Hello, animals. Merry Christmas!
My morning is with NPR, listening to King's College choir, live from Cambridge England. The solo introduction, with its own story of who will sing it in any given year, is hauntingly beautiful. Ed would protest, but he is still sleeping. So here I am, following along with the story of a holiday that is mine by tradition, by ancestry I suppose, most certainly by choice, my own choice, selecting those elements that I love, not paying much attention to those that I find alienating or too fanciful.
And then Ed does come down and we eat a breakfast of croissants and fruits.
He spends the morning trying to understand what's wrong with our internet (it's down) so that he can be sensible once the Spectrum repair person shows up in the afternoon. Me, I study recipes. I have a lot of oven use coming up and I want to make sure I can accommodate all of it.
In the afternoon, the two older kids are here...
... to bake cookies. Simple but good. Santa needs a few to sustain himself tonight, though God knows he's got it easy weather wise. No great chill out there. We have a weekend of relative warmth. (And by evening, plenty of fog.)
In the evening I bring the kids home and I stay with the young family for dinner.
A traditional one for us, in that I used to make the same thing for my kids all those Christmas Eves of now long ago.
And we have a FaceTime with the Chicago young family. Some of the kids want to put on a Christmas show. Snowdrop has written a poem about snowmen and one about Christmas trees, Primrose sings a wonderful rendition of Rudolph, and Sparrow gives Jingle Bells his best.
Juniper tunes us all out and Sandpiper sends his vocal regrets. Maybe next year.
I linger, watching their spirited antics, smiling at little Sandpiper's first Christmas Eve.
Christmas Eve. Beautiful thoughts of holidays and everydays spent just like this -- with the ones I love so much, with the frills and thrills of ribbons, bubbles, glitter, sprinkles on cookies and the sparkle of their high energy, their beautiful young faces, reflecting the wisdom of the ages: search for happiness and share it with the ones closest to you.
Merry Christmas, with love...
