The Santa Update

We had pancakes with Santa last Saturday at a youth fundraiser at our church. The kids were totally excited about telling him their lists - especially the little one, who only refers to him as "Santa Paws" and refuses to be corrected when we try to tell him his real name.

As soon as we got there, he went straight to Santa. I had to stop him from climbing up on his lap with the kid that was already there talking to him. He meant business. The object of his desire that day? An elephant - a fluffy elephant.

Though he has consistently given the elephant answer for a few days, he's also told various other askers of the question these things.
- A shootin' gun (told to the pediatrician)
- A talkin' Santa (told to his preschool teacher)
- A Batman shirt that's grey like skin (told to me and Dave. Sidenote: I assume this means a 1960's Batman costume rather than the morbid image of grey skin that first popped into my head.)

Big sister decided to eat pancakes first while she built up the courage to talk to Santa. Her list this year includes the following.
- A robe
- Clothes
- A new Barbie

Either she's struggling a bit in the creativity department, or she is very content with what she already has. She already got a tricked out Barbie Escalade at our first Christmas celebration of the year.  It will transport six Barbies to and fro at one time, and she's been making good use of it. There's no doubt that she can entertain herself for hours with Barbies, but I've already decided that for every new Barbie that comes into our house this season, an old one has to go. We have so many that we're starting to get duplicates. It's shameful.

I've struck a deal with ole' Santa Paws this year - if he will give the Barbies and giant mammals to some other lucky family, I'll let him come again next year. Otherwise, he gets the axe.

'Tis the Season

...to be busy. Fa la la la la, la la la la.

And sick. 'Tis the season to be busy and sick.

Since I last wrote, the entire house broke out in a stomach virus. We fell like dominoes. It was almost as bad as the really hideous one we all had in 2011 while our house was being remodeled, but not quite. The good thing about everyone being sick is the rest. It puts a complete stop to the busy, and that's usually what we all need. Granted, we watched way too much TV last week, but we rested.

I'm struggling to keep my Christmas focus. There's the usual holiday distraction, but it seems to be increasing as the kids get older. The toy commercials, the talk about Santa everywhere, the appearance of an elf on the kindergarten hall - those things make our mission to keep Christ at the center of our Christmas celebration seem daunting sometimes.

Someone gave us an elf a few years ago, but we use it to decorate the tree. That's not how it was intended, I know, but my children haven't known otherwise. This is the year when they realize that it's supposed to do things.

We had this conversation on the way to school Tuesday morning.

Ella: There's an elf on the shelf in the kindergarten hall.
Me: (filled with dread) Really? What does it do?
Ella: It watches us and tells Santa if we've been naughty or nice.
Me: (filled with dread) What happens if you're naughty?
Ella: I don't know.
Me: (slightly less dread) What happens if you're nice?
Ella: I don't know.

I sighed with relief; she still didn't know the whole elf deal.

Yesterday, I found out that the elves at Gigi's house had been moving around. And, they have names. Now ours has a name: Candy Cane. As I choked on incoherent syllables while she told me all of this, she reassured me yet again: "Our elf just stays on the Christmas tree like it's supposed to. I guess Gigi's elves just aren't trained right." Yes, yes, that's the reason. We don't need any pesky elves running all around the house while we aren't looking, making more mess than there already is and creeping out little children who can switch from fascinated to terrified in .2 seconds.

Seriously people, all of this elf on the shelf nonsense is confusing them. I've already had to explain that real elves don't make toys, they forge unbreakable swords and impenetrable armor. They live in the trees of Rivendell and they fight against forces of evil. And sometimes they might be enslaved to serve wizard families, but even house elves can change the course of history. Gah.

'Tis also the season to make a Christmas list, and they've gone above and beyond to make a shared list.

Luke: (randomly) And I want an elephant from the zoo.
Me: An elephant?! You think our house is big enough for an elephant?
Ella: No, but it is big enough for a cow or a pony. . .
Luke: And some bunnies!
Me: Where are we going to keep a cow, a pony, and some bunnies?
Ella: In the back yard.

When I got in the car this morning, they had also been discussing adding a pig to that list. At least we reached consensus that an elephant is out of the question.

In all seriousness, it's not that I'm declaring "No fun here!" on Santa and his elves - I'm not. Santa leaves a gift for each of them and they get to visit him and tell him their lists. They are allowed to believe in him and in magical elves. Who doesn't want to believe that? It's just that there's SO MUCH Santa and elf business that I feel like we're holding back a tidal wave that's threatening to wash away the manger and it's tiny newborn king. I don't want that to happen because when the truth comes out in a few years, there needs to be some magic left in the season. I want a miracle baby who was sent to earth to save us to be that magic. If they can believe that Santa is real and that stuffed elves are mischievous, they can believe that the most precious gift of all is the Baby Jesus, but it's my job to make sure that is part of the Christmas magic.

