gets for everyone to open the presents she got them. She is really really good at selecting gifts. I myself am horrible at gift giving (except for the advice I give to Santa about what to get for the kids)… really truly horrible. Like I have a bad gift giving disability and should by law get a special personal shopper to help me every time I enter a store. It’s that bad. But Ana is magical with selecting gifts and she really feels the full joy of watching someone open them. I might even give her the money to buy the extended family members’ gifts next year.

For example, she gave Poem a miniature American Girl doll since Po always tries to steal hers except they are too big for Po to carry. Poem is trying to brush the doll’s hair. Po loves the doll so much and carries it around all over the house. Nice job Ana!

 

After we opened presents for awhile, we got ready to go to church. Church was rescheduled to be earlier on Christmas that it usually is so that people could have time in the afternoon to be with family and such. For us, it just added to my stress a bit since I had to accompany a singer I had never played for before and also had to be there extra early to make sure I had everything ready for the organ songs. Surprisingly, we made it there 50 minutes early, yet when we got there, the choir was practicing so I didn’t get to warm up the organ and the first time I pushed my fingers on it for the day was when the congregation started to sing “Joy to the World”, and let me tell you, the organ was NOT set up right. Oops!! And it was sad too because Ana and I had practiced for an hour to be able to do a duet using the bell chimes on the last verse and we didn’t get to do it because the organ settings were all wrong. Darn. I guess no good deed goes unpunished.

Thankfully, all the speakers and musical numbers were sublime and it was a good day at church, except for Ana’s tooth falling out in the middle of one of the choir numbers which caused her to run out of the chapel with a bloody mouth.

Anyway, here is my kids’ version of a pre-church Christmas photo.

They finally settled down and we got the very first photo EVER of all of our kids looking at the photo and somewhat smiling. It was a small Christmas miracle.

After church we had a really fun time opening more presents (my parents and Jonah’s parents are always wildly generous and many many gifts appeared magically on our doorstep in the weeks leading up to Christmas) and Skype-ing with lots and lots of family members and trying to get our kids to stop playing with their new toys so they could finishing opening their presents. I REALLY REALLY love opening presents and I always want it to last all day, but last year (thanks to my “post-Halloween, all costumes 90% off” buying spree) we opened presents until it was dark, and that was a bit of overkill. So, by late afternoon we finally got everything opened and loved and put away and video-chatted with more family while fixing a big dinner for our friends who were coming up. It was a lot of preparation, but the dinner went well, and when our friends left late that night and the kids were finally in bed, Jonah and I sort of took a breath and thought, “wow. that was a Christmas!”. It was a whirlwind for sure. It made me SO SO grateful that we had taken 30 minutes every night in December to quietly read a Christmas story with the kids. It was such a simple thing to check the books out in November, to quickly wrap them, and to invite the kids each night to sit with us under the Christmas lights and decorations and read those good stories.  We were able slowly soak in the Christmas spirit of joy and rejoicing and celebration. I’m so glad because I felt ready for the day when it came. I didn’t feel I need to quickly cram for the “big day”. It also helped us not feel so guilty about indulging in the kids’ total delight in opening presents. We just felt so Christmas-y about the whole thing. It was lovely. The kids were also so incredibly grateful for their gifts, and their graciousness was contagious. We just felt that perfect floating, misty joy that you get when the whole family feeling the same comfy warm happiness and the whole world seems right.

As Elsie proclaimed about 20 times, “Best Christmas EVER!!”