Christmas Day 2024

 I think this is the first Christmas Day since we've had kids that we did not have to leave the house. Michael had to be at church to say the 6:30am mass, but he was home long before any kids were awake. So we had the whole day to loaf about, open presents, and eat way too much food.

These are their "I can't believe Michael Jr is STILL sleeping" faces. To be fair, it was probably 10 or 10:30 already.

Agnes and Edie had to give Dema their presents for her first thing.

Agnes was in my lap while I was looking at friends' Christmas pictures on facebook (because by this time apparently all their kids had woken up and opened presents already) and she saw a picture of all the kids in another family sitting in front of the tree with their stockings, and insisted we have a copy-cat picture. Obviously I was not going to tell her no.

I don't know if she'll ever be less excited for opening presents.

Edie has an equal amount of excitement for opening presents and for watching other people open presents she gifted.

Some stocking gifts! Agnes has been jealous of Edie's dancing fans lately so they each got a couple more.

Catherine and Mary have been complaining that they might need to move out if Agnes keeps eating snacks out of metal bowls with metal utensils, so I got each of them a quieter small snack bowl. 

Catherine has a massive straw cup (easily hundreds of ounces, according to family lore, and nicknamed "the brick") that she uses every day. Agnes, Edie, and Gussie got smaller, more manageable versions.

This is Edie's "someone is about to open a present I made or bought" face.

This is Agnes's reaction to every single present.

Agnes bounces around the room offering her professional gift un-wrapping services to anyone who has a gift in hand.

But she was extra excited about this one. Agnes drew Edie in the kid-gift-exchange name drawing, and found a musical box snow globe while out thrifting with Dema one day.

I promise she's not trying to steel it back from Edie, she just really really really wants to show her how it works.

Grampy T apparently needed a lot of gift-unwrapping help.

Gussie has to enjoy his presents as he opens them.

(We're all laughing at Gussie not opening the rest of his gifts).

This is Agnes's face when you decline her gift-unwrapping services.

Most fun gift of the morning? Due to their fairly constant comments on how he eats a bowl of ice cream every single night, Michael got each of the kids their own box of ice cream. It was hilarious watching their faces as he was handing out the wrapped ice cream cartons and they realized the presents were cold.

Phone pics interlude. I asked Agnes if she would sculpt a new wise man to replace the one in our nativity scene that was broken a couple years ago. This is the result, and it is even more amazing in real life. It has since been painted gold all over.

Agnes and Edie insisted Grampy T needed a (rather too small) santa hat.

Agnes helped me make the cream cheese danishes for breakfast.

The kids spent the rest of the day mostly hanging out and enjoying presents. Mary had to read the entire manual of her sewing machine, Catherine printed out dozens of pictures from her phone with her mini printer, Gussie got his new bow strung up with some help from Grampy T, Edie and Agnes have to wait for a little better weather before hanging their new silks outside but there was a lot of fan dancing and hydrating with their new straw cups in the mean time, and Michael spents four or more hours putting together a logo Bugatti while dreaming of the road bike he'll buy some day when his road bike fund is full.

The kids were a little unsettled by the fact that we didn't rush off to Grandma's after flying through present opening and Christmas lunch and said it didn't quite feel like Christmas yet, but we will remedy that in a couple days. 

Christmas Eve 2024

While our Christmas tree goes up the week before Christmas so we can put the O Antiphon ornaments on it throughout the last week of Advent, we don't decorate it in full until Christmas Eve. This year instead of people teetering on tall stools I just brought in the ladder for putting on the star and decorating the top. Edie took charge of getting the star on the tip top, while Agnes danced around.

Agnes also had to climb the ladder to put ornaments on the top part of the tree. Eventually we convinced her to take off her heeled boots to make climbing feel safer.

Mary is great at ornament triage, sifting through the giant box for good ornaments to hang up (even on this tree, they don't all fit).

Catherine was crocheting a baby blanket for church, and the boys mostly observed, although I think Mary might have shamed them into hanging a few ornaments.

See, Agnes still has the boots on and is looking very unsure. She doesn't actually love climbing ladders, but if Edie does it, she does it.

Edie and Agnes convinced Dema to sew them new stocking this year because all the other kids have big stretchy stockings that can double as a hat, but theirs were non-stretchy material and could not be worn on the head. Dema fixed them up nicely.

These two are always looking at me like this.

After tree decorating and some dinner, I put Agnes and Edie to bed in preparation for midnight mass. Gussie and Mary had to be at church early so Gussie could prepare for singing his solo chant during Matins and Mary would be there in time for choir rehearsal. I was fighting a very unpleasant head cold so Michael took Gussie before 9 so I could sleep for an hour, then Mary and I got there in time to see Gussie sing for Matins. He has been singing with the schola for vespers occasionally but hasn't done anything like this before. Christmas Matins was two full hours of singing, plus his solo chant, and honestly he absolutely crushed it. He really did a great job and I hope he keeps singing.

Here is the video of Gussie's solo:

I don't have pictures of Mary singing because she sings in the loft with the choir. Since Michael and I were there early, Catherine stayed home and woke up Agnes and Edie at 11 and brought them and Michael Jr to church for midnight mass. Agnes slept in the pew the whole time, Gussie and Michael Jr served, and Mary sang. Since mass was about two hours long I restricted the parking lot hang-out afterwards to just a few minutes, so we were all home and in bed by about 2:30am. A great start to Christmas!