"For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be the sign to you: You will find a Babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger." - Luke 2: 11-12

Day 25 - Lunchtime.

Because Christmas is about Jesus, we celebrate him on Christmas day with cake and gifts, as is proper for a birthday party.

It has four layers because we couldn't reach consesus
 on a flavor this year; thus, two cakes in one.

We don't actually have lunch on Christmas day because we have late breakfast and early supper, but we do usually eat birthday cake in the middle of the day.

Earlier this season, while we wrapped presents for our family, Ella asked me if we should leave a gift for baby Jesus. I ran with it.

Me: Hmm, I like the idea but how would it work?
Ella: We could just leave it by the manger set.
Me: We could. Do you think we've already given Jesus a present this year?
Ella: (head shaking, eyes questioning)
Me: Well, you know that the baby Jesus was born as God's gift to us so that he could grow up and die on the cross to save us from our sins, right?
Ella: (Nodding affirmation)
Me: And one of the things that Jesus teaches us is to take care of other people who need things, like the little girl we filled a shoebox for and the kids we bought stocking stuffers for? I think that by taking care of other people, we have already given Jesus a present.
Ella: (Thoughtful, then decisive) No, I don't think it works that way.

She has always been very literal. She wanted to leave an actual gift by the manger for the baby Jesus, just like the wise men did, and that's okay because the seed is planted. At the suggestion of her preschool teacher, we did create an ornament for our tree to give her something tangible that represents her gift to Jesus.

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’" - Matthew 25:40

Day 22 - Decoration

Dave's Santa House

This little ceramic house belonged to Dave's mother. He remembers it from Christmas when he was a little boy. When he studies it now, I can see a whisper of the little boy who loved it so much then. It represents his mother and the traditions that made him love Christmas.



We acquired this house while cleaning out Nana's storage building over the summer. He had not seen it since he was 13, but he remembered the little tree with lights and he searched and searched until he found it. After his mom died, Nana carried on the Christmas traditions - gathering the family together to eat and celebrate. I know that he misses his mother during Christmas more than any other time, and I know that this first Christmas without Nana is hard.






Inside the house.



I'm glad we have this little house that reminds him of his boyhood and youthful anticipation and the love of his mother and grandmother.

 



Day 21 - Tree

I always let the kids help me decorate the Christmas tree. I'm not obsessive about the placement of ornaments, and quite frankly, I'm glad to have help with the chore. That's right, it's a chore. I love having the tree up and glowing; I hate the putting it up part, probably even more than the taking it down part.

We have a fake tree, so I do the assembly - and this year I even had help with that because they think it's fun - and put on the lights. Then I find all of the kid-safe ornaments and untangle them while they fight over sort them into piles. Then they put them on. Sometimes it's haphazard, sometimes they are all clumped together in one place, and last year they were sorted by color. I do not care as long as they get on the tree.

This was Luke's first year to really understand what was happening, and he fully embraced the decorating. This is his branch.

Luke's branch of the Christmas tree.

He put all of his ornaments in a one-foot radius around this branch. If I were an obsessive tree decorator, we would have issues because he knows exactly where he put each ornament and, should one happen to be moved, he loses his head about it. We had approximately 10 minutes of hostage-crisis negotiations when Ella took his Pooh ornament to put on the little tree in her room. Pooh was returned safely to the branch with the rest of his crew in exchange for Cinderella's castle.

Day 19 - Something beginning with 's'

Ella's Fingerprint Snowmen, 2011

We have a lot of kid art in our house. A lot. They bring home things from school every day. They make things at home all the time. It's stacking up. Were I a hoarder, we would be buried alive under the kid art. Alas, I squished my hoarding tendencies during the Moving Years (i.e. college) because it's easier to move up and down three flights of stairs when you have less junk. Thus, I cannot keep all of the kid art.

I have a series of steps for stacking organizing it.

1. Each day I clean out their folders and put the art on the fridge in their designated artwork magnet clips. They like to see it and Luke likes to breathe life into his, chasing his sister with his letter B bumble bee or whatever. Sometimes Ella, nerd child that she is, needs to finish her work at home.

2. When the magnets start to fall off from the weight of it, I move the art to the shelf in the top of the hall closet where I keep their Keep Boxes.

3. When the pile on the top of the shelf starts to avalanche, I sort through it and throw away the things that I deem unworthy of saving and put the rest in the Keep Box.

