Frank Christmas 2008

We had a great Christmas Eve and Christmas Day as a family. Skyla & Brody are both at fun ages to "get" the whole Jesus' birthday thing, but also to love opening presents and all the wonder of the whole day. Christmas Eve we went to church for a beautiful service, then came home and had Kevin's parents and brother over for dinner. The kids each got to open one present before bed, and then Mommy & Daddy had "our" Christmas Eve together, so that Christmas Day can be all about the kids. Christmas Eve is definitely one of the highlights of Christmas for me. Christmas Day started bright & early at 7:00 and we had so much fun just the four of us opening all the stocking stuffers and gifts. Mid-morning we were joined by Kevin's parents and brother again for a yummy brunch, then round two of gifts. Wow - busy day and Momma was exhausted by the end of the day, but it was really fun! Now we look forward to round three of Christmas at Grammy's house next week for New Years... :-)

All dressed up for Christmas Eve service

Waiting on the stairs for Daddy to turn on the Christmas tree and pour coffee for Mommy & Daddy!

The "big gifts" - Spider Man bike for Brody and Princess bike for Skyla - with matching helmets! Sky just looked at her bike and said "For me?"


"The" gift of the year for Skyla - her Belle princess dress. She had to wait till after breakfast to put it on, then wore it ALL day.

Focused on the gift opening. Brody got the unwrapping down to an art.

Quick family photo after all the gifts were done.

Round two begins - Belle is in costume, and we're joined by Gramma, Grampa, Chesty and Chesty's dog Byron.

Daddy helping Brody put together his power tool set. Daddy did his share of assembly on Christmas!

Taking a much-needed nap during a break in assembly.

Blowing out Jesus' birthday candles for Him. Seeing Brody and Skyla sing "Happy Birthday dear Jesus" so sincerely was definitely one of the highlights of my day.

A Day in the Life

Have I mentioned how much I love being able to be at home with Skyla & Brody? :-) I feel like every day is full of new things they say, learn, do... and I especially enjoy the creative things they come up with when they play together (those times when they are NOT fighting). The big thing this week has been Skyla being either Brody's mommy or his teacher. She takes her job very seriously, and he loves every minute of being taken care of and taught new things. I just sit and watch, and laugh - sometimes out loud - because it's just so precious.

The "schoolroom" this morning. Note that Curious George and Beary Tales have joined the class

I also had to include this picture above, because Kevin & I were shaking our heads last night at dinner as Kevin bribed Brody to eat his stuffed shells, by putting a piece of broccoli out on his napkin as a "treat" for each bite of pasta he took. Seriously, broccoli? Here's Brody enjoying his reward... :-)

Good Friends, Good Times

Last night we had our Small Group Christmas Party with lots of yummy food and desserts, lots of holiday cheer and a gift exchange (I call it a Yankee Swap but down in this neck of the woods I guess we call it a White Elephant?). Kevin & I are so thankful for the families God has brought into our lives through small group, and we love sharing life with them!

The gift exchange got a little competitive and borderline nasty but we all hugged and made up at the end. :-)

Christmas Baking Kick-Off

When we were at the outlets earlier in the week, Skyla & I got aprons at Williams-Sonoma for our Christmas baking this year. Sky's is so cute - it says "Little Helper" on the front. And quite the helper she was all day. We started our baking with making Christmas candies for our neighbors and friends. Milk chocolate, white chocolate, peppermint, peanut butter filled and rice krispie... Skyla was in chocolate heaven with all her "helping," which mostly involved eating every little piece that fell on the counter. It was lots of fun working together though, and she stuck with it for most of the day. This is a big part of Christmas for me - the cookies and candies and neighbor gifts. It's tiring but so much fun and part of the season! I am happy to put my feet up tonight! Enough of being barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen for one day! :-)

Kevin & Brody hung out doing guy stuff while the girls were in the kitchen.

Christmas at the Zoo

Another annual tradition for our family is going in to the National Zoo in DC for the ZooLights display! The kids were so excited and it wasn't too miserably cold, so we had a lot of fun walking around looking at all the lights throughout the zoo, and even visiting some animals. The gorillas were all sleeping but we still got to see them in their hammocks! It's a magical experience to be walking through the zoo at night when most of the exhibits are closed but displays and trees are lit up everywhere.

After dinner, we visited the barn and saw a cow named Rose ("like Skyla Rose!"), some goats, donkeys, a pig and some llamas.

This being the National Zoo, the kids got to play with a panda in a snowglobe. Kisses and hugs all over.

Premiere Performance

One of the best choices I made this fall was to join a Community Bible Study (CBS) held at a local church. It's made up of women of all ages, walks of life, faiths, etc, and we meet as core groups (small groups) to discuss the lesson we've done on our own over the week, then meet in the sanctuary for a lecture on the same lesson. The studies are really deep and require you to actually OPEN your Bible (something I have somehow not found the time to do as much since the kids joined our family!) - we have been doing Joshua, Judges and Ruth. The nuggets that we have found buried in the depths of the Old Testament have been a real blessing to me.

