Merry Christmas 2023

I woke up early this morning and was sitting in the living room, which was still dark except for the tree lights, drinking my coffee and thinking about how very blessed I am and how I wouldn't trade my life for anyone's in all the world.  I have five sons whom I adore, they have five wives who feel like daughters (and who love my boys, which is the only important trait a mom looks for in a daughter-in-law, right?), and I am a Grammy to 22 of the most extraordinary little people on God's green earth.

Joy to the world, indeed.

My house is quiet.  Much has changed since I was raising those five boys who are now husbands and fathers, living in their own homes, with their own lives, and raising children of their own.  They are establishing holiday traditions for their own growing families, so our family celebrations don't look anything like they used to.  As someone who by nature has always resisted change, this has been difficult to accept at times.  But ever since our move from NH, where we raised our five sons, down to VA, where we live close to three of them  (and 14 of our 22 grandchildren), we know that we will spend at least part of every Christmas with a good portion of our family gathered together.  What a gift that is!

On the 23rd, we were able to get all of our VA gang over to our house for an early Christmas celebration.  (By some miracle, no one was sick--I think we all still have PTSD from last year's epic stomach bug fiasco!)  The grandkids had a wonderful time running around the house, and it looked a bit like a bomb had gone off in here after they all left.  But it was just the best, and I hope my husband and I can stay healthy enough to give them this one crazy party every Christmas season moving forward.  I'm never happier than when my home is full of my people.  And my husband and I truly live to hear the sound of our sons' laughter in the house.  That is the best gift of all.  We don't want their presents; we want their presence.  (I just made that up!  But I'm probably about the millionth person to say it, so I suppose I can't take credit!)

There are no little people opening their stockings in this house on the 25th.  It's quiet here.  But it's peaceful and I've got the best husband in the world and I am feeling very happy. 

I hope you are having the merriest of Christmases, dear readers!  

A Lovely Second Sunday of Advent

Yesterday, we were supposed to go to a Christmas gingerbread house-making party at our second-oldest son's new home.  All the VA gang--sons #2, #3, and #4, and the 14 children they have between them--were going to be there.  Our boy spent hours the night before, dutifully carving up graham crackers to glue together, so that the houses would be ready for the kids to decorate with icing and candy the next day.  (He made 20 houses!)

Our daughter-in-law, who is such a great cook and truly the hostess with the mostest, was going to make a nice meal for us, and I had put together a double batch of caramel brownies and two pans of hash brown casserole to contribute to the spread.  

But as usual, if you want to hear God laugh, tell him your plans!

Yesterday morning as my husband and I were leaving morning Mass, we got a text from son #2's wife saying that one of their boys was throwing up and another had a fever, and they were going to have to cancel the party.

Before we even got home, we got another text from son #4, who wondered if they could swing by our place after Mass.  Their four young kids had been so excited about having a party with their cousins and were all bummed out, and he thought coming to see us might take the sting out of their disappointment. (Note to parents of littles: never tell them something good is going to happen until it's happening!  LOL)

Papa and Grammy were up for visitors, of course.  Plus, I had some hash brown casserole on hand already, and a bottle of watermelon mimosa from Aldi's (the greatest place to shop; if you haven't checked it out yet, you should!).  So I just fried up some bacon and sausage, scrambled some eggs, and took some cake balls that I'd been saving for Christmas out of the freezer.  Et voila!  Brunch is served.

They stayed for three or four hours.  The kids played like angels in our basement playroom while we chatted down there (it was one of those "don't say anything, don't look at them, we don't want to break the spell" situations!).

Then on a whim, we decided to watch one of our boys' childhood Christmas favorites, Jingle All the Way (which is so bad--so, SO bad!--that it's good!  Very funny!).

So even though we didn't get to go to the party we'd all been looking forward to, we had a lovely second Sunday of Advent here.  How about you?

Christmas Celebration Preparations

I just realized that I forgot to push the "publish" button on this post this morning.  Oops!  So I'm sending it out a tad late.

Good morning, dear readers!  And happy day before Christmas Eve! 

I’m  just sitting here by the light of the tree, drinking coffee and thinking warm thoughts, getting excited for the coming days.  (Our super awesome overlit Griswold family tree has many light settings, and this one is the candy cane/red-and-white-lights-only option.  The photo doesn't do it justice; but isn't it pretty?)