4. Eventually, when the lid stops fitting on the Keep Box, I'll sort again and throw away more things unworthy of saving.

It has to be a process because it's hard for me to throw away their work. They are so proud of it, even Luke, who has so much help with his right now. He's so proud that he tells me, "I made a [insert letter of the week craft here]! Ms. Tristie help me!" (His teacher's name is Kristie. He can't say the "k" sound yet.) So, I drag it out in multiple steps, knowing that it's easier to throw away glued bits of paper and paint blots that are unicorns when some time has passed from the making of them.

In the end, I know I'll only keep the things that have their hand or footprints on them, or their very own handwriting. I'll keep the things that mark their development and remind me of their innocence.

Day 18 - Makes you feel merry.

Trans-Siberian Orchestra

Nothing makes me feel merrier during the holiday season than electric guitar mixed up with my Christmas carols. 

I've been a Trans-Siberian Orchestra fan for a long time, and, unsatisfied with the frequency that Birmingham's Christmas Station plays their music, I've owned their CDs (yes, people still use CDs) for a few years. Except for the occasional request from Ella to listen to Wizards of Winter in the middle of the summer, I limit myself to listening to them during the holiday season. Until this year, I had never seen them live and I've been really, really wanting to.

In an act of redemption for the Great Garbage Can Debacle of 2010, and also as an act of love, Dave gave me tickets for my birthday this year. It was amazing. Feeling the music vibrating through the soles of my feet and straight to the middle of my chest made me giddy with the love of it.

I've always loved loud music, and I find that I turn to the loudest of music when my heart and mind need scrubbing. Somehow the drums and the guitars help me process the chaos and ugliness that gets caught up there so that I can let it go. I think that's why I love TSO so much. It's loud enough to chase away the end-of-year soul mold while also celebrating a season that I find refreshing.

You can keep your Jingle Bell Rock, just give me O Come All Ye Faithful on the the electric guitar.

Day 4 - Black + White

I chose the black and white words of my Bible for day four. 'Tis the season to remember that I celebrate more than the winter solstice and fictional characters in December; I also celebrate the birth of my Savior.

I've written about Christmas before, so if you've been reading here for a while, you already know how I love this season.

If you have never read the story from the Bible, or it confuses you because it's written across two books, I'll link you to it in sequential order. Watch for their humanity as you read it. They weren't just Bible characters, they were actual people living in an actual world.

Gabriel Visits Mary (Luke 1:26-38)

An Angel Visits Joseph (Matthew 1:18-25)
The Birth (Luke 2: 1-20)
Visit from the Wise Men (Matthew 2:1-12)

As for this year's update on the more secular side of the holiday, Ella has been continuously interrogating me about Santa - when he comes, if he fills the stockings, what he will bring, etc. I have continuously responded with "Hmmm" and "What do you think?" She has a lot of ideas. I'm treading carefully. I see this as our first real experience of reconciling what the world tells her with what our family believes. There will be so many more complicated topics than Santa, so we might as well start practicing now. 

Day 1 - 8 o'clock

Our Saturday morning 8 o'clock usually looks like this. Today, we happened to be at Breakfast with Santa, but usually it's my kitchen table that's in wreckage by the 8 o'clock hour. The monkeys get up with the sun, no matter what time they went to bed the night before, so we've usually had plenty of mess by 8 a.m.

This year, they both went willingly to sit with Santa for a picture. Ella was motivated by telling him her Christmas list, which she has prioritized by order of importance.

Ella's Christmas List
1. Barbie House
2. Barbie Car
3. Soap
4. Gum
5. Tattoos

Luke was just excited about the pancakes.

Good Things Come in Small Packages

Dave wrote this post for us. Enjoy!

I have long been desensitized to the comings and goings of items on, under, and around the Christmas tree. The self-induced blindness was a necessary coping mechanism for me as an obsessive compulsive person, borderlining on disorder, sharing the Christmas season with, first animals and now, children.

The process began about eight years ago after Amanda and I put up the tree in our first home and the kittens promptly undecorated the bottom branches, climbed ¾ the way to the top and perched on the inside of a branch for a nap. Two days later, we returned from shopping and did not see the tree in the window of the house. It was in the floor and we picked it up and reset it with the ornaments we could find, a process we repeated two more times before Christmas Day arrived.

During that first Christmas, we adopted a rule that any ornament we found on the floor after it “fell” from the tree would be placed in a box and salvaged for next year. We had a fully decorated tree top by Christmas, with more natural looking lower branches.

