Even going to the grocery store is a public service these days. The twins are universally cute, smiling, and finally poseable enough to take some really good pictures.
Our house doesn't have a chimney on which to hang our stockings with care, so we make do. Grammy, Grandpa, Mommy, and Daddy have handmade stockings I made years ago, but my kids don't. Even Ally kitty has a stocking with her name on it, but not my kids. In January when all three kids will finally be on an afternoon nap schedule, I'm going to get my act together. I wanted their stockings to all be done for our first Christmas as a family of five, but I spent the three discretionary hours I had last month taking a bath and reading Dare to Discipline.
Our early fears of Devon tipping over the Christmas tree haven't been realized, although he has removed most of the ornaments he can reach. It's pretty much just a lit tree now, a hardy Fraser Fir that sheds needles profusely because it was trucked in from five states away.
Of course, what the area lacks in Christmas Tree Farms it certainly makes up in poinsettias. The one in our entry way is four feet wide. In Lexington I'd spy a nice one and buy it only to have the cold drive home almost kill it. This season I've already bought three and they're all blooming away in the warm weather. When Christmas is over, I'm thinking of planting them outside. Hah!
It's 84 degrees here, and when I complain to my friends about being too hot I get NO sympathy. All our Christmas decorations survived the move, although I spent a month looking for the Caucasian Holy Family. While in high school I received beautiful, fragile, and probably valuable china figurines of Mary, Joseph, and Baby Jesus. Every year when I set them up I marvel at their blonde-haired, blue-eyed, white-skinned perfection, and then wonder why their makers didn't have a creative vision that was, oh, EVEN JUST A BIT MIDDLE EASTERN!!!!! They were a gift from my Grandma Annabelle (yes, as in Carrie Annabelle), the kindest, least prejudiced person, and it was the kind of thing I'd like to pass down someday. I was relieved when Devon came out of the twins' closet one day holding aloft a reindeer tin that contained their intact, bone china selves. Now I need to find an out of reach place where we can safely enjoy their white-as-the-driven-snow radiance.
Our workaday manger scene is getting heavy use these days. It's a Fontanini, a brand I recommend not just because it's reassuringly culturally accurate. The figurines are made out of durable molded plastic, which can be very comforting when Devon rounds the corner with Gaspar in one hand and the camel in the other. Don't worry about the safety of the Baby Jesus; I'm following the Keathley tradition of putting Jesus in the manger for the first time while reading the Luke 2 story on Christmas Eve. Until then, he's enjoying our anticipation from a teacup on a high shelf.
Devon's having fun acting out the Christmas story as Mommy narrates using phrases from the King James. I know that we're all enlightened now and use NASB, NIV, or even the Southern Baptist favorite the Holman Christian Standard, but I prefer to recite the nostalgic words straight from my childhood.
Mommy: Those are the shepherds!
Devon: Sepperds! There! (pointing)
Mommy: They're abiding in the fields keeping watch over their flocks by night!
Devon: Seep! (picks up the Lambs to the Slaughter and puts one in his mouth)
Mommy: Lo! An ANGEL OF THE LORD came upon them, and the GLORY OF THE LORD shone around them, and then they were SORE AFRAID!
Devon: (tips over all the shepherds) Oh Noooooooooooooooo!
For weeks Devon would only take the sheep out of the creche; I aptly nicknamed them the Lambs to the Slaughter because their presence protected the peace and tranquility of the rest of the tableau.
No, Ally kitty has not seen his star in the East and come to worship the Baby Jesus. She's always been a little confused by the manger. It started when she was a kitten and we laid towels on the furniture to show here where she could lay so she could shed away on a towel and our couch could be hair-free. Every year we roll out a towel, arrange the creche and figures, and have to shoo Ally away every day or so.
Funny, this year it hasn't been so much of a problem!
Since we barely finished sending the twins' baby announcements out in November, we're probably skipping a picture mailer, but we did take a really nice picture.
For those of you wondering about the unfamiliar person, that's what my brother looks like when he smiles in pictures. Stoic Tim didn't make it this year, thanks to the other new person. He and his girlfriend Bojana Jovanovic were able to come out and spend last weekend with us. Uncle Tim and Auntie Bojana made quite a stir with the small set, taking Devon to Walmart and buying him a dozen balls and a Monster Truck that makes him turn purple and quiver with delight every time you turn it on.
There are many more pictures in this series that didn't make the post. Devon, not one to pass up a chance to perform, thought it was hilarious to lift his shirt and display his "Pufferfish Tummy" every time Daddy set the flash on the tripod and dashed for the picture. Mommy tried to keep him distracted by singing "Father Abraham Had Many Sons", an appropriate song because the "right arm-left arm" motions prevented the tummy shenanigans.
White Christmases, fir trees, chimneys, and reindeer are nice, but they're not spiritually significant. Why did Perry Como have to dream of a "White Christmas"? He lived for years on Jupiter Island, about thirty miles south of Vero Beach.
It's ironic to think that spending our first Christmas in Florida in our shorts and bare feet brings us closer in a way to the very first one. Christians don't know the time of year that Jesus was really born, and the Middle East probably doesn't get many feet of snow and subzero temperatures at any time of year. Baby Jesus came to parents who were hot and tired from travel, surrounded by sand, and far from home, all things we can identify with given our past year.
NOT that I'm comparing us to the Holy Family, but it makes me grateful for their journey and what it means to us. We share their story with our children, mostly too young to understand.
That's okay. There's always next year.
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