Only 363 Days until Christmas!

I feel like a stranger to Blogspot -- for Christmas, I really would have loved to unwrap one day devoted to catching up on the blogs of all the bloggers I've grown to love.   I miss you all.  Why does time move so quickly these days? 

Anyhow,  I also must skip the details of Christmas here -- the futile search for corn meal on Christmas morning --  (If I leave a check to cover damages, cost of police response time, as well as the cost of the flour would it still be a crime to break into the supermarket?).

...but the dressing was just fine without it.

And what is the difference between dressing and stuffing anyway  or is it a class distinction?

Anyhow -

The grandboys had fun.  And why aren't there real words for expressing gender differences among grandchildren?

And the grandbaby turned into a grandgirl overnight.

And we survived the mandatory family group shot.

Ony 363 days to next Christmas.  And I plan to sleep through New Year's Eve which has become my favorite tradition.

Friday Hometown Shootout - How we celebrate Christmas

This week’s Friday Shoot-Out (New Year’s Eve) theme is a perfect topic for the Bagman and Butler clan! Because this year we are finally doing it right! We are taking all of our typical rituals and enhancing them with total and all encompassing CHAOS!!   And grandchildren.  And more chaos.
BUTLER: “Remember the shootout is not just about your family, Mark…it is about your town, you community.”

BAGMAN: “Boring!”

Okay, a quick note on community – which since I work in the government sector, can be handled in one word – “Political Correctness.”

BUTLER: “That’s two words.”

Let’s move on. I really don’t want to get on my soapbox about how stupid it is to avoid offending anybody by saying “Christmas” or “Chanukah” or “Kwanzaa” or “Eid al-Adha” or “Los Posados” -- and insist with true political paranoid correctness in saying “Happy Holidays.” Blah!

BAGMAN: “I thought you were going to move on…”

Sorry. Got sidetracked. And so, on to Christmas with Bagman, Butler, Karen, Brian, Melody, Conner, Noah, Daisy, Annabelle, Bill, and Snowball…

First of all, we usually put up the tree during the Thanksgiving Holiday. Many years ago, we decided to stop killing innocent trees and bought an artificial tree.

BAGMAN: “Liar! You just got lazy and didn’t want to go tree hunting, and get sap on your hands and have to vacuum up pine needles!”

Not that it is much easier to assemble the artificial tree! This is always my job. I straighten the artificial limb that have become twisted in the box, set them up on the pole and then hang the lights. This year, as some of you know, I avoided the completion of this job by falling off the stepladder and breaking my arm.

This is the point where initial decorating stopped for a while

But Melody risked the heights and  finished the lights.

This years tree with the bone breaking couch in the foreground

We have been doing so many new things with the kids that we never got around to adding all the deocrations and baubles from last year,

Last year's tree



We also usually decorate the entire house with tons of decorations that we have accumulated over years. Gifts, heirlooms, memories, little towns that light up, outdoor lights that twinkle from all our bushes.   We bring them from the crowded shed to the porch and unpack them from there. 

From the year I got my black belt

That year I just would have broken the couch in two!

Karen and I always hang these together in the front of the tree

Brian tries to convince us NOT to hang this one

And this year, his wish came true.  Because we have been doing busy things and baking cookies and playing with kids and we got the decoration boxes to the porch...

But not any further.

This is how we will celebrate Christmas this year

But we will have a ball.  There are tons of presents for Noah and Conner.  Some from yard sales since Karen has an eagle eye of cheap treasures and has been collecting and hiding toys all year.  Of course, it is less than 24 hours before Christmas and we haven't wrapped anything yet!

And the other problem will be figuring out where to put the new toys since --

...the old toys have already taken over the house.

I guess that what I always heard is true...Grandparents exist to spoil grandchildren!
The other thing we have traditionally done on Christmas Eve is gone to a Midnight Service…and fortunately the church we attend (a bit infrequently) is progressively customer-friendly enough to have an early Midnight Service around 6:00 p.m. so we can be awake for it. Then we drive around looking at Christmas lights. Usually we go to the James Island Park’s Festival of Lights – which is an incredible light display that I have never photographed because I always seem to be driving the car through the two mile light maze. And since the Friday Shootout is today and today is Christmas Eve, if we actually do go this year and if I can convince someone else to drive so I can shoot it, it will have to be an additional post later.

