326. Bokeh. I just learned this term this year. It means the blurred lights you get in the background when you shoot a close up picture with lights behind it. Here are a couple of my best efforts.
I tried to get the lights to make shapes, but I haven't quite figured that out yet. Mine just looked like I stuck an outline around the lens.
Which is what I thought you were supposed to do. . .Anyway, it was fun to experiment.
327. Cookie parties. Adult and kid.
Adult party. A friend I met in PTA has an annual cookie party, and I was invited again this year! The girls and some of their friends helped me make lots of cookies to bring, and I went and enjoyed adult conversation and fun. There is such a good group of ladies at school. I enjoy being with them so much. So many of them have kids that are friends with my kids, and by now I've been on a dozen committees with most of them. I appreciate that they do get togethers like this. It's fun to see each other outside of school functions.
Kid parties. We tried so hard to make this happen before Christmas break, but things just kept coming up and not quite working out. So we finally called people the day before we had a free day or two. It worked out perfectly! Sue had friends over one day to make cookies, and the next day was Lou's turn. We didn't do anything fancy, just made sugar cookie dough ahead of time. The girls made peppermint bark, (smashing candy canes is the highlight!) and then made, cooked and decorated their sugar cookies. We sent everyone home with some of each kind of cookie and a new cookie cutter. I'm so glad that my girls have some good groups of friends at school. I know it will make all the difference in years to come. It was fun to watch the different groups and how they did things. Here is the aftermath, so you know they had fun.
328. Unexpected visitors. We had good friends show up who had just moved away. They had come up to take care of a few things. They had a couple of prearranged playdates, but the kids spent most of the day hanging out here. Luckily they came on a day that was almost completely free of anything scheduled, and we didn't have anything pressing. The kids were in heaven. We've missed them so much, and it was good to see them again.
329. Helping. Sometimes it's hard to know how to help out. I'm grateful for friends who are thoughtful and help organize those opportunities. It was so much fun to clean together.
330. Neighborhood Caroling party. We will definitely do this again any year we are in town! And having it the 23rd was genius. All the last minute decorating got done, (Including this fun and crazy wreath by Mr. C.) (Mantle by the oldest.)
the house was clean - and stayed that way! And we still had another day before Christmas to finish up. Lots of neighbors couldn't come with us, because of health or other reasons, but we caroled to them anyway. We ended up with about 15 people caroling to the neighborhood and joining us for hot chocolate. The warm glow of Christmas was beautiful. (Table by Sue.)
My favorite was our sweet Russian neighbor. He came out to listen, but said his wife stayed in because she didn't speak much English. He said "Merry Christmas! Thank you so much for coming!" We asked him if he had a favorite Christmas song he'd like us to sing before we left. He said, "Merry Christmas! Thank you so much for coming!" We just chose one more song ourselves before we left. He was so cute.
331. The Nutcracker. Lou was invited to go to the Nutcracker with a friend. One of the Moms couldn't go and they invited Lou. She was in heaven. Those lights in her eyes were amazing! After the performance they went to eat dessert at a revolving restaurant! She couldn't stop talking about it. Apparently she ate a dessert half her size. We are so grateful for sweet friends who are willing to include us in new experiences and memories.
332. Christmas jokes. What do you call the 23rd of December? My kids went around calling the day Christmas Adam. Because that's what comes before Christmas Eve.
333. Mr. C and Christmas Eve Day projects. Mr. C was done with his Christmas preparations mostly, so for one of his Christmas presents to us all he continued with the back basement reorganization. He added two more shelves to the back wall so that we don't have to stack the green beans and cans of tomatoes three high in order to get it all in. He surprised me with this project when I came home from running errands. :)
334. The Perfect Gift. It's great when an all purple backpack of the right brand drops from heaven at a place where Santa has a gift card on the night before Christmas. In fact, three backpacks to replace three that were on their last legs showed up. Hallelujah for Christmas miracles!
335. Christmas morning picture. I love the glow of tree lights. And I know it's time to take them down. We just had 12th night. But I'll miss them dearly. And maybe I'll leave a string of lights up just to keep that glowing feeling.
336. Christmas Eve and Christmas morning. We spent some time reflecting on the true meaning of Christmas. We ate dinner with friends. We read the Christmas story. We jumped up and down about Christmas pajamas, and wore them when we came downstairs in the morning.
We spent time excitedly opening presents from each other and from family. We sat around all Christmas day in our pajamas and enjoyed being just us. I talked to my parents and asked them what they were going to be doing on Christmas Day. My mom said, "Not much." My dad thought that might be overstating what they were going to do. I think we were all on the same page for that!
337. Kids and presents for each other. The kids had so much fun with their presents for each other this year. Lou was particularly thoughtful. She made a great pillow case for the oldest. I've written about how the oldest uses vegetable names instead of swear words. Well, Lou and I went to the fabric store to look for fabric with green beans or pickles on it. We couldn't find any, but found a lot of other vegetables: asparagus, mushrooms, carrots, peppers. So Lou sewed them together into a pillow case, and gave it to the oldest with a note. "In case you run out of vegetables, here are a few suggestions. . . "
338. Christmas morning legos. Love Christmas legos. This year I got to build the Buzz Lightyear spaceship with the S-Train! I am quite the expert on that ship now. I repaired it at least a dozen times. It was so fun working together. The S-Train can really follow the diagrams himself, so mostly I let him do it and was just there for guidance. But every so often I couldn't help myself and built a wing without him.
339. Being people people over the holidays. My goal this year was to do things with people over the break. We've decided that what really makes it feel like Christmas is spending time with others. Many years we spend it with my family. It's easy to spend time with people when the house is always packed with 20-30 people, and sometimes more! So this year since we were far from family we went out of our way to include friends and neighbors. I know we didn't get everyone over that we wanted to (we eventually ran out of time!) but we did some festive things that I think the kids will remember.
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