22 December 2016
I know I made the voting difficult on y’all this year, since I presented the options without our final photos. But you voted valiantly regardless, though I have to feel that that switcheroo threw off the final numbers :) In the end, the buffalo check was the definite favorite, with the illustrated “hark the herald” option coming in a solid second. The one we went with? It got a measly five votes (!), but I think you’ll like it when you see it with the photo we chose…
This is the Bright New Life design by Shiny Penny Studio from the darlings at Minted. Our beautiful photo is by Nancy Ray. (Can’t wait to share more from our session soon!) He has brought us light and life in abundance this year, so this design couldn’t have been more perfect for 2016.
Squeezing all of the good stuff from this past year into our newsletter was certainly a challenge, but one that I gladly accepted! So much sweetness packed into twelve months.
On the back, we found a spot for just a couple of newborn photos (you know I had to!), plus a favorite Christmas scripture and a little room for the traditional Thomas family note.
I hope you love them!!
With that, I’m signing off for a few days while we celebrate the holidays with our beloved family! I am sending you all lots of love and wishes for a cozy Christmas filled with delicious food, comfy pajamas, and laughing until your cheeks hurt with the ones you love. I will see you back here next week for my year in review – one of my favorite posts of the year!
P.S. Our cards from 2015, 2014, 2013, and 2012!
20 December 2016
While I very much hope that June grows up thinking of Christmas as magical, happy, and glowing, I hope even more that she always knows WHY we are celebrating — that for our family, Christmas is when we remember that Jesus, God-With-Us, came to live among us as a tiny baby! That can be a hard thing to focus on with all of the trimmings and trappings of the season competing, so I know we will have to be intentional about it as she grows. Here are a few things we’re trying, and I would love to hear ideas from y’all in the comments!
— Interpreting the season. Even as we do things that our kids see others doing (buying presents, sending out cards), I want to invite conversation about why we do these things and why they are meaningful to us. For example, we send out a Christmas card to remind people in a personal way of our joy at the birth of our Savior, not JUST to share a cute family photo and update :) I think narratives and the stories we tell ourselves have a lot of power!
— Being generous. As many of you know, giving away an amount equal to what we spend on Christmas gifts has been a passion of our family for three years now. It started with one of Adam Hamilton’s sermons where he spoke about the shepherds, and it really stuck with me: “Christmas starts with the poor and the nobodies. I think part of the reason God sent the angels to the shepherds first is because they didn’t have anything to celebrate. Let’s start with them. Let’s invite them to Christmas. We can celebrate every day if we want, and we have lots of reasons to celebrate. But to celebrate Christmas the way God celebrates it, we must start with the poor and the nobodies.” Celebrating with the poor and the nobodies — I hope that’s something our kids always have a heart for. We have a long way to go in this arena, but I think there are some good starter ideas on my list here. We’ve also done Angel Tree gifts and Operation Christmas Child boxes in the past. Though we’ve traditionally given our Christmas gift fund to our church’s Christmas Eve offering, I think it would be fun to decide as a family where we want to give it as our kids get older.
— Decorating intentionally. Several of our Christmas decor pieces point directly to the Christmas story, like our Lindsay Letters canvas and our nativity scenes (we have two – one from Willow Tree and one hand-knit by my Aunt Nan!).
— Filling our ears with good stuff. In addition to services at our home church, we always love listening to Church of the Resurrection’s December sermons – after all, they’ve radically changed our lives in the past! (See above!). One of our many Christmas playlists on Spotify is reserved for just “sacred” Christmas tunes, too.
— Baking a birthday cake. This is an idea from Nancy that I’m excited to try as June gets older. Every year, her family would make a coconut cake on Christmas Eve, light candles, and sing happy birthday to Jesus. I love this, because it’s something that contextualizes Jesus’s birthday in a way kids understand (cake!) AND it’s something that’s undeniably fun (which not all “religious” things are to a kid, let’s be honest).
I also think that keeping Christmas about Christ is sometimes about what you don’t do as much as it’s about what you do, whether that means cutting out particularly commercial things or just paring activities/decorations/traditions/hubbub back in general to make way for quiet, service, and family time.
I would LOVE to hear: if you’re a Christian, how do you keep Christmas about Christ in your heart and home, whether or not you have kids? I’m always looking for ideas for me, too! :)
14 December 2016
I’ve been following along with Victoria’s fun Christmas link-up, and wanted to pop in today to share a few of my favorite Christmas recipes! Though out of the five I’m going to share, all but one is a dessert, or almost a dessert… I promise I do eat real food in December :)
I’ll move from the oldest holiday favorite to the most recent addition, which means starting with peanut butter balls. Possibly the most homely of treats, but my Mom’s are legendary. So much so, that I can’t give you the recipe :) When my sisters and I were in high school, she would make dozens and dozens and dozens to give to friends, family, teachers, mailmen, coworkers, Coast Guard cadets, and anyone else who stopped by and looked hungry. She even made 300 (!!) for our wedding, making batches over the course of a few weeks and freezing them until the big day. Moms are the best.