This will be our fifth Christmas in VA.  And each year since we've been here living near our four oldest sons, we've floated the idea that since we get to see them so often throughout the year, we would be okay with having a family celebration on some date before or after the 25th, so that they can either stay home on Christmas with just their little ones or enjoy time with their kids' grandparents and aunts and uncles on their moms' side.

But in spite of the lack of pressure to spend Christmas Day itself with us, that seems to be what most of our VA peeps actually want to do!  Our youngest son is in MI with his wife's family this Christmas.  But the four sons who live near us down here have all agreed that an Open House party at Papa and Grammy's centrally located home is a good idea.  So as long as everyone stays healthy until Christmas, we could have as many as 33 people here that afternoon: 16 adults (including not just our four sons and their wives, but a couple sets of their in-laws, plus the brother and girlfriend of one daughter-in-law) and 17 kids.  

Because the group is so large and figuring out how to time a sit-down meal is pretty much impossible (believe me, we've tried, and it gets complicated; especially with people driving from 1/2 hour to an hour away, with babies and small children and their nap schedules to figure in--not to mention Christmas Day overexcitement!).  So this year, we are having a come-when-you-can, stay-as-little-or-long-as-you-like, heavy hors d'oeuvres and snacks, old-fashioned cocktail party kind of a party. 

We have tried cooking a beef tenderloin for our gang here.  We have tried a buffet-style menu, with lasagna and pulled pork and other hot casserole-type items in chafing dishes.  We keep fine-tuning, trying to figure out what we can manage best without a staff of catering professionals on hand to make sure all goes smoothly and everything stays hot.  (A quick aside here: How positively dreamy does a catered party sound?!)  So I am actually kind of excited about trying this more relaxed format for a Pearl family party, and I've been working on my menu.  Here are the items I'm planning so far: Swedish meatballs; cocktail weiners in barbecue sauce; piglets in blankets (yes, Little Smokies are going to play a major role in this shindig!); deli meats and slices of deep-fried turkey (my husband has always wanted to try cooking a turkey this way); rolls for sandwich making; Tostitos with salsa and guacamole; Buffalo chicken dip with Fritos; loaded baked potato dip with Ruffles; Pimento cheese dip with crackers; veggies and dip platter; baked stuffed mushrooms; deviled eggs; fruit. There may be more items added, but that’s it so far.  And the guests are bringing stuff to share as well.   (I'll also have mac and cheese as a backup for any picky eaters in the younger crowd!) I have crockpots for keeping the meatballs and Little Smokies warm, but most of the foods we'll have out won't need to be heated.  I THINK this is going to be our most stress-free party yet.

For dessert, I'm making a red velvet bundt cake with cream cheese frosting and several batches of Christmas cookies, and I've also got plenty of store-bought goodies, too, including lots of chocolates and chocolate-covered treats.

If you have any egg allergies in your family, like we do, these are great
(and easy!) eggless cookies: 1 box red velvet cake mix, 1/2 c. water,
1/2 c. oil, white chips, and sprinkles; bake at 350 for 8 minutes.

I will break out some of my pretty Christmas platters and serving dishes (because if they never get used, why even have them?), but otherwise, it's going to be paper and plastic all the way, so there won't be much to clean up afterward.  (She throws her head back and guffaws loudly, remembering that after every giant family party--disposable plates or not--she and her husband joke that perhaps it would be easier to torch the place than to clean it!)

I've been collecting party supplies here and there for the past month.  The planning part of having a
party is one of my favorite activities. :)

BTW, do these chips look fun to you...or sort of gross?  (I’m going with fun.)

I'm going to take a break for the next few days, until the excitement dies down, and just enjoy being in the moment with all the people I love most.  But here's wishing you all a blessed Christmas.  Joy to the World!    Let earth receive her King!

Planning a Holiday Tea Party

These days, it would be very easy for me to fall into a pit of despair over what is happening in our world.  I could sit paralyzed with fear, worrying about what kind of future our grandchildren will have if things don't change, and fast. I'm not going to go into details here, because this isn't that kind of blog.  But there are goings-on afoot that truly terrify me--and some of them are hitting way too close to home.

But my husband and I are doing the Bible in a Year study with Fr. Mike Schmitz, which makes us realize that none of the things that are happening in the 21st century are new at all. Throughout salvation history, misguided and sinful man has time after time turned away from God and suffered greatly for it.  But in the end, God our merciful Father is in charge and He does love His children; so in spite of our disobedience, there is always hope for us.

