just another morning here

Just thinking about my childhood Christmas traditions, after reading the comments thread about advent calendars on Nic’s blog. We did have advent calendars as kids but I don’t remember them all that much, they certainly aren’t an integral part of my Christmas memories.

I do remember having a real tree, and decorating it being a lovely family time. I can’t really remember having stockings when we were very young (did we – I know we did later on but really can’t remember earlier?), but I can remember my Dad’s endless Christmas day breakfasts, as we weren’t allowed to go into the lounge to open presents until he’d finished countless slowly consumed cups of coffee.

Some traditions revolved around food – for a few years Boxing day was the only day in the year that we cooked real chips in a deep fat fryer, to go with cold turkey and ham cooked with a crust, but I think my family have got too healthy for that now!

There is, however, one thing that stands out as the thing I loved about my early childhood Christmases. We used to go carol singing in the village where we lived – usually a large group of us from the church we were part of. My Dad would bring out his piano accordian for its yearly outing (the one and only thing it’s really good for), and I just remember loving the feeling of being out in the cold, with our friends, singing as loudly as possible, and usually ending up somewhere for mince pies at the end. I absolutely love carols, even the bad ones!

That tradition kind of changed when we moved into the city – I seem to remember we did carol singing a few times but it never had that lovely community ‘walk round the village’ feel to it. The piano accordian has been used less and less, unless I’m very much mistaken, although Dad does still bring it out at Christmas usually to torture us all – well, we say it’s torture but we love it really, you can tell by the look on my sister’s face in this photo

My kids love it too, and happily for me (not so happily for Steve, who is very bah humbug about that sort of thing!), are also developing a love of Christmas music – carols and other music too.

Which is why I’ve been hankering after one of these (spotted slightly cheaper here) for the children ever since I saw it – I reckon Anna would love it, and she’d probably be able to do a jolly good job of playing it as well …

So, what’s your most memorable childhood Christmas tradition and why?

Apologies for the strange blog-behaviour yesterday, the server went down so I lost a day’s worth of blog, but let’s face it, it wasn’t exactly the end of the world. In fact it was strangely liberating to be without blog and email for a day, I must put the internet on a shelf more often.

We’ve just been doing the normal stuff here, working, and the usual round of child-related activity. Yesterday was quite productive – Anna did some geoboard maths on perpendicular/parallel lines, and Abbie did some pattern block maths too, as well as some reading. Music practice has been well done all round over the past couple of days, and Anna’s expecting to take Grade 1 in both cello and piano next term, now. We’ve agreed monetary reward for pass/merit/distinction in those, which she is quite excited about, and is already planning a shopping spree based on maximum payout

Home Ed group at the park yesterday included a friend’s birthday party, so that was fun, as well as the usual dance/cello combo for Anna.

Last night we saw Maria (of cake-a-month fame) for the first time in ages; she’s been to Thailand recently on a ‘help rebuild a tsunami-bashed house’ activity holiday so had photos to show us, which were really interesting and inspiring. She recommends Amandara Island Resort, where she stayed (the first people to stay there since it was rebuilt), if anyone is remotely interested. It was nice to spend the evening with her, just catching up

Today the plan is to bake, once bedrooms have been tidied – which is currently taking a very long time! We got up early and the kids watched Raven before breakfast, we’ve done music practice, but have since stalled somewhat! I’m making pumpkin pie (yes, we have a glut of pumpkins!), and the children are planning a sponge cake, I think.

And as I typed my title for the blog post today I was reminded of a kids’ song that we have on CD somewhere.

Even if I’m lost in space, Jesus can find me
He’s bigger than the universe, he’s all around me
It doesn’t matter where you are
Even on the farthest star
There isn’t anywhere too far from Him

Might seem cheesy, but I was just reminded of the closeness of that relationship and how much it means to me. And also reminded that maths, reading, and even music are secondary to imparting the value of that relationship to my children. Which is a challenge to me, personally. Love moments like that, where I’m not thinking of anything spiritual particularly, but God just speaks through little things – keeps me going.

Another Nanci lyric, sorry!

Strange old day, the main part of which, for me, was taken up with the Remembrance Service for lost babies. I feel fairly emotionally battered this evening as a result. It gets me every time, I see people walking in to the chapel in the hospital and I end up feeling *so*full of grief on their behalf and on my own as well, I guess. And then I have to stand up and read stuff, which is quite horrid, why do I agree to these things?! Actually this time I was drafted in at the last minute … anyway, it was a good afternoon, there were loads of people there and plenty of conversations went on afterwards in the strange ‘have a cup of tea with people you’ve never met while you’re feeling really emotional’ time afterwards, which I always think is slightly bizarre.

Noticed the strangely ironic line in ‘Lord of all hopefulness’ which seems to be a regular feature in the order of service: “be there at our labours”, hmm. I know I believed God was there at mine, but only the times I made it that far! Anyway, time to pack away all my thoughtfulness for another year.

Steve was on childcare all afternoon and I confess to spending an extra half an hour out having a cuppa with a friend so that he would have to go and pick Anna up as well as having dropped her off, I just couldn’t face it after the service.

Anna had a ball at Stagecoach, so there goes another load of money. Ho hum. She complained that she wasn’t very good at the dance; I think it was modern dance whereas she’s only ever been taught ballet before, albeit with a contemporary edge to most of her performance dances, she’s not ever done what I’d call ‘pop’ dance so it was strange to her. But she loved the drama and the singing. She said ‘I made friends with someone who wouldn’t believe that I was allowed to not go to school, so then I made friends with someone else!’

We’ve had a friend round for dinner which has been pleasant, and we’re about to watch the Motorcycle Diaries together, goodo, I need some escapism this evening, and I’ve been looking forward to seeing this film for a while now.

Oh, and we’ve seen some photos of Robyn today, very exciting

Lots of babies due at the moment, in fact Steve’s sister is in labour as I write, so I’m thinking of her today – more news later hopefully! Her due date was tomorrow so I know she’ll be over the moon not to have gone overdue. She’s having her first baby, at home, so pray that all goes well

And so because I’m procrastinating (do some things ever change?) and to give Nic something else in the sidebar to click on, I’ve added my birth stories to the ‘Pages’ section in the sidebar. They were on our family site but it’s broken at the moment.

Of course the other reason for all this baby thinking going on is that I’ve been working on Miscarriage stuff this week, a couple of people at swimming this morning had heard me on the radio yesterday and mentioned it all to me, and I guess it just brings all the remembering to the fore again – which is fine (no hugs please!), in fact I think one of the strengths of having something significant to do once a year is good as it brings you to a place where it is okay to remember things, and then the rest of the year you (well, I, now) don’t really think about it as much. Anyway, I need to carry on with the display stuff as I didn’t get much done yesterday due to printer problems, so I’m off …

UPDATE!
Emma had her baby, a girl called Robyn, at 13.37 7lbs 15.5oz, home birth went swimmingly Congratulations!