Every Christmas morning we eat monkey bread – ooey, gooey, possibly slightly raw, always delicious. Here’s our version – no fancy caramel sauce or raisins need apply. Cut four cans of biscuits in quarters. Mix cinnamon and sugar. Shake biscuit quarters in cinnamon sugar. Arrange in a 13×9 pan (better than a bundt pan – helps it to cook more evenly!). Melt some (?) butter and pour over the top. Bake at 350 for 20 minutes.
John’s Mom started making chewy chocolate-gingerbread cookies back in high school, and I was immediately hooked (as was the rest of his family). They’ve since become a staple of the holidays, and were also served at our wedding! Bonus: they freeze well, so we usually get to take a container home with us whenever we visit :)
The year we got married, I started making this toffee recipe and handing out the goods to our garbage men, mail lady, post office peeps, oil change guys, etc. – maybe my version of PB balls. June’s teachers have been added to the list this year! It really is delicious, and easy – just follow the peanut butter trick.
Finally, for the last few years, Jenny’s beef ragu has been the centerpiece of all sorts of special occasions, including Christmas dinner 2015 when we hosted John’s family. Aside from being deeeeeelicious, it makes your house smell marvelous.
I would love to hear: what are your favorite Christmas foods? (Almost) all sweets like me, or something more substantial? :)
Linking up with Victoria and Sarah!
Photos from their sources except for monkey bread and ginger cookies (photo by Tanja Lippert from our reception)
30 November 2016
Without a doubt, one of the best parts of having children is reliving the magic of your own childhood, but through a new lens. This time, we get to be the ones creating the magic, introducing our sweet babies to some of our favorite experiences that produced our most vivid memories!
Truthfully, it can actually be a bit overwhelming when you start thinking that it’s your responsibility to make everything “magic,” but I’m comforted when I remember that some of the experiences I loved best from growing up were far from perfect. The one thing they all had in common, however, was that they were rooted in time with my family–and that’s a kind of magic I’m confident I can create. Here are a few of my favorite memories from childhood, and things we love doing now…
Growing up, I danced in the Nutcracker every year, so I started listening to Christmas music in August! The opening notes of Tchaikovsky’s prologue still make my heart race a little with excitement.
My family cut down our tree at the most idyllic farm. (This one, for those in Connecticut/Rhode Island!) I remember eating buttery springerle cookies and warming my hands on a paper cup of hot chocolate while we traipsed through the yellow fields looking for the perfect Fraser fir.
Every night, even if it was just for a brief moment between dance class and basketball practice, all five of us would gather to pin a felt ornament on the tree of our Advent calendar, made by my Dad’s cousins before I was born. A few years ago, Kate made Kim and I exact replicas for our own homes, down to the felt colors and sequin placement.
On Christmas Eve, we’d eat ham, baked beans, and coleslaw, then attend the seven o’clock candlelight service at our church. Since it was usually freezing in Connecticut, we’d wear our fancy wool coats with the velvet bows.
On Christmas morning, my sisters and I would squeeze across the top of the stairs while my Dad turned on the Christmas music, “checked to make sure that Santa had come,” and then gave the okay for us to race toward the tree in our pajamas. Opening stockings for our family of five usually took about an hour and a half, after which we’d eat gooey, cinnamon-y monkey bread before moving on to presents.
I could go on… but let’s chat about 2016 :)
My absolute favorite North Carolina tradition is going to the Christmas concert at Duke Chapel (pictured here). Getting to sing along to my favorite carols in that beautiful space is nothing short of magic.
We love our town’s Christmas parade, which winds through our historic main street at twilight, with high school marching bands, dance schools, jump rope teams (!), and floats from local churches. We always bring our own peppermint hot chocolate in thermoses, and have a particular hilltop spot we’ve secured for the last few years!
We love gathering with a few friends and family members to carol at a local assisted living home. The babies are always extremely popular :) Everyone brings their holiday party leftovers for a cobbled-together feast afterward at the Ray’s.
Now that there are several nieces and nephews on each side, matching Christmas jams are a thing! There was a long text chain on the Thomas side to decide on the perfect pair, but we just snapped up this one.
In addition to attending our church’s candlelight Christmas Eve service (still the thing I look forward to most every year), our Christmas Eve giving has become an important part of our family’s story.
There’s so much more — the ornaments John and I exchange every year, our end of year celebration dinner, the treats we shower on the post man, teachers, and other friends who help us throughout the year, sending Christmas cards — but I’ll stop there, for now :)
With that, I’d love to hear: what are your most vivid memories from Christmas as a child? What are your favorite parts of the holiday season now? Please tell me below!!