The neverending Christmas post

Our December was so full this year, and one of the best parts was getting our Uncle Mike home for the holidays. We were there to welcome him at the airport!



He will be home for good sometime this Spring!


Our neighbors also did their annual Christmas play. Every year, they write and direct a play for the neighborhood. There are weeks of practice and memorization, costume design and all kinds of fun.

Then it was finally Christmas Eve! We got to have our cousins with us this year! We love having our cousins over!

My laptop is going to have to get some work done on it so I probably won't update while it's gone.

Frogboy

In January of 1998, I gave birth to my second son. We named him for Esau's younger, and much more famous, brother (those biblical scholars among you now know his name LOL) because Esau was a red head and he came "on the heels" of his brother. This man is also one of the more headstrong of the old testament fathers....hmmmm, I might have rethought that.

My Frogboy is very much his own person. Legos, movement, laughter, noise, more movement, quick, funny, emotional....that's my boy. He's always been quick to laugh, quick to cry, quick to lose his temper and then have you laughing again before you've had time to get mad back. He loves babies and is always ready to welcome a new sibling, often asking when we are gonna get a new one! He's is fun to do school with, as just about anything can capture his imagination, except history. He's doesn't enjoy reading but is a whiz at math, like his daddy. His mind is a maze and he sees things very differently from the rest of the world. He can occupy his younger brothers with imaginary worlds for hours, but when he's done, he's done. He has taught his brothers to literally climb the walls, jump like frogs, "fly" off the bunkbeds, climb trees and so much more. More and more now I see him growing into a young man. My little guy with the super power fits is gone. He notices others feelings now, he shares his own with words instead of actions, he is more patient and gentler. He still has his fire though. I'm glad for that. His joy, creativeness, intelligence and emotional personality give so much to our family. It is truly amazing, I was just sure he was the one I'd be apologizing for on the evening news.

Happy Birthday Frogboy, glad you are mine.

Christmas

In the interest of killing two birds with one stone, I've decided to have most of the pictures I post here be scrapbook pages I build for the kids. It will hopefully encourage me to keep current on the scrapbooks and I don't have to arrange them artfully here, it'll already be done. But I've only done part of the holidays so far. Yall saw the gingerbread house, next was our baking. We bake cookies and pumpkin bread every year for the neighbors. The plan is to to bake it and deliver it with some caroling before Christmas, which we almost always achieve (the exceptions being Christmas' after delivering twins). Red has become an ace at making pumpkin bread and does almost all of it by himself. The younger kids do the cutting out of sugar cookies, which is the hardest 30 minutes of my life, other than leaving for church. Red and Frogboy can do their own but aren't fast enough to please the little guys so I roll out the dough for them. It takes them .2 seconds to cut out 20 cookies, at which time I have to roll it out again, and there are 5 of them. I'm gonna miss this some day, right?

But it's tradition. My Uncle Vern, who Ses is named after (middle name), used to pack up me and my cousins and take us to sing for his neighbors and deliver baskets of homemade goodies on Christmas Eve. I loved those times. My kids love these times. I hope my grandkids will love it too. It fills the house with good smells, laughter, and thoughts of others, with only the occasional threat of being sent to their room breaking the harmony.

After the baking, our neighbors and caroling partners come over to decorate cookies and package everything up. Our neighbors are such a blessing. They have 4 beautiful children (the youngest I jokingly refer to as my future daughter in law), 3 girls and 1 boy. The boy is Red and Frogboy's best friend and the girls, even though 2 are older, are great playmates too, showing them that girls are human, and can kick a mean soccer ball. I love that they entered enthusiastically into our tradition, it makes it more fun with more singers. We usually sing for everyone on the cul-de-sac that wants it, but it was cold and wet and we had a new baby, so we just did the ones directly next door and across the street. One of the women across the street is bed ridden on a respirator, but her mind is still sharp. She loves to have us come visit and over time the boys have become comfortable with her machines. Last year she was able to sing with us, but this year she was too sick. She did smile and move her lips. Our next door neighbors have a son with Down's and while he loves our little guys, the big ones scare him a bit. He usually runs when we knock but this year he actually watched us from behind his mom and waved at the litte guys.

Coming soon:
Frogboy's birthday and more of Christmas.