Cookies

This is part of AndreaClaire's Christmas Memory Challenge series.

I loved making Christmas cookies. I remember the table covered in flour as we rolled and cut gingerbread. Yum. My mom made Forgotten Cookies and there was always a box of shortbread under the tree from my great-grandmother.

Gramma Ross died just before J was born, but her memory lives on in her cookies. Last year I think I made three pounds of butter worth of shortbread. J is now the chief gingerbread cutter-outer. I make my mom's Forgotten Cookies but I also make sugar cookies and spice cookies and who knows, maybe this year I'll make some thing new too...


Edited after Christmas: I made one batch of gingerbread, one batch of shortbread and half a recipe of sugar cookies. That's it. No one got cookies under the tree this year...maybe next year!

Setting out the nativity

This is part of AndreaClaire's Christmas Memory Challenge series.

We didn't have a nativity scene until I was, oh, eight maybe? I can't remember when, but I do remember getting it. My grandmother was a garage sale fiend. If we spent the night on Friday, Saturday we'd get up and pile into her car and go garage saling with her. She'd give us a couple of dollars to spend on WHATEVER we wanted. And this day, I'm sure it was mid-summer, I insisted I needed a nativity scene. It was banged up and chipped, but it was mine.

For a few years I tried to make the three wise men march across the living room to the "stable," but it didn't work very well.

I don't know if my parents still have the sad, sad nativity scene, but we pulled out the one Alex's parents gave us a few years ago and set it up tonight. J had a great time helping me unwrap all of the animals and people. She was not thrilled that there is no baby Jesus yet, but she'll get over it...

The Office Christmas Party

This is part of AndreaClaire's Christmas Memory Challenge series.

Uh, so this was supposed to post yesterday morning, but I've been having major issues with the auto-post function in the last few weeks (blogger bug? operator error) and I didn't think to check yesterday to see if it posted... And it didn't. So here it is a day late.

When I worked in London we didn't really have one Christmas party - we had multiple Christmas gatherings for various reasons. Mostly because we jumped at the chance to have a little party for ANY reason!

I moved back to Vancouver and began working at the dark cave in the corporate world. I had only been there for a few months the first Christmas - the invitation said semi-formal, but the staff definition of semi-formal was interesting...I went and got a new outfit just for the party, but probably half of the people looked like they came in their work clothes. T-shirts and jeans. Not suits.

The next two years I got to organize the party...and I had way more fun! It was a long, long, long night, but it was fun. The last party I organized was the best of the three for sure...we rented a whole bar, the food and custom drinks were awesome and bang on, the company paid for cab rides home...I left almost last because I was the holder of the cab card...

And of course the next day, because the party was ALWAYS on a Thursday night, everyone was a little under the weather, but the CFO usually arranged for the greasiest pizza in town to arrive just before noon.

Then I left the corporate world for the public sector. And my boss was Jewish. And there were only four of us in the office. And parties turned into holiday lunches. At nice restaurants. YUM. Two years ago, I moved to another department. Last year there were only two people in that department and my boss was on vacation for the month of December. This year we've grown to three and today we're heading out for a long lunch and an early weekend.

Happy Friday!

O Christmas Tree

This is part of AndreaClaire's Christmas Memory Challenge series.

It's almost time for the tree...almost...

I loved tree decorating day at our house. Sometime the tree came from the woods by my uncle's house, sometimes from a neighbourhood tree farm, once from the hill in parents' backyard, and sometimes the tree just appeared.

There were two big boxes of decorations, one was the box for the yellow vacuum my parents had for years. The decorations were carefully stored in the big box - it was like a puzzle - my mom knew how to put the small boxes back just so, but it was so much more fun for us to take the boxes out. There were the gold teardrops, the glass bells, the red glass baubles, the sugar plums, the scary santas, the little angels, the very special homemade decorations we started making when we were, oh, two years old.

There was also cheese (not that I ate it, but it was important), crackers, maybe antipasto, veggies, egg nog in special glasses with green crests and metal animals (chocolate milk for egg nog haters like me).

The lights went on first. Then the decorations...most of the decorations got placed on the tree with a story.

Now that I have my own family, we're following some of the same traditions. We don't have a lot of the special homemade decorations...yet...we do have a craft loving three year old. We have a couple of boxes of decorations and they have come from all over the world, so there are stories. We have treats and goodies - Alex gets his egg nog out of a carton, not the real stuff like my dad made because I'm still an egg nog hater. Unless there's enough rum in it to make me forget it's egg nog.

The tree goes up on Saturday...I don't know who is more excited, me or J!

The Best Christmas Tree...ever

This is part of AndreaClaire's Christmas Memory Challenge series.

This was the happiest Christmas tree we ever had. Everyone who walked into the living room smiled (or laughed) when they saw it.

Tomorrow? More about Christmas trees.

Love Actually

This is part of AndreaClaire's Christmas Memory Challenge series.