ANYWAY, sorry for starting out as a real Debbie Downer on this Monday morning (as if Monday mornings aren't kind of the worst for many already!); I'm going to change my tune here and tell you what I'm doing to combat the blues:

I'm planning a St. Nicholas Tea Party/Brunch/Cookie Exchange in early December, for all the Pearl ladies here in VA (including my five oldest granddaughters)!  

I've got lots of ideas for the food and decor already, but I find myself doing Internet searches for "Christmas Tea Party Ideas" quite frequently now, and here are some of the images that have popped up that make me feel all merry and bright.

I'm trying to decide if I'll use my beloved blue-and-white transferware for the party.  Or instead, I might use the lovely holiday china that my mother-in-law left me, as I have exactly 10 place settings of that and there will be 10 of us around the table.  I'll be sure to post pictures of our event--which will probably not quite live up to these Pinterest-worthy images, but I'm going to do my best.  I can't tell you how excited I am about this little all-girls party!

With visions of sugarplums (and dainty crustless tea sandwiches) dancing in your heads now, and all the gloominess of the beginning of this post hopefully blotted out of your mind, I wish you a wonderful week. Enjoy your families.  And make every day a holiday!  (That's my new motto!)

A Belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I hadn't made the decision to revive this blog in time to do a lot of Christmas posting, so I thought that today I'd do a quick catch-up or re-cap or what-have-you.

We had a beautiful and blessed holiday season--especially since our youngest boy and his wife, whom we hadn't seen in more than a year, were able to be with us for about two weeks. We had a family party the day after Christmas (all five sons, their wives, and their 17 darling offspring aged newborn to 9) at our centrally located VA home.  It isn't the biggest or the grandest house, and the yard is...well, it's so small it can hardly be called a yard.  But we are perfectly situated for all four of our VA-based kids to meet here with their families.  (We just have to entice our baby and his wife, who currently live in OK but will be moving--east, hopefully!--this summer, to end up settling in VA, too. Ha ha!...But really, we do.)

 

Aside from the family party, we had our second annual adults-only party on December 30.  (I wrote about our first one in this post last year.  It's a fun post if you have the time.) This is a tradition that my husband and I love so much, a real highlight of our holiday celebrations.  It's wonderful to have all the little ones running around the house together; but it's so incredibly special to get our grown children and their spouses gathered under our roof without their kids, so that we can all relax and enjoy real conversations that aren't interrupted by boo-boos, cousin squabbles, or poopy diapers.  We had drinks, hors d'oeuvres, and desserts, and we did our Five Favorites gift exchange (which we've decided we prefer to a Yankee Swap).

I wish I had posted pictures of our Christmas decorations here at the blog in the days leading up to Christmas (I was busy posting them over at Instagram instead!).  I think our house looked particularly lovely this Christmas...but maybe that's because it was so often filled with family.  My boys have always been my favorite element of home decor--and wherever they and their dad are, that's my home.

Now that I've decided to blog again, I have so many things I want to write about!!  I can hardly wait to get started.  So I'll be back before too long.  In the meantime, here's hoping that 2021 is being kinder to you and yours than 2020 was. God bless you!

(P.S. For those of you concerned: thankfully, almost all of the adults, and a number of the kids, in our family had already had and recovered from Covid before our Christmas get-togethers.  We had herd immunity going big-time!)

Our December 26 Party: Just for the Grown-Ups!

Remember in my last post about our Pearl family Christmas celebration, when I said I'd be back "tomorrow" to tell you all about our awesome day-after-Christmas adults-only party?  That's right, I'm talking about that post I wrote back on December 28, which as you probably realize was not yesterday...so I am a bit late with the sequel, but that's about par for the course these days when it comes to keeping up with this poor old neglected blog of mine!

However, Christmas isn't over yet; officially, we have until the Baptism of Our Lord this coming Sunday to celebrate.  So here it is, the promised sequel (for those of you who even care anymore--and I know who you are!) about a party we had at our house that had nothing to do with squabbles over toys, changing poopy diapers, cleaning up spilled cups of water, and toddlers dancing on coffee tables.  Nothing against parties that include those activities, mind you; but this was going to be all about us big people!  Adult beverages would be consumed!  There would be platters of hors d'oeuvres where the offerings would not be picked over by chubby little fingers and then put back with bite marks on them!  Conversations were going to take place without interruptions!

