Merry Christmas, 2017!
Greetings, Merry Christmas to all!
Christ is Born!
As these before and after pictures show, we celebrated a wonderful Christmas this year.
For both Rebecca and I, this was the first Christmas in a long time (and certainly since we two met) that we both truly enjoyed. As we discussed it, we decided it's the first time we were not running from place to place, no pressure on the feast, and a continuous day not broken up in the midnight and mid morning hours of church services.
This year Rebecca and I found a church we both can call a home church; even Xavier enjoys attending church. This unification in our family brought, I think, much of the peace we felt this year.
We had planned on making the 10:00 AM service today, but late yesterday decided to take in the 7:00 PM Christmas Eve service instead. That gave us a slower moving Christmas Day, and allowed us to focus more on the purpose and worship of Christmas, rather than on getting here on time, getting there on time, etc.
Xavier started the day very early, and twice. Once at midnight and again at 3:00 AM. Excitement did not wake him these times, but congestion. At 3:00, we turned off the humidifier and he came to bed with Mom and Dad. He did not get up until 8:00 AM. This gave we parents some time to ourselves, a nice Christmas present in its own right.
When he did get up, the tree's lights shined brightly and the lights in the evergreen on the mantle shone clear, and the stocking were filled! He was excited.
Yesterday, he was concerned Santa would not fill his stocking because he thought he had been a bad boy. We still do not know where he picked up this thinking; perhaps at school, perhaps he watched Santa Clause is Coming to Town one too many times. Try as we might, we could not convince him his behavior had been "good" and not "bad".
Aunt Chelle drove down from Fort Collins. While we waited for her, we opened stockings. Xavier has never gotten so excited over stockings.
This year he turned the corner on getting it and anticipating stockings and gifts. He got into shopping, even picking out stocking stuffers and other gifts for people. He picked up a turkey baster for Rebecca as a gift; he explained to me "Mama can use this when she cooks." With thought like that, how could I tell him "she already has one"?
He helped wrapping presents, even several of his own (though he did not know that at the time). I think what he really liked was pulling and ripping the tape from the dispenser and applying it to the wrapping paper.
Xavier dug into his stockings (Xavier had two) with gusto, excited by everything he pulled out, even more excited when he continued to discover the stockings held more than he thought. He even watched excitedly as Mama and Daddy opened their stockings.
We decided to call Grandpa Danny before he got too far into his day of celebration. While on the phone, Xavier opened his gifts from Grandpa Danny. Danny gave Xavier a pair of robotic toys and a tool belt with tools. Xavier received both enthusiastically.
Later on in the day, Grandpa Bill arrived for dinner. He brought Xavier a gift as well. It was Xavier's first radio-controlled car (OK, technically, it is infrared controlled). Xavier overflowed with excitement and impatiently bothered us until we got the double A's installed in the remote control.
After Grandpa Danny, we rang up Grandma Penny and let Xavier tear into her gift to him. Grandma Penny always gets Xavier a big Tonka truck, and this year she sent him a front-end loader, something he desperately needed.
Next, we had the annual get Aunt Kathy working on Skype call. We're getting better at this, and it only took 30 minutes this year to get things going. Kathy sent Xavier more TinkerToys.
This excited Xavier. He had to empty the bag of new Tinker Toys into his barrel. After, we had to break down every one of his Tinker Toy structures, including the one he said only yesterday that he never wanted to take apart. The reason for this: Xavier wanted to see if he had enough Tinker Toys to "overfill" (his term) the barrel.
Aunt Chelle gave Xavier two books, one being the sequel to the book which themed Xavier's fourth birthday: Dragons Love Tacos 2: the Sequel. At bed time, we read that book four times and the second book Aunt Chelle gave him we read twice.
At last, we came to the big gift, the glory gift, the gift he has been asking for since early summer, the gift that would eclipse all others, leaving these others as distant memories in its light: the gift from his parents.
Success! We, the parents, gave the glory gift! Or so we thought. Xavier played with the Bruder cement truck to the exclusion of all else. A few hours later, Grandpa Bill would bring a remote controlled Lightning McQueen, snatching away the glory from us completely!
After dinner, and at Xavier's persistent pestering, he and Dad built the robotic spider Grandpa Danny had sent, a feat which took about an hour and a half. Once the spider was up and running, it was hard to say which grandpa stole the glory, Grandpa Bill with his remote controlled car, or Grandpa Danny with the robotic spider. Likely, they both share the glory stealing; both granddads did very well this year in gifting Xavier with what rev's his engine.
Dad got the 1955 SciFi movie Tarantula as one of his gifts this year. As it played on the TV in Middle Earth, Xavier acted out scenes having his own robotic spider chasing cars just like in the movie.
Merry Christmas 2017!