The next Christmas I knew what to expect and I had well learned to not see ornaments and scraps of papers from the wrapped presents in the floor. We had also added a new member to the fold who kept some control over, or at least provided interference to, the kitten activities with the Christmas tree. The cats of course did not appreciate having to succumb to the larger physical presence, and hence authority, of Georgia Brown Dog regarding the Christmas decorations. And that is why they tried to kill her.

When Georgia came into the house the year after the cats, we knew she would likely be interested in chewing the Christmas ornaments, as would any other four month old Labrador retriever. For this reason, we decorated the bottom of the tree with plastic, wooden and cloth ornaments, placing just a few glass balls toward the top. The day after the decorating was complete, I heard a crunching in the kitchen and walked in to find Georgia chomping on little pieces of glass, bleeding from the mouth and attempting to understand what had become of the pretty purple ball that had just been in front of her. By extreme fortune, she had a scheduled vet appointment the next day and had no damage from the incident. While I did not see the situation resulting in that ball falling from the tree, I have no doubt that the cats we fully involved and acted with full knowledge of the results of their actions.

With such a history, I was decently prepared for the addition of children to the list of Christmas tree admirers and undecorators in our home. I have become skilled at kicking an ornament, sending it gliding across the hardwood floor, so it comes to rest underneath the tree. I no longer have to pick the decorations up and put them back on the tree and torn wrapping paper doesn’t not bother me as long as the gift underneath is not completely visible. Partial visibility is solved not by re-wrapping, but by turning the other direction. [Note from Amanda: Now that Ella is learning to write, many of the presents weren't just partially unwrapped, they also had her name scrawled across them in Magic Marker. You are a special person if you got one of those presents this Christmas!] If a strand of lights goes out, so be it. Out of necessity, I pay very little attention and we are all much happier for it.


This was my first year with two mobile children at Christmas and I could have easily driven myself crazy had the cats and dog not taught me to cope with the tree situation. By Christmas morning, the presents underneath our tree sat in the midst of several ornaments, shreds of paper and other small pieces of trash, and toys. Luke’s “drop it wherever the urge to move on to something else hits” mentality combined with my “don’t stress about what’s going on under the tree” attitude allowed the underneath of the tree to become somewhat of a toy box for the children.

And then on Christmas morning, I was completely taken aback and stunned to the point of tears by what transpired from underneath and around that tree. We had a living room full of presents and Ella was helping her Mommy hand them out. I don’t know the exact number, but there were presents from four separate households dispersed. The process took about fifteen minutes. After the morning presents were handed out, a few were left under the tree that were for our afternoon guests. When everyone had their presents, I expected Ella would tear into her stack, as would be expected for any three year old. Instead, the following conversation transpired.

Ella (moving to the back corner of the tree where the presents for the afternoon company were): Mommy, you have a few more over here.
Amanda: No baby. Those are for this afternoon.
Ella: No Mommy, these are for you.

And Ella retrieved her own small purses from the underneath the Christmas tree and handed them to Amanda saying, “These are your presents Mommy.” And Amanda opened each one to find that Ella had wrapped a few items inside to give to her for Christmas.

Ella's presents for Mommy

I sat in awe and thanked God that I had not moved any of the “toys” from underneath the tree and for the wonder of children at Christmas.

Christmas Magic

I read something this morning that got me thinking about what makes Christmas magical for me. As I thought through it, I realized how much I've changed in my lifetime, but especially in recent years.

When I was little, of course it was all about the anticipation of presents. I don't remember Santa ever really being a part of the magic because I was 5 when a friend in my kindergarten class told me he wasn't real.

As I got older, but still pre-driving age, it became not only about the presents but also about traditions - seeing all of my cousins on Christmas Adam (the night before Christmas Eve), loading up in a van with them to look at Christmas lights, listening to Christmas music on the drive home from Grandma's house on Christmas Eve and shivering because the windows were rolled down so Jan could cool off because Grandma always kept the house too warm (and oh how I can relate to that now!), yummy breakfast on Christmas morning at Daddy's, and finally the transfer to my mom's house that afternoon for the rest of Christmas break, which usually included reading a stack of new books she gave me even though she hated seeing me "with my nose in a book all the time."

Sometime in highschool, when the family started changing (boyfriends, girlfriends, marriages, divorces), Christmas lost it's magic for a while.

Then God sent me Dave and Christmas got magical again, even during the darkest period of my life, he brought magic to Christmas. It wasn't just magic in the form of romance and renewed anticipation (because Dave Roper loves Christmas more than any person I know); it was because he gave me the first Christmas gift. The baby Jesus.

