Blessed quiet fills the house this morning. School has started back up, and although it was a trifle rocky getting Lucas out the door, I am very pleased to be back to our school-days routine. I am enjoying filling my body with the silence and deep breaths. There is plenty to do: editing work, chores, errands. And yet, I’m feeling peaceful and happy.

We had a good, long winter break. Ian was off work for the entire time the kids were out of school and daycare, and that, my friends, is a BEAUTIFUL thing. I’m so grateful because my work didn’t slack off at all until New Year’s Day and if Ian hadn’t been at home to keep the children occupied, I never would have made it. I am burned out and weary, but the last couple of days have been mellow, with hardly any work at all—just a check-in here, an email to write and send there. Rest is most welcome and I’m hoping to get a lot of it this week.

Christmas. What can I say? It was glorious and outrageous as ever. It was abundant and fun. It was also both busy and a little weird at times. Family troubles dominated my family’s side of things this year. Fortunately, I think my boys didn’t even notice. The gift-giving at RoRo’s house was low-key compared to usual, which was a blessing. And yet, somehow, my parents made up for that by showering presents on my kids. Mom and Dad and Jonathan arrived at our house Christmas morning with a huge carload of gifts. My mother kept shaking her head and muttering, “I guess I got a little carried away this year.” This amuses me; it’s not really like her to do so.

Ian and I approached Christmas with a fair amount of trepidation. Some of which was totally unfounded. We enjoyed a spur-of-the-moment shopping spree at Toys R Us for the kiddos. We also plowed through our home and garage in the last days before Christmas and boxed up lots of old toys for Goodwill and some for Ian’s clinic. So far, not a single item has been missed by Lucas or Asher.

I am so grateful the children had such a nice Christmas. Our days were full of conspicuous good behavior, talk of Santa Claus, and lots attention from Daddy.

Here are just some of the wonderful gifts we received:

Lucas: lots of science kits (experiments, volcanoes, science you can eat such as soda, rock candy, etc.), rollerblades, books, awesome colored pencils, Green Lantern action figures, and massive amounts of Lego.

Asher: books, puzzles, a noisy rocket ship, a noisy fire truck, a noisy cash register (his new “computer”), wooden boats, play dough, a carved owl that hoots, wooden tools, and nice block crayons.

Ian: a gorgeous new rug, many books, lots of music, a sweater, slippers, and high-quality cookware.

Sara: a gorgeous new rug, a Singer sewing machine, Gingher sewing shears, books, sweaters, two scarves, and lotion.

Our 15th annual Christmas party was a huge success! We were delighted to welcome old friends and new to our home Christmas night. I’m still smiling about it. We had a bunch of kids come, too, which was great fun for our boys. The last guests left at 2:30 a.m. on Boxing Day.

I had high hopes to make gifts this year. None of my plans panned out because my work kept me cranking hard the whole month. Some part of me finds it interesting to watch my internal struggle about that; letting go of my expectations and banishing the Shoulds is often hard for me. But I did it eventually out of necessity. Our Christmas was bountiful in every way, and that is thanks, in part, to the work I do.

Thank you to all who showered us with presents, good food, their presence, good wishes, and love.

Painting by Lucas. Feliz Navidad!

Our first batch of plum jam was made on December 4th with Papa. Last night we made another big batch and we’ll have to see later tonight whether it’s gelled properly. The jam is low in sugar, sweet-tart, and full of pulpy goodness. I hope it’s delicious.

The plums we used were frozen from last year’s harvest, when Dad and I picked way more than we could process in three jam-making sessions. It was a difficult time then, full of anxiety (and flat-out fear on my part) about Dad’s upcoming heart surgery, and making jam together was our bonding activity. It was special and sweet, the first time we had ever made jam together, and laced with uncomfortable overtones of, “what if.”

The jamming has been different this year. More of a celebration. More an act of thanksgiving for me. Dad is well, perhaps not fully recovered, but nevertheless doing great despite a lot of stress and caring for his 89-year-old mother and 96-year-old  aunt. He would say he’s all better now. I know he still tires easily.

I would be very pleased if I could be making plum jam with my dad for another 15 years.

