a wide place

Our Christmas Eve dinner tradition is a large pot of cheesy potato soup with bacon and Sister Shubert’s rolls in front of a movie. This year it was The Man Who Invented Christmas, and Linda brought her specialty peanut butter Rice Krispies treats for dessert, which were so delicious we decided to add them to the tradition.

After the movie, we Facetimed with our Seattle family, who were gathered at Pat and Cathy’s house, three hours behind us in the day, for cookie-decorating and their own Christmas movie.

Another tradition of ours: the kids have a sibling sleepover in one of their bedrooms, and when they’re all tucked in (and whispering and laughing), David and I set out all the gifts under the tree. We had a little mishap this year which involved me knocking over the tree on Christmas Eve, Buddy the Elf style, while trying to reach to get just a little more water in it. It was a moment.

Thankfully the kids were there to help me, but the living room was littered with pine needles from our dying tree and the rug remained soaked through for 24 hours. So David and I placed the gifts in a rather wide perimeter around the tree until morning.

On Christmas morning, the kids are allowed emerge from the bedroom at 6:30 and jump in bed to wake us. It’s getting harder to all fit. This is the second year we’ve also had a dog to jump in bed with us on Christmas morning, and as you know by now, there are few things that make me happier than having a dog in the mix.

Steve and Linda join us at 7:00 Christmas morning, and I have no idea how we began this, but our family welcomes them up the walkway by singing a Christmas carol. Noah chose his favorite, “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” for this year.

We start up the Christmas Classics playlist on Spotify, pour mugs of strong coffee to fortify ourselves, and proceed to dig into the pile of gifts. David and I always gift one another the rhyme, “Something you want, something you need, something to wear, and something to read,” and this year for the first time we did that for the kids too.

Kira was delighted with her Christmas stuffed monkey from the clearance rack at Marshall’s and proceeded to chew it to shreds while the rest of us opened gifts. Hey, it kept her busy for an hour or so.

And Grandpa and Mum Mum were delighted with their new coffee maker, a gift from all their kids.

My “something you want” from David was Hamilton tickets! I’ve wanted to go ever since I heard the show is coming to Columbia in the spring, but felt like we shouldn’t splurge since we saw it in NYC a few years back. I am so excited.

But the all-time best surprise of this Christmas was a car for Judah. That’s right! It’s truly a gift from God for all of us. He and I have been sharing the van this semester, which worked fine when it was three days of classes. But then he added three days of work and it’s been . . . tricky. I’d literally just began praying for a solution, not seeing how we’d swing buying a third car this year.

Then, the week before Christmas, our friend Sarah told us that she’s purchasing a newer vehicle and offered to sell us her 2009 Nissan Rogue for a fantastic price. It all happened so fast we couldn’t even get the car itself over here in time for Christmas morning. But a photo did the trick!

Here’s Amie’s haul (as they say in Harry Potter), which included her first (and possibly last!) genuine leather covered Bible, at her request. I miss the days of Calico Critters and American Girl, but it’s fun to see what our big kids are into now. Thankfully Noah’s still putting Legos on his wish list so we haven’t completely moved on from toys. That will be a sad day.

After a breakfast of cinnamon rolls with more coffee, Grandpa and Mum Mum headed home while we spent a quiet morning relaxing with new video games and books, then we headed over to their house for Christmas dinner.

My parents and Kenny and Shari and the boys joined us, and while Kenny grilled 12 filet Mignon steaks to perfection, the kids played badminton in the yard and Steve lit the most enormous Christmas tree-shaped fire I’ve seen.

After dinner, we headed over to our house for more gifts, dessert, and a rowdy game of Christmas Trivia, thanks to friends who shared the game they wrote. It was very close — team Christmas Heat beat team Christmas Spirit by just one point!

These cousins are growing up so fast. Owen is happy, because in 2023 he surpassed Amie in height for the very first time (she is just 8 weeks older than he is).

The family all left around 4:30 and Amie and Kira looked like I felt. I headed out for a rainy-evening fire pit with David so I wouldn’t be tempted to nap, and learned that Judah and Amie both promptly fell asleep on the sofas. Christmas is exhausting!

Later on we gathered in the living room with bowls of cereal for dinner and an episode of Squid Games (the Netflix reality show). At the end of the night, Amie said “I think this was my very favorite Christmas.”

Each one has been wonderful in it’s own way, but she’s right, this one was pretty special.