December is notoriously a busy month, in all aspects. I think this year, we didn't do so badly after all as I tried to keep the pressure of things to get done to a minimum.
We had a couple of dental parties, both of them included spouses. We love going to fancy places to eat Christmas party dinners:)
One very-VERY rainy evening in early December we ventured out to Raleigh to a "European Christmas Market" which turned out to be a huge disappointment and something that we did in 30 minutes after getting some Czech pastries and two bratwursts. I guess it's organized by a small parish, so we shouldn't have expected much. It was nothing like the European markets in Europe. And we were not the only ones disappointed, but that's ok.
One of the evenings we did something that the kids love to do but that is not my favorite Christmas tradition, and I am not sure why. Because it's more candy? Because it's messy? Don't know. We invited our friends, the Whites. And surprisingly it was a lot of fun and most importantly, the kids were grateful and so excited! Here is our Christmas village.
Our church family is busy every December with the Apex Nativity--the display of hundreds of nativity sets and Messiah sing-along plus a number of other beautiful musical numbers and choir performances. This year we sent our Ukrainian stacking doll nativity set, bought in Lviv (so it's the real deal). It's one of my favorite Ukrainian souvenirs in our house.
On the 23rd of December we had the Wests over. They have six kids in their family and our kids are good friends with their kids. After dinner we went over to ten different families from church to carol and gift them with fudge. We all had a lot of fun. The weather was in the low 70s! Crazy!
On Christmas Eve, we had church, which was perfect! It was a shortened version of our church meeting, lasting only one hour. We had a lot of time after that to do our family traditions and cook our dinner and just hang out and relax. By the way, our temple (in the background) is going to be completely leveled and rebuilt after January 8th. It's going to be closed for a year and a half.
We had a couple of dental parties, both of them included spouses. We love going to fancy places to eat Christmas party dinners:)
One very-VERY rainy evening in early December we ventured out to Raleigh to a "European Christmas Market" which turned out to be a huge disappointment and something that we did in 30 minutes after getting some Czech pastries and two bratwursts. I guess it's organized by a small parish, so we shouldn't have expected much. It was nothing like the European markets in Europe. And we were not the only ones disappointed, but that's ok.
One of the evenings we did something that the kids love to do but that is not my favorite Christmas tradition, and I am not sure why. Because it's more candy? Because it's messy? Don't know. We invited our friends, the Whites. And surprisingly it was a lot of fun and most importantly, the kids were grateful and so excited! Here is our Christmas village.
Our church family is busy every December with the Apex Nativity--the display of hundreds of nativity sets and Messiah sing-along plus a number of other beautiful musical numbers and choir performances. This year we sent our Ukrainian stacking doll nativity set, bought in Lviv (so it's the real deal). It's one of my favorite Ukrainian souvenirs in our house.
On the 23rd of December we had the Wests over. They have six kids in their family and our kids are good friends with their kids. After dinner we went over to ten different families from church to carol and gift them with fudge. We all had a lot of fun. The weather was in the low 70s! Crazy!
On Christmas Eve, we had church, which was perfect! It was a shortened version of our church meeting, lasting only one hour. We had a lot of time after that to do our family traditions and cook our dinner and just hang out and relax. By the way, our temple (in the background) is going to be completely leveled and rebuilt after January 8th. It's going to be closed for a year and a half.
This year we also participated in a Secret Santa mission, splitting the responsibilities with one other family. Although we all were busy with our Christmas preparations, we managed to only forget the gift once:) The kids really loved plotting a way to drop off the gift unnoticed and run super fast to the car or hide behind the building. We never revealed who we were to the family either:)
And this year once again, I let the kids choose a night when they wanted to sleep next to the Christmas tree. Mark fell asleep almost immediately next to it on the rug, near the fireplace, Katya got all comfy on the couch and slept their all night. Alex didn't really want to do that and decided to go upstairs and sleep in his bed. And I am just happy that the kids did something special that they think is cool (well, at least two thirds of them does).
This year I really felt like we were able to relax and enjoy the school/work break together. We had a lot of downtime and a lot of "nowhere to go" kind of days which were so welcome after busy rowing/tennis/theater days. Robert and I strive to help kids create memories that are precisely like that--remembering what is most important.
Lyana.
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