But the BEST part about CBS for me has been the amazing children's program they have. Skyla is loving the 3-year old class, and Brody is in the 2-year old class (he started out in the 1-year old class since his birthday wasn't till mid-September, but got moved up a few weeks ago because he was bullying on the younger ones. Everyone is much happier now! I have visions of future report cards - "Brody doesn't play well with others...). The teachers are absolutely wonderful, and the lessons and crafts they do with the kids are so thoughtful and purposeful. Skyla does the pledge of allegiance to the Bible, the Christian flag and America, and they have memory verses (put to song) each month. Ironically, their first memory verse was "I am with you always," which was the first verse Kevin learned when he became a Christian. I love hearing them sing the songs while they're playing at home. And Skyla always grills me about what I learned when I was in my class. :-)

Yesterday was our last class until after the New Year, and the kids did a little performance on the stage in the sanctuary at the end of CBS. Since this was the first "performance" either of our kids have done, Kevin came for it too, and we were armed with zoom lens and video camera. We watched Brody walk in and stand on the stage with his little friends, then all of a sudden he made eye contact with me and he was done before he even got started. He made a beeline for me and went hysterical when I tried to get him back up on stage. So he sat in my lap and we watched Skyla do all of her memory verses and a few other songs - it was so sweet! As you can see from the pictures, I was the only parent who didn't think about dressing her children in Christmas colors. All the Christmas plaid and black velvet, and my child is in her blue & purple flowers.

Brody, next to Skyla, crying his little heart out because he sees Mommy but isn't in her lap. At least we got one picture of the two of them on stage!

Hand motions and all. It was so fun to watch her sing & join in the fun, all the while peeking over at us to see if we were watching!

Budding Artist

Over the past month or two Skyla has started churning out some pretty amazing artwork. She calls them her "projects" and she spends three or more hours a day, either at the counter or in her toy room or in her bedroom, working on her masterpieces. She definitely doesn't get her creativity from me, as everyone knows the Dohertys do not have the artistic gene. But Kevin is so proud of his artist-in-training, and a typical early morning finds her waking him up by whispering in his ear "Daddy, can we go do a project?" I come downstairs to find them at the kitchen table with things spread out and Skyla coloring in a sketch that Kevin has made of our family or our house. She has mastered scissors, glue sticks, and coloring completely in the lines (do I sound like an obnoxious bragging parent yet?). She's been bugging me to let her use tape for some kind of project she has in mind, but we're waiting on that one for a while. I'm just enjoying watching my three year old display way more artistic talent and creativity than I have as an adult. It's hard to throw away any of the "projects" because they are so much fun, but pretty soon we're going to have to make some tough choices. :-)

A recent masterpiece - Skyla made these pictures of our family with construction paper pieces, her glue stick & her crayons - all completely on her own one afternoon.

Santa Baby

Every year since Skyla was a baby one of our Christmas traditions has been going to Old Town Hal the first weekend in December for (free!) pictures with Santa, then next door to the gardens to see the light displays, ice sculptures and have hot chocolate & marshmallows. This year right on cue it started snowing as we headed out the door so it was freezing cold and snowing which made it seem so "Christmas-y"! The kids had been nervously excited about seeing Santa - we don't make too big of a deal about him at our house, so he's kind of an unknown to them! :-) But of course when it was our turn, Brody wouldn't go anywhere near him without mommy, and Skyla wouldn't say a word to him and wanted nothing to do with sitting in his lap. So once again this year, I was part of the photo with Santa! One of these years...

Waiting for Santa, holding hands for courage

While I'm on the topic of Santa, one of my favorite symbols of Christmas is the "Kneeling Santa" where Santa Claus has his hat off and is kneeling before the manger bowing to Baby Jesus. This is how our family tries to celebrate Christmas, with every part of Christmas - all the extra fun stuff like Santa and presents and cookies and decorating - all dimming in light of the story of Baby Jesus coming to earth and becoming like us just to save us. Explaining the concept to Skyla & Brody makes me think of Christmas in such a simple but still amazing way.

For the First Time...

I finally decided to give in and create a family blog. Everyone else is doing it, and since this has been a banner year with me joining Facebook as well - I thought I may as well do the blogging thing before the year is over. And with so many family and friends scattered all over, it'll be fun to keep everyone up to date with funny things the kids say and random photos.

I'm not normally very introspective, but this Christmas season seemed to start early this year for me, with thinking through all the many blessings God has given to our family - as well as listening to my Christmas music starting on Nov. 1 and getting the house all decked out Thanksgiving weekend. I just absolutely love this time of year, and making it meaningful for the kids this year has been so much fun for us. I love hearing Skyla explain the story of Jesus being born to Brody, and being pregnant this Christmas has brought a new appreciation for me too (think Breath of Heaven). The kids have already spent hours reading the Christmas books and playing with the different nativities, and Kevin has been working with them on Christmas crafts since that's his department as the artistic one of the family. And we FINALLY this year decided to get most of our Christmas shopping DONE in November, so that stress is gone, except for the mountain of gifts upstairs that I need to start wrapping at some point.

We took a trip out to Ticonderoga Farms in Manassas to cut down our own tree last weekend, but didn't find the type of tree we like, so we took some pictures so we could pretend to be authentic with getting our own tree - then trekked back to Fairfax and bought a great Douglas Fir at the high school right near our house!

Hope you all are taking the time to appreciate the full meaning of this Christmas season! It's amazing to think of the gift that God gave the world so many years ago, and what a privilege it is to be able to celebrate it each and every year.