I’m working on being both reasonable and flexible this holiday season—reasonable about what I can accomplish and flexible when circumstances change and obstacles arise.

I had high hopes that we could go up to the foothills this year to hunt for our Christmas tree, but the rainy weather on Saturday and limited time made the trip impossible. We always have such fun visiting the craft fairs and enjoying a slice of apple pie. Instead, we went to Lucas’s school and bought a beautiful tree. Our money will help the school and a group of girls who have formed a eurhythmy troop. We were back home with our tree in less than 30 minutes, which meant that we got the whole thing decorated in a day, instead of it taking all weekend (a day in the foothills, and a day to decorate the tree).

It’s wacky that so many of our ornaments have memories attached to them. I often know where they came from—who gave this one to us, what year I bought that one, which ones are handmade, where Mom and Dad were traveling when they picked up those two, what this one meant to me when I received it. I have ornaments that have been on my family’s Christmas tree since I was in preschool. And if that’s not sentimental, I don’t know what is.

“The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads”

This is what I often find after working in the evening: Asher asleep in our room with Ian folding laundry and watching a program.

Gorgeous persimmons are ripening on my kitchen counter top. Last Friday the B children came over after school and we made a batch of cookies with the couple of persimmons that were ripe enough.

I’m really enjoying spending time with Snow in the kitchen; she has greater follow-through than my boys do. I seem to have hit on the magic formula: Every child measures and pours an ingredient into the bowl, taking turns until everything is in. Everybody mixes, counting their strokes. Eventually, the littler ones drift away to do something else and Snow and I spoon the cookie dough onto the pan. Then, she’s off to play with the others and I get the job of waiting for the oven buzzer, switching out pans, and cleaning up—the boring parts.

I’m learning to recognize (sometimes) when I have a need or expectation for a holiday. To me, it wouldn’t be Christmas time if we didn’t bake cookies. My kiddos didn’t think to ask to do this. But I realized it was something I needed to do. So, I set it up, carved out a moment, and made it happen. Of course, the boys are overjoyed at the opportunity to eat cookies. And, really, who wouldn’t be?

I should add another observation. Besides the script in my mind that says, “good moms bake cookies for Christmas,” there is another script running: “Sexy moms don’t eat cookies.” A little conflict there, perhaps.

Work continues at a much more relaxed pace this month. I’m reviewing second pages now of my textbook, making sure all the intense and involved changes we asked for last month were made. It’s looking good and I’m happy that the people down the line were able to do it. This one is not exactly easy for them, I’m sure, even though I’ve done everything I can to make it as painless as possible.

With some professional coaching, I have managed to change my banner image on my blog to my own wintry photograph. I’ve also added a caching plug-in, so now my site will be faster. And that’s just plain nifty!

Lucas, after the Santa Lucia walk through 11 grades and the school office. The children braved the cold and rain to deliver their message of light and the coming of Christmas, and buns for everyone!

As the youngest boy in the class, he carried a lantern and wore a special outfit, including grandma’s sweater and a hat I made.

When I told Lucas the other day that his name and Lucia both mean light, he smiled really big.

I wish I could say I am the picture of calm. I often am not. Today I had both kids home “sick,” although they don’t look very sick to me. In some ways it was good to spend my time thinking about things other than my textbook deadlines. I tried really hard to be the domestic goddess. I sewed, cooked, cleaned, laundered, and baked—with yeast. I have been successful. I also have lost my cool several times.

And now that it is 4:53 p.m., I would like to walk out the door wearing high heels and not come back until tomorrow morning. I would like, for a while, to be a dancing, on-my-own, free-as-a-bird goddess.

Just saying.

Instead, let’s talk about Santa Lucia and the festival that we’ve been preparing for this week. Lucas’s class will be visiting all the grades in the school, singing songs and delivering Santa Lucia buns to every student and teacher in the school. Lucia was a pious girl who ended up tortured and suffering. She is thought to have brought food and drink to poor people in Sweden and the Swedes love her.  (When Ian lived in Sweden, he participated in a Santa Lucia festival and sang songs to his college profs wearing a pointy Star Boy hat.)

But I digress.