Before you think I sound a bit Grinch-y about the usual chaos that accompanies most of our family parties these days, believe me, I love the craziness.  I really do!  I feel so incredibly blessed to have all 16 of our grandchildren (and their wonderful parents, of course) living close enough to us that getting everyone together fairly often has become part of our normal life in VA.  (Gone are the days when we had to board an airplane or spend a day or two traveling by car to see our precious little people.)  However, we weren't going to fight city hall when one of our boys' wives suggested the idea of having a little bash sans children, with just the adult Pearls (and whatever babies needed to come along with their mamas), and the rest of the overworked young parents enthusiastically got on board and set up babysitters.  I don't usually plan this sort of grown-ups only party, because I know what babysitters charge these days and I don't want to burden our gang with the expense. (I used to make 50 cents an hour watching three small kids, including one in diapers--and that tells you just how much of a dinosaur I am!)  But it was their idea, so no guilt!  My husband and I were just thrilled that they wanted to do this.

Our house was chosen as the party venue, since it is kind of the epicenter for the VA Pearls--which is the reason we chose to move to this particular town, located less than an hour in one direction from one son, about 35 minutes in the opposite direction from two other sons, and a stone's throw from a fourth (who moved here after we did).  When we bought this house, we hoped and dreamed that it would become a central meeting place for everyone.

We were encouraged to dress up like our favorite character from a Christmas movie.  My husband and I, who really aren't dress-up people at all (full disclosure: we've never been huge fans of Halloween), decided to go all-out and get in costume.  I hope you can tell who we are (if not, I'm not sure that we can be friends!).

I'm pretty sure you can figure out who this guy is supposed to be.

But what about me?

I stumped a few people, who don't know the movie Christmas Vacation as well as we do, I guess.  But I'm Clark Griswold, from that scene where he gets stuck in the attic.  Obviously.  (And I finally found a good use for my paternal grandmother's mink stole!)

Only one of our sons joined us in the dressing-up department.

I won the prize for best costume.  Obviously!

The party started about 7:00, and we decided to keep the menu simple with just hors d'oeuvres and desserts.

These two were the last to arrive.  They have 2-year-old triplets and a 2-month-old infant, so they had a good excuse.  It's amazing they were able to get out of the house at all!

We gathered around the tree in the living room and played a game where everyone took turns telling stories about their favorite Christmas memory, or the funniest thing that had ever happened to them at Christmas.  Three of our daughters-in-law have only been married to our sons for about five years (they all got married within an 11-month span, from Dec. 2013 to Nov. 2014), and we still have much to learn about them and their past lives, so this was actually a great activity.  And it was so much fun! We laughed a lot, especially when one of our daughters-in-law told a hilarious tale about her dad and a Christmas tree (I can't repeat it here, sorry; but suffice it to say that it had us all in stitches).  There was a prize for best story, and she won that one hands-down.

Instead of having a Yankee Swap, which we've done several times in the past, we did a "Favorite Things" gift exchange, which is a tradition in one of our daughters-in-law's family.  There were five couples, so each individual chose four favorite things with a value of $5-7 to give away.  We brought our items in gift bags, so we could easily take one out and show everyone and explain why this particular thing was a favorite before distributing them. At the end, each couple went home with eight new items.  It was fun to hear the explanations for the choices and to see the variety of items.  For instance, one daughter-in-law brought four bottles of red wine called "WELL REaD."  Her explanation for that choice was that she loved books and reading (she used to be a librarian), and as a mother of five she sometimes she needs a little wine at the end of the day!  My husband gave out "cocktail hour" bags, with a bottle of Mike's Hard Lemonade, a block of cheddar cheese, and a box of his favorite crackers inside.  There were phone chargers, coffee mugs, travel mugs, chocolates.  There were even personalized ornaments hand-painted by our second-oldest son.The whole thing was just delightful.

It was agreed that we MUST try to do this sort of thing more often.  I only wish that our youngest son and his wife could have been with us, but they were out in MI this Christmas with her folks.  Next year, though!  I think we have decided that this adults-only party must happen every Christmas season from now on!

It has been the most blessed Christmas for us, filled with so much love and laughter. I wish we had a better picture than these blurry selfies taken with a timer to mark our first ever Christmas party just for the grown-ups here in VA.

But these shall have to do!  Merry Christmas from this crazy crew.  And God bless us, everyone.