Merry, merry, merry – one more time – my friends! I know we’re at January 4 now, but I can’t miss recapping our Christmas weekend; it was too much fun, as always. New Year’s content will start next week. In the meantime, let’s close out December. Our Christmas festivities started on the Friday before; I took the afternoon off and enjoyed one of my favorite Advent traditions – taking Peanut to on a girls’ date to the theatre. This was an idea I hit on when we moved back to D.C. – we’ve seen The Secret Garden at the Shakespeare Theatre, Mr. Popper’s Penguins at the Kennedy Center, and this year – Fancy Nancy’s Splendiferous Christmas at the Adventure Theater.
No snaps from the show itself, of course! But it was as sparkly, festive and fancy as you would expect Christmas to be chez Clancy. Peanut loved every minute.
On Wednesday I shared our Christmas Eve activity – hiking at Saratoga National Historical Park and finishing up my 52 Hike Challenge for 2018. After we’d worked up an appetite tramping through the snowy fields, we headed to my Aunt Maria’s house for the traditional Christmas Eve dinner.
This was THE big family event of the season when I was growing up, but I hadn’t been to the family Christmas Eve dinner since having kids. (Even when we brought Peanut to my parents’ for Christmas when she was younger, we stayed home in the evening so we could put her to bed at a reasonable time.) With bigger kiddos, and being in town, we joined the family again and it was wonderful. All four of my cousins on my dad’s side were there, which was a special treat. (We missed my brother and his wife, though.) The group keeps getting bigger – husbands have been added to the mix, and this year the table also included my cousin Jocelyn’s new fiancé and his parents. So much joy!
Aunts and uncles plied Peanut and Nugget with Christmas presents, fueling the excitement, and we got home pretty late. Peanut curled up in “baby position” on the armchair, but someone else was wide awake and happy to put out treats for Santa… and generally to stir the pot.
Look at that mischievous face! (Sorry for the blur; he’s a moving target.) Eventually we got both of the little elves tucked away to dream of sugarplums, and the parents and grandparents got down to work loading up the Christmas tree. No pictures of the completed project this year – whoops. We all flopped down exhausted, knowing that Christmas morning would be arriving painfully soon.
And it did! The kiddos were up and at ’em at 6:00, and by 7:00 all the adults were sort of awake, and we were down opening presents.
There were SO MANY gifts that we weren’t even able to finish opening everything before church. We took a break from the unwrapping extravaganza for Christmas Day services. I marked a milestone, as I told Steve: my parents’ church was renovated when I was in middle school, but this was the first time I’d ever entered what we called “the crying room.” Peanut has always been generally good in church, but wild Nugget had to be removed from the crowd. He occupied himself with zooming his “Incredib-ile” around, banging it into the glass doors, and scribbling all over one of the church’s coloring books. Oof.
Then we headed home to enjoy our gifts. Air hockey for the boys – Nugget cheated on every point – and…
Books for the girls, naturally.
Oh, and new pajamas. The next couple of days were fairly quiet. Steve and I both worked remotely Wednesday through Friday, but we also squeezed in some fun, including an unpictured play date at my high school BFF’s house – she has a daughter about a year older than Peanut – and a couple of lovely evenings with our family friends. (Including a Friday night appetizer feast that I left with two new recipes to try – yum!)
We also got out for our traditional viewing of the holiday lights in Washington Park and dinner with our dear friend Seth. The kids accompanied us to the lights; Peanut loved every moment, and Nugget snoozed through the whole thing – whoops.
Then we dropped the elves back at Nana and Grandad’s house and headed out for a grown-up dinner at Druthers Brewing Company with Seth. We sipped, snacked, and talked away for over an hour, but we never seem to have enough time together.
After dinner, I got this gift – an old picture of Seth and me, circa 2001 – right after a 5K to raise money for the Red Cross in the wake of 9/11. (Incidentally, that was my first 5K ever. Please ignore my cotton t-shirt and early-2000s hair.) We’ve been friends since freshman year at Cornell and have been keeping up our lights-and-dinner holiday tradition since our junior year and I hope we never let it lapse.
It was a lovely week, filled with friends and family – and I haven’t even showed you New Year’s yet! Maybe next week? Anyway – I hope your holidays, wherever you spent them – were full of joy, too.