Christmas Eve

Thursday, December 24th
On the day before Christmas, we got up at a leisurely pace. Vivian was content to just hang with her daddy or explore the various kiddie toys I had pre-planted about the downstairs. I'd seeded the family room with curios like Duplos and stacking pegs and shape sorters. Perhaps her favorite items however were the TV and DVD remotes. The challenge of restoring them to their functional configuration would fall to Grandma and Grandpa at the visit's end.

Vivian was not the only one to play. Dan and I played checkers with a wooden set Frank and I had purchased at the Colorado Train Museum in Golden when we visited there the end of August. The red checkers were carved with cabooses and the black checkers were carved with locomotives. Dan beat me. 

Traditionally we'd play with a set of Christmas Checkers where there are 3-D wooden carved green Christmas Trees versus red and white Santa Heads; but that set, with its red and natural maple checkerboard, had somehow not made the trek down from the attic for Christmas 2015. I nabbed the image below from the internet. Maybe if I'd had the more appropriate checkers for the season the outcome might have been different...? One Christmas, when Robin and Dan were younger, I'd bought extra sets of these, one for each of them. I wonder if they still have them after all their moves and life changes.

Some adults, the energetic silly ones, amused themselves by ambushing each other with X-Stream Air guns that launched donut shaped discs or a PowerPopper that shot out bright green foam balls. 

Vivian loved running around picking up the foam balls, and placing them in carrying basket with a handle. A basket we normally use as a dispenser for our paper napkins was pressed into a nobler service on this day, collecting spent ammunition from the PowerPopper.

After collection, Vivian willingly and proudly presented the ammunition spheres to Grandpa, one by one.

I'd forgotten that I'd been saving empty tubes from wrapping paper so we could have cardboard light saber duels, but that is ok. We had plenty to keep us active and happy and busy. Frank picked Alex up mid-afternoon so he could join the fracus. He settled into the newly arranged, no longer carpeted family room, content with his puzzles and banks and videos, nonplussed by the totally rearranged room.

After Vivian's afternoon nap, she went with Dan and Carrie pay a brief visit to some in-town friends of theirs. Later, I accompanied them to the 4:00 pm Children's Christmas Mass at St Michael's Catholic Church. Vivian joined the kids up on the altar for part of it and was well behaved. She got kind of antsy as the sermon lasted too long and became too boring; but then, so did the adults. I surreptitiously took this cell image of her and Carrie from my place in the pew.

After church we gathered with the neighbors in our cul-de-sac to set out and light luminaries. It was a chilly night but the rain stayed away while we socialized and were occupied in our communal task.

Alex was quite the un-doer, trying to pick up each sack and blow out its candle! He loves to blow out candles so this was a fun, field day for him. Vivian was quite the helper. Our neighbors were commenting about how for many of the previous generations of candle lighters – our own kids when young and some of the grandkids, nieces, and nephews of our neighbors – lighting luminaries had been their first experience with striking a match or handling fire close up.

The resulting effect is always beautiful and calming. I love how in this  photo the moon is peeking through the clouds as viewed through the branches of our tree. 

After coming indoors I fried up the Cheese Blintzes I had made the day before. My aging stove-top chose to act up with an intermittently working burner; but by juggling different dials and controls, some pointed blows with a wooden spoon on offensive heating coils, and multiple fry pans, I persevered and no blintz was lost. They crisped up nicely and were delicious with sour cream or applesauce. I was too busy being a cook to be a photographer so you must just imagine how delicious they looked. We polished off all I had made in short order.

After dinner was bath and bedtime. Frank and Dan played a few games of Sequence and kept me company while I stubbornly stayed up knitting Isaiah's stocking. I finished it just at midnight with seconds to spare. I give more detail in my DianeLoves2Quilt post for December 28th. Here are those ten stockings hanging all in a row. 

The day had been quite full of merriment and we still had Christmas to look forward to the next day.

'Twere the Days Before Christmas 2015

'Twere is the pluralized version of 'twas, 'tis not?

If Clement C. Moore can do it, why can't I?