"But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” - Luke 2:10-12

I was 13 when I prayed the prayer of salvation, but I wandered around for a lot of years after that not really knowing what it meant, certainly not understanding what a gift that little baby was. Dave changed all that when he told me point blank, in his very Dave way, "You think that you get to heaven by being a good person and doing good things? You're wrong." He then proceeded to tell me exactly how you get to heaven and he took me to church. Again and again and again until we were both convinced that I understood that it takes more than works to get to heaven. It takes faith. It was only after that that he married me.


Then the magic of Christmas became about candlelight communion and awestruck reverence for a tiny baby who would be my Savior. It became about waking up with my husband on Christmas morning and traveling to see our families.

Then our family started to grow. The year I was pregnant with Ella was also the first year our church did the Night in Bethlehem production. I worked and worked, lived and breathed the city of Bethlehem for a solid month and do you know what happened? I suddenly had a new perpective of God's greatest gift, that of a pregnant woman. How must she have felt with such an unbelievable story of immaculate conception, knowing that she carried the child of God?

"But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.” Luke 1:30-33

Then we had Luke and I got to sit in the stable and play the part of Mary and see the recreated magic of people on a journey to find a baby. I got to sit quietly and think about what it would be like to know that my tiny baby would the world's savior. Did she know?

"When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them.  But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart." Luke 2: 17-19

And now the magic of Christmas is about a 3 year old voice sharing the story of Jesus, from birth to resurrection, with her animals in the shower. It's about my 16 month old son bringing me the baby Jesus from our Nativity playset so I could give him kisses, and entire evenings of acting out the Christmas story with the same playset. (Thank you, friend, for giving us that Nativity set. It might be the best gift my children have ever received.) It's about, "Don't worry, Mommy. I'll just put the ornaments back on the tree if he pulls them off" and knowing every word to the preschool musical before it happens. It's about explaining why we give presents at all and shopping to fill stockings for kids whose parents cannot afford to do it this year. It's about lights and trees and cookies and presents, and most of all, it's about the baby Jesus.

"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." - John 3:16"

Happy Merry Christmas!

Soak it up world, because at the rate I'm going, this is the closest thing anyone is getting to a Christmas card this year. Despite the fact that Pop the Pop actually got a decent picture of all of us at once, no Photoshopping required. Despite the fact that I picked out the card at Snapfish and it's just waiting there for me to order it. And despite the fact that Dave has offered me the use of his debit card since mine has expired and I've yet to recieve a new one. I'm in the Christmas spirit, but I'm also paralyzed by our remodeling project and finding it hard to make myself actually do any of the Christmas things that need doing.

Regardless of the fact that we've not decorated a single thing and I have no real date in my head for when that will happen, we officially kicked off Christmas with breakfast with Santa over the weekend. You read correctly, we paid Santa a visit. Ella has been very curious about him and our church had a pancake breakfast fundraiser with Santa, so we went.

The kids were not at all excited about Santa. They gobbled pancakes, they made picture frames with Nativity scenes on them, they watched from afar as others sat with Santa, but they were not impressed. Anytime we went near him, they were hanging on us like baby monkeys. Dave really wanted a picture, but after seeing Luke's reaction and Ella standing at the other side of the room, I told him I wasn't having any part of it. At first he tried to encourage them to sit with him and take his candy, and then he realized that we don't really want them to sit on strangers' laps and take their candy, so he backed off and let them have some space.

That led to this.

Proof of Luke's love for suckers.

Upon seeing that Luke didn't spontaneously combust or disappear in midair, Ella reluctantly agreed to be photographed with the weird man as long as her whole family participated. Thus, we have this classic holiday moment preserved in time.

Merry Christmas!

There are so many things I could say about this picture but I really want you to note their faces (click the on the pictures to enlarge). One was climbing me, the other was trying to stand as close to me as possible without being near Santa, and Dave and I, well, we just knew what the result was going to be: hilarious.

So mark it down peeps, we took a Santa picture this year. We have not broached the topic of Santa coming into our house and I dearly hope she doesn't go there. I briefly considered finding a copy of 'Twas the Night Before Christmas to explain him to her, but I decided to leave it be. So far she has only asked two questions: Does Santa live at the North Pole? and Does Mrs. Claus make cookies? She is still not sure what to say if someone asks her what Santa is bringing her for Christmas. For the love of all things merry and bright, people, please stop asking her that before she realizes you mean that a stranger is supposed to come into our house and leave presents! I'm kidding. Sort of. I'm already dreading the sleep disruption when we move her to her new room, and associating that move with a belief that Santa will be coming down our chimney (because those two events are going to happen too close together) is just not an exciting prospect for me.

Without further ado, Merry Christmas from the fam-i-ly!