'Tis the Season: December 2013

Past years I've written about the Christ.  He was and is and always will be the wellspring for Joy.

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I'm tired tonight, so...

Christmas.  Oooooh, Christmas.  It was a whirl of people and cooking and gifts and food and joy and crying and then-- sleep.  The sweetest gift of sleep.






 Christmas Eve morning, I found this monster dipping into the cookie dough.

 

The children festooned the tree with every gaudy trinket we own while I did my part by sitting on the couch with my feet up. 

They decorated each other before deciding that slathering an immobile tree was a wiser choice.

I took these pictures at some unearthly hour of the night-morning, after I'd finished the baking, cleaning, present-arranging, and putting away of odds and ends.  It's always strange to arrive at that bone-tired moment when everything is done.  Really?  Everything?!  And it's only 5:00 a.m.!

 

I ran out of frosting and didn't feel like making more (the only sensible decision of the night), so the gingerbread children became gingerbread old people.  You can see that Zeke, even with white hair, still loves milk.  Maybe that's what turned his hair white?

Christmas morning!  Zeke eats the popcorn ball from his stocking.  

 

Christmas afternoon!

  

                   

We hosted the whole Johnson clan (save Andy and Wendy and crew who were so sorely missed), which is always a pleasure.  All 20-some cousins run through and around the legs of their parents in search of cookies and adventure, and the day was threaded through with their energy and excitement.

As far as pictures go, Brother Pete inspects the dusty chandelier! (Yup, he's a tall drink of water.)

Aaaand, that's it.  Here's why.  When one's home is filled to bursting with 30-some people, 2/3 of whom are exuberant, happy children, and when those 30-some people are family you love and of whom you see far too little, and when the table groans with mountains of feasty food, and the couches beckon for sitting and conversation, and cookies and coffee pair up in as many combinations as you wish, well...the camera gets neglected.

And that's just as it should be. A few months late, Merry Christmas, everyone!