The traditional Lucia festival was held on the 13th of December, which the Internet tells me was the winter solstice during the middle ages. The festival is, at heart, a festival of light designed to honor the darkest moment of the year in the hopes that by doing so we can encourage the light to return. In Sweden, the oldest girl in the family rises early, bakes Lucia buns, wears a crown of lighted candles, and with her siblings, serves her parents buns and sings traditional songs.

Lucas has a special role to play in the Lucia festival. He is the youngest boy in his class, so he will be dressed as a gnome, in an all-red gnome outfit with a pointy hat. The hat I made from scratch out of wool felt. I sewed a little gold star on it for a decoration. Then I went hunting for red sweatpants. Target, K-Mart, Penny’s, and even Wal-Mart do not have red sweatpants. I went to the thrift store and found some that were rather too big, but, for $1.98, possibly not too, too big. I chopped off the extra length on the legs, hemmed them, and then doubled the waistband an inch or so in the back, and stitched it together. I had hoped I might be able to open the elastic waist, cut it, and cinch it tighter, but it was stitched down all the way around. Still, I think now they won’t fall off him.

I volunteered to bake Santa Lucia buns, so that was today’s major project. I am happy to say they are edible! I’m not a big bread-maker. I don’t know how many years it’s been since I made a yeast bread. The kids helped and when they were done, we sampled a couple. Pretty tasty. But it seemed to me the dough did not rise as much as it should have. I probably should have practiced before baking for reals.

We are deep in the festival season now, a time when it seems there is a new festival to be celebrated every other day. The season kicks off with Michaelmas in September, then moseys on to Halloween. After that, it picks up speed, rushing quickly through Martinmas, Thanksgiving, and St. Nicholas’s Day. You might say it’s snowballing, rushing through Advent downhill toward Christmas and the year’s end. I admit I’ve had fewer cycles to give to all of this celebrating because of work, and that is disappointing to me. But one of my daily lessons in life and parenting is I must do what I can, and that is all I can do. It is enough. (I tend to fight this lesson a lot.)

Before Thanksgiving, we went to a St. Martin’s Lantern Walk at Lucas’s school. The children in second grade made their own beautiful lanterns from milk cartons. They whitewashed, painted, and created tissue-paper windows in their lanterns before the big event. On Friday, November 13, about a hundred people gathered in the darkness at school and walked a lovely path through the woods. We came upon a beggar man and St. Martin on his brave charger (a real horse!) in the night. Silently we watched Martin give the beggar a cloak to wear and a sack of food, for Martin is a generous man. The children sang their lantern songs, and carefully carried the lighted lanterns dangling from a stick.

About a half-hour before it was time to go to this festival, I realized that Asher would be sorely disappointed not to have a lantern to carry, too. So I whipped up this one, using a plastic jar and leaves and tissue paper. I was drying it with a hair-dryer just before we walked out the door. Instead of fire, I placed a few glow bracelets inside the lantern and sealed it up tight. The lantern glowed nicely—and safely—which was just as I had hoped. It got bounced around an awful lot!

Now, nearly a month later, the lantern is looking a little worse for wear. If I had had more time, I would have covered the top with a pretty fabric.

Asher's 30-Minute Martinmas Lantern

I should be packing. I’ve spent almost the whole day trying to wrap up my work neatly, so I can go on vacation with a guilt-free conscience. I wasn’t able to tie as pretty a bow on everything as I would have liked, but I still have tomorrow morning, too.

I hope to be on the road by 10:00 a.m. We’ll see. I pulled out the packing list I made for our Bodega Bay vacation at Thanksgiving 2007; it was funny seeing some of the items we had to bring along, like baby food.

We  are all very excited to leave tomorrow! We are hoping to hook up with a few friends while we are near Capitola. I hope the house where we are staying will be cool. It should be!

Our plans for the week off include:

• beach play
• sand castles
• strolling through town
• eating out
• eating in
• Santa Cruz boardwalk
• redwoods
• meeting friends
• flying kites
• naps
• cocktails
• cuddles
• play
• reading
• knitting
• and some working

Sounds heavenly to me, except for that last little part. Wish us luck and safe travels!