I’m not counting on it.   From our progress so far, we'll still be wrapping presents.

Christmas

Just a couple of Christmas shots. 

This year, I made a real effort to just enjoy Christmas morning without putting a lens between myself and the festivities.  In past years I have obsessively videoed or photographed the unwrapping ritual and have missed the entire thing and ended up with a ton of boring shots of people tearing paper.  So I left the camera on the shelf for the day and enjoyed it more.  Although there was one moment that I wished I had caught.  But a small sacrifice for just being part of everything instead of acting like an uninvolved photojournalist. 

But I did take out the camera at the request of the group for a group shot.

Thank goodness for Photoshop.   I took five or six versions and this was the only one that had everyone's eyes open.  Except the original had one small flaw. 

But I was able to find another one in which Thomas was behaving himself and, because I had used a tripod, was able fairly easily to replace him for the photo at the top. 

Then I took the camera out one other time.  It was also Conner's first birthday -- well, a couple of days off but close enough.  We had the bright idea to give him a cake just for his own fun and exploration.  He was happy but a tad confused at having a huge sweet thing in front of him with nobody feeding him.  Just let him do what he wants!

"Fingerpainting"

"But how do I get it in my mouth?"

"Nana to the rescue."

"Maybe I'll stick to the painting part.  Not sure about the taste."

Friday Hometown Shootout - Christmas Decorations

Whew!

I wasn't sure I'd make this week...but I'm driven.  This shootout has become important to me...seeing everyone else's work (even if I don't get to it until Monday!)...and putting in my two cents.  Anyhow, I didn't have time to go out and shoot lights downtown at night, or the creches at Mepkin Abbey...or the James Island Festival of Lights or...

So yesterday, I figured I'd just focus on the tree in our livingroom.  At first it was blurry but Bagman said, "what the heck!" and opened the shutter and swung the camera like a madman, singing "Deck the halls and I'll call Holly...Fa la la la..."

Then Butler, not even bothering to correct Bagman's lyrics, went and got the tripod. .

Then the three of us got to talking and decided to tell you about some of the ornaments that we always put on it.   Of course, we always have to hang the ones that Brian made when he was a little boy. 

With the help of teachers, of course.

And below is one of the seven or eight hand-crocheted ornaments that Karen's Grandmother made long ago.  Brian's great-grandmother.  Conner's great-great-grandmother.  Boggles the mind to think about it.  Laveda.  She made the best pound cake in the world.  If she knew I'd be coming, she always made two. 

They used to be white.  And we'll hang them until they are just dark brown strings.

 

The there is this more modern ornament.

Karen and Brian got me this the year I won my black belt in Tae Kwon Do

I tell people that I chop the tree down with my bare hands.

Actually it's an artificial tree.

The ornament above is one of two police officer decorations that were given to me by a wonderful man, the deputy in charge of the Pittsburgh Police Department EAP.  He was a recovering alcoholic motorcycle cop who used to refer cops to the treatment center I ran in Roanoke, VA.  Believe it or not, his name was Jack Daniels and in his wilder drinking days, he drove a police motorcycle, lights flashing and siren wailing off a bridge because he didn't remember that it was not finished.  But he survived.  We became good friends and he helped alot of alcoholic cops get sober.  He passed away several years ago, but I always honor his decorations -- I place one on each side of the tree, facing out, keeping guard.

Then there is the dove.  This was the first ornament Karen and I bought after we were married.  For several years it was actually our "tree topper" because we couldn't afford to buy an illuminated star.  We always put this on the tree together.  It's a nice tradition but a bit of a challenge too trying to attach its tiny wire legs with 16 fingers, four thumbs, and two brains working together.

Some years ago we got a small box of 6 hearts...one year we hung two of them together on the same hook and we've turned that into an annual tradition as well.

This year, the most meaningful ornament was:

Well...there is no photo above because Brian and Melody took it for their tree and I didn't think to photograph it first.  But several years ago we found a little cocker spaniel figure that had the same color markings as Sally, our cocker who many of you have met in past posts.  Many of you also know that we had to say goodbye to Sally this year, almost 18 years old.  But when we took out the Sally ornament from the box, we were tearfully stunned.  None of us remembered -- but the little ceramic cocker spaniel had angel wings.  Needless to say it also now has some tear stains. 

I'll probably take a picture when we visit Brian and Melody and post it as a late addition to this shoot.