The Post of Christmas Past

The boys are settled down for the evening viewing A Very Merry Muppet Christmas so it's only fitting to do a brief flashback to the holiday season.  I would be lying if I said Christmas was perfect.  It was great to spend time with the family celebrating the nativity of our Lord but this being wife and mom adds a whole new dimension to the festivities.  Perhaps I find it particularly stressful because I feel the weight of instilling in our boys the REAL reason for the season.  To be completely honest, I was darn near exhausted myself at the thought/presence of our new baby that I didn't spend ample time pondering the birth of the Christ child.  Thank goodness Pete was around more to tend to the boys and give me the opportunity to indulge in the naps I shamelessly craved during the first trimester  (Yep, that's right folks!  If you didn't already know...baby Schafer #3 is a cookin'!).  More on that later.

The adventures began with a family outing on the Polar Express.  Uncle Stevie and Aunt Sarah supplied the tickets as a gift.  We seized the chance to get decked  out in our p.j.s and travel by rail to the North Pole.  The ride included hot chocolate (but not too hot :-), a chocolate chip cookie, a reading of the story all catered by volunteer elves on the way to the North Pole (a.k.a Peninsula, Ohio)where we picked up Santa Claus who visited with the children and passed out jingle bells.

This was our boys' first encounter with the jolly man in red.  Luke was puzzled by his questions of good behavior and what he wanted for Christmas.  What word would you use to describe the boys' expression?  I would certainly attest that they were not scared, but I could hardly purport that they were delighted either.

If you look closely, you'll notice that our oldest son, given the name Luke, insisted on his name being Curious George as displayed on his name tag.  This trend continues to this day although with a few added twists or personality options.  When we say his name he responds, "No.  I'm not Yute.  I'm Thomas!"  or "I'm Wall-E", or "I'm Woody", or "I'm Nightning Mt-Tween".  Most recently though he incorporates the lot saying,  "I'm not Yute.  I'm yots of names!".  Oh, hi Lots of Names.  Is that something like Dances with Wolves?!?!?.

Initially, we were planning on announcing the presence of our new baby at Christmas time when all the family was around.  After further reflection,  I found this to be somewhat facetious.  Our second thought was Gaudete Sunday but Pete's parents weren't cooperating.  You see, we wanted to share the news with them first since our previous two pregnancies we revealed to my parents first (if only by a few hours or a day).  Luke because he was the first grandchild for my parents and Augustine because we just so happened to go for the ultrasound earlier that day when my parents decided to come for a surprise visit to Maryland for Luke's first birthday.  Surprise visit, eh? We'll show you a surprise.  Back to the initial story, we decided to share the news on December 12th, the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe-patroness of the unborn.  Foiled again, Grandma and Grandpa Schafer decided to stay in for the evening and forego attending Mass for the third time in one day. Despite it being near, or past, their bedtime we interrupted their quiet night in with an appearance.  We did, however, come bearing gifts...

A bag of bags of nuts for Grandpa.

And, "Here dramm-ma.  Here is your twilt." Luke explained as he handed Grandma the unopened package.

At this point the quilt was not quite a quilt, but it was suitable for proclaiming the announcement.  Granted, Grandma was slightly confuzzled by the inverted view supposing that there were mommy and daddy handprints included and the punchline was located on the most distant corner.

Overhead view

In actuality, Pete and I had taken a design from a baby quilt book and tailored it to our specific needs to include the handprints of all the grandchildren with a projected image of the baby's footprint.  It was a fun project getting all the grandkids involved, even though, Lisa essentially guessed the secret when she brought over her four to make their contribution.

The project was fun and Pete was excited because he was in on the surprise rather than being the recipient this time.  The most difficult challenge was probably choosing the fabric.  We wanted to incorporate some of the aspects of life/grandparenthood that my in-laws most enjoyed [from our perspective] but had trouble tying the colors/prints together.  After getting over the hurdle that everything didn't blend together perfectly, we were able to make progress rather quickly.  I mean, with sports, and toys, and VW bugs, and musical notes, and ICE CREAM, Grandma and Grandpa would be a little forgiving right?!!?  Around the border,  I tried my luck with applique in adding a rosary.  God knows how many rosaries Grandma and Grandpa have offered up for us all so far.  Plus, pregnancy [and motherhood] has led me to pray more fervently.  Particularly with the expectation of a new child the delicate, early phases of pregnancy where you don't see or feel baby you simply hope and pray trusting God that tiny person continues to live and grow.

Here's the kicker

A couple other challenges that presented themselves throughout the project included having to do some piecing on the reverse side of the quilt and quilting the darn thing period.  Because I didn't have a big enough piece of material to make a solid back, and,  I wasn't about to go out and buy more fabric, I fiddled around with the material and pieces I already had cut.  It took some time but overall I was happy with the result.

The backside

The gift message

With Pete's quilts last year I had the luxury of working with Lisa's mother-in-law who has a special quilting machine that practically takes up a whole room.  Now that I am more interested and "experienced" at this sewing gig I wanted to do all the steps from start to finish with the materials and tools on hand.  We considered this at the onset of the project in designing the quilt to be a reasonable size to manage on a normal sewing machine.  I'm not sure what the finished dimensions were of the quilt, 5' X 6' perhaps.  There was a lot of fabric to move through the machine at times but it was a good size for my first machine quilting attempt.  My next quilting attempt may include homemade stockings for Christmases to come.  You'll see in the picture below that our current ninety-nine cent for two felt stockings are under duress.

In conjunction with the quilt project for Grandma and Grandpa Schafer we wanted to spend some quality time with our nieces and nephews as their Christmas gift.  The "other" Schafer boys, Jacob, Nick and Nate went sled-riding with Pete and the little guys,  came back to our place to add their handprints and birthdays to the quilt and then we all went to Chuck E Cheeses.  I was as excited as the boys since I have never experienced the venue myself.  A good time was had by all.  We are still determined to take out the Snyder gang ;-)

Other preparations included making our homemade wrapping paper.  I cut out some snowflakes using paper plates then had Luke use sponges and paint to add the impressions to layers of white tissue paper.

Paint refill

squish, squish, squish

 Following are a few photos of opening presents at my parents.  Luke received a large garbage truck which came in handy in cleaning up the wrapping paper.

clean up

We stretched out the Christmas celebration and didn't do our own present ceremony until the 6th day of Christmas.  Pete actually got pretty sick from the 26th to the 27th and was out of commission.  The following day I was under the weather.

Augustine's gold- beginner's band set and piano

Luke's myrrh- felt board

Luke and his "hook"

And for our other family tradition- pasta making on Holy Family Sunday we decided to try pierogis. We did three different fillings 1.) potato and cheddar 2.) sauerkraut and mushroom and 3.) apple blueberry

As we head into the third month of 2014 we continue to thank God for His many blessings: family, friends, health, and resources.