In 2003 I was dragged to see some movie I hadn't even heard about. Kelsey might have actually seen it once before she made me go with her. I wasn't convinced...and then the movie started. And it immediately became one of my all-time favourite movies. Ever.

It made me miss London and I sent hours daydreaming about how I could get on a flight and go to London before Christmas for a visit.

Tonight, as part of our annual holiday traditions, my sisters are coming over to watch Love Actually. I can't wait for 8:00 tonight!

[Other favourite Christmas movies? The Sound of Music. Little Women. The Snowman. Miracle of 34th Street (the original one) Rudolph. Mickey's Christmas Carol.]

Choir

This is part of AndreaClaire's Christmas Memory Challenge series.

When I was a kid, I sang in the school choir. And every year we sang somewhere, not just at the Christmas concert in the school gym. Sometimes we sang in the mall on risers in front of the horrible fountain (that's not there anymore) by the Santa line up. Sometimes we sang at the big, week long Christmas concert at the Evangel Tabernacle.

One year my mom went away to England and Ireland for three weeks just before Christmas. It was an exciting three weeks. We had a calendar filled with notes and stickers and stuff to count down when she was going to be back. She and my dad and the babysitters (I think there were three, maybe four?) and probably my grandma had a well coordinated schedule and plan. My dad was in charge of doing our hair in the morning. We were eight and four. One morning, when we were already running late, my younger sister, Teamhardcore, stuck her tongue to the metal stair railing. It was cold that winter. As in it went down to -27.

Anyway, the point of this is that year the choir sang at the Evangel Tabernacle. We all had to wear black pants and white shirts and the choir director provided us with red bows to wear around our necks. They weren't exactly bow ties, more like big hair bows pinned just below our collars. Someone, likely one of the three of us, tugged on one of the tails of the bow. My dad tried to fix it. But I had a straggly ribbon instead of a bow. And we sang Mary's Boy Child. And it was on TV. And I was at the end of the row and my straggly bow is glaringly obvious. And I'm sure my mom and dad still have that tape.

But I loved singing in the choir. Loved it.

The Hug Bug and Santa

On Saturday, we took J up to the local mall to catch a Charlotte Diamond concert and then visit Santa.

Charlotte Diamond was awesome…J sang along to all of the Christmas songs and some of the other songs and really wanted to take a Hug Bug home with her. It was so much fun!

After the concert we wandered down to the other end of the mall so that J could visit Santa - we had no idea what her reaction was going to be. Last year we didn't go and when she was one, she went twice - and we had mixed reactions.

This year, J saw Santa and was so excited. He walked past us to get to his chair and she started waving and calling his name. Luckily there were only five people in front of us, so J didn't have to wait too long...I'm not sure she would have been able to contain herself.

She brought her That’s Not My Santa book to show Santa. Because she didn’t get to show it to him at the Santa Claus Parade. You know how it is.

She checked to make sure his beard was real.

Smiled for the camera (sort of).

And then had a very serious conversation about what she might like for Christmas…and the kids at Children’s Hospital…Visiting Santa was a by donation fundraiser for Children’s and we had explained that to J. She asked Santa for a watch and then decided to ask Santa to make all the kids better before Christmas…we were quite proud of our little girl.

Visiting the man in red

This is part of AndreaClaire's Christmas Memory Challenge series.

Orchard Park Mall had a courtyard outside of Boppers (that was the name of Mariposa's little sister, right?) and that was where Santa set up every year when I was a kid. There was also a Santa at the Capri, but he wasn't as good...at all...

I don't know if we went every year, but I remember going more than once. We'd get dressed in our best holiday outfits, get our bangs trimmed, and head down to stand in line to ask Santa to bring us something on our Christmas lists.

There were years of three smiles, years with some tears and I'm pretty sure there was at least one year with only two kids (me and one sister...) and possibly a year or two with my mom.

Oh Santa Claus pictures...

The Lights Go On

This is part of AndreaClaire's Christmas Memory Challenge series.

As a parent of a three year old, I am particularly aware of the excitement of Christmas this year. I didn't get the limits my parents put on Christmas at our house until I was in my late teens and while I understood in theory why certain things didn't start until certain dates or ended by certain dates, it became crystal clear when I had a kid of my own.

My cousin (fine, second cousin three times removed, upside down and sideways. or something) Melissa is the same age as I am. We grew up together. We were in the same classes at school. She was one of my best friends. And her birthday was on December 10. And every year my sisters and I looked forward to December 10. Not just because I, inevitably, got to go to a birthday party, but because December 10 was a magic date at our house.

That was the day the Christmas lights went on. They were usually up for a number of weeks before that, but that was the day the outside lights went on.

Why December 10th? Well, my mom figured it was far enough from Christmas that we wouldn't feel like we were missing out, but close enough to Christmas to actually be Christmas season and close enough that her little darlings wouldn't drive her totally mad with excitement before the big day!

When do the lights go on at our house? Ummm...well, we don't have outside lights because I don't think they're allowed, but this year I might just get out the fairy lights for the living room. We'll see.