Tuesday, December 22nd

Dan, Carrie, and Vivian were about to spend the Christmas holiday with us in Livermore and their flight from SoCal arrived about 10:20 am. Frank and I parked the car with its child safety seat securely installed, rear facing, in the back seat center, the purported safest configuration and went in to greet them at the Oakland terminal. Meeting up in short order, we transported the luggage out to the parking lot. We had parked in premium; nothing is too good for our granddaughter.  A half hour later, after her parents had inspected and revised the safety seat installation and all the straps had been custom adjusted for Vivian, we left to drive home to Livermore. We had lunch and dinner at home and just hung out and visited. An afternoon walk to a neighboring park fit the bill. Every one had to get into the act on the slide - except the photographer.

We'd tentatively planned a night of Zoo Lights at the Oakland Zoo, but Vivian's long nap, Carrie's slight case of the sniffles, and the damp, chilly weather conspired together that we scale back our plans to be less ambitious. We went to look at Christmas lights throughout the neighborhood and strolled through the displays at our local Deacon Dave's. This is an annual tradition, established 1984, that we've kept since Robin, Dan, and Alex were little.

One year, when Dan was very young, he quite innocently asked us, as we walked through Deacon Dave's Christmas decorated courtyard, "How come we never see Deke, only Dave?" Here he is now, all grown up, with his dad! And if you are still groaning after that pun, it was not made up. He really did think that there must have been two people.

A friendly passerby graciously took a photo of all of us.

Wednesday, December 23rd

Dan, Carrie, and Vivian took BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) into San Francisco and spent the day sight seeing. Frank and I stayed home. I used part of the time making Cheese Blintzes for Christmas Eve dinner, something I had not made in years. I still have my old crepe maker.

I made and froze two full jelly roll sheets of blintzes to fry up for dinner the next evening. Fortunately I had copied the proportions for the ingredients and taped them on the bottom of the batter platter because in its faded state, my recipe card was barely legible. My recipe is my mom's and different form the one printed on the plate. She used to make cheese blintzes at Easter time. We'd eat them with sour cream. Yum!

I also mixed up a batch of cookie dough for cut-out cookies. We would roll them out the next day. This recipe hails from the the early 1970's when my godson Glenn used to make these at Busy Beaver Nursery School in New Jersey. I think it may be time to copy over this recipe before it too fades away. Perhaps it can live on in this blog.

Once Vivian was settled in for the night, Dan, Frank, and I played a few games of Sequence and Tsuro. Dan won most of them. Grrrr. Seems like the torch has passed to a new generation.

I also used any other spare time during the day to work on a vintage Christmas stocking for grandson Isaiah. I only had one more day till Christmas and I wanted it hanging with the others. These stockings symbolize that we are all together in spirit for Christmas. Frank, Alex, and I carried them all with us out to Oklahoma for Christmas in 2014. Dan, Carrie, and Vivian were not there but their stockings were.

Once all others had gone to bed I took time to reflect. Robin, Jeremy, Autumn, and Isaiah were unable to travel to California for Christmas 2015, but they kept us in the loop of Christmas preparations in their Oklahoma home. I took time to enjoy some of the photos they'd been mailing us. Five-month-old Isaiah and three-year-old Autumn seem to be engaged in their Christmas tree-trimming!

Yes, I was reflecting on the growing, happy families. Carrie and Dan are expecting another little girl next May. I love this photo on their 2015 Christmas card.

And of course this one, with Dan balancing pink booties on his head and his daughter on this shoulders, is a real keeper.

I can't help thinking back to when he and Robin and Alex were the size to ride this rocking horse, now pressed into service as a Christmas decoration.

I also mused on the wreath we have in our kitchen. Frank and I bought that the first Christmas we were empty nesters – Robin in Oklahoma, Dan in SoCal, and Alex placed at St. Denis. It was now just the two of us.

It is easy to get lost in your thoughts late at night. And it was late at night. I stayed up until 2:45 am on December 23rd, determined to get Isaiah's stocking knitted to a point where I would have only to turn the heel and complete the foot the next day, Christmas Eve.