Friday the celebrations started at my little guy’s preschool. He will turn 5 over the winter break, so my husband and I went to celebrate with his class. I read the Jan Brett story “Who’s That Knocking on Christmas Eve?” (a classic in our house), I showed baby pictures (we show one from each year) and then we had cupcakes and strawberries. We have done a lot of these birthday celebrations at this preschool, starting with my eldest’s 5th birthday, which was approximately 12.5 years ago. And this was the last one! End of an era for sure.

Then in the evening, my husband and I went to his office’s holiday party. This is another thing I have been doing for a very long time (and will do for limited more times — he will be retiring from this place at least in 3.5 years). I have learned my lesson from earlier years and now I own long sleeve festive dresses, as winter is cold, and if I were wearing something sleeveless I would just be sitting there in my big puffy coat the whole time. Anyway, we hung out with the folks I know fairly well, and made it home at a reasonable hour (10:45 p.m.) which was key because we had…

Robotics at 6:45 am! My husband took kid #2 to the high school to get the 6:45 a.m. bus to a robotics tournament that was about 45 minutes away. I wasn’t sure I’d make it back to sleep, but I did until 8 a.m. — at which point it was up (kid #1 and me) to go to the dress rehearsal for our church choir concert. We sang through all the pieces in the lessons and carols service, and made it home by about 12:30 or so. (There may have been a Starbucks stop along the way).

Since we had childcare for the little guy on Saturday, I took the three kids I still had (#1, #3, #4) ice skating downtown at the ice rink on the Delaware River in the late afternoon. While this was not on my official Holiday Fun List, it is really quite fun. The weather was perfect (clear and about 34 degrees, so the ice stayed frozen but we were not so cold it was unpleasant). We skated for about an hour. I’m thinking maybe I should have signed kid #4 up for hockey as he was just zipping around everywhere…

Meanwhile, my husband (who does not like to ice skate) went to the robotics tournament to get kid #2, and then take him downtown not too far from the rink to go to the Battleship New Jersey. His scout troop was staying on the ship overnight, so that was quite an adventure for sure.

The next morning we had tickets for all 7 of us for breakfast with Santa at a department store. There had been some discussion of going to get kid #2 off the battleship to come with us, but we decided he didn’t have to go. So it was breakfast for 6 (they still set the table with the fixed menu for 7 and my other kids ate all the good stuff off the extra plate…). It was all right as these things go — the little kids got balloon animals and we took pictures with Santa. I’m still trying to figure out the breakfast with Santa experience we’d enjoy most around here. We used to like the Longwood Gardens one, but then they stopped doing it for a bit.

After, I took three of the kids shopping for sibling gifts at Target. Let’s just say we survived the experience! I dropped those three kids off at home, picked up kid #2 from the local scout house, then hung out for about 2 hours until it was time for the choir holiday concert.

This wasn’t so much a concert as a service of lessons and carols — with readings, and a brass quintet. It’s been fun to sing with my 17-year-old in this ensemble, and I thought the choir sounded quite good. Some pieces are familiar, but every holiday season I learn new ones, like a Norman Dello Joio Christmas Carol that is based on a GK Chesterton poem. My husband came to hear us (leaving the little guy with the other kids – an upside of older children) and then we came home to watch the Eagles game and I did Christmas Legos with kid #3. This set is taking longer than any have in past years because my Lego helpers have gotten older and busier.

But so it goes…The thing about the holiday season is you do so much of the same year to year, but things can’t be the same because we change. Now it’s on to a week of holiday concerts for the kids, more choir rehearsals, and then it will be weekend #3…

(I love this picture of the 6-year-old holding up the toddler so he can get a better view…)

I also took the two older boys to the Pennsylvania Ballet’s performance of The Nutcracker on Sunday. It was probably not quite as exciting as Spiderman (which they saw Friday night) but I think they enjoyed it. I certainly did! I love the snowflake dance in particular, though sadly this year they didn’t have the boy choir accompanying it. I did get a bonus musical festive moment on Sunday though: at church the music director played Bach’s Wachet Auf as the prelude. This is my favorite piece of organ Christmas music, and it’s always a treat to hear it.

This morning I looked back on my 2021 holiday fun list, and I think I’ve basically hit everything at this point. We saw several holiday displays, including LumiNature at the Philadelphia Zoo, Longwood Christmas, the Morris Arboretum Garden Railway, the Brandywine River Museum’s holiday train show, and then the get-up at the aquarium. (We also went ice skating downtown, and that was decorated for Christmas.) My husband and I went to his office holiday party, and I managed to make some of my existing clothes work. We went out for dinner for my birthday. I’ve been playing lots of Christmas carols on the piano. The 12-year-old and 10-year-old and I constructed the “Visit from Santa” Lego display, and we’re about a quarter of the way through the Elf Clubhouse. Will we finish by Christmas? We shall see!

I have not bought a whole lot of holiday flowers for the house, though we do have a poinsettia, which we bought at the 14-year-old’s holiday choir concert. We also have two amaryllis plants which are sprouting and budding rapidly. I have been reading some Christmas stories with the 6-year-old, though he has now graduated to reading by himself, and has really gotten into the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, so he’s been hustling me along to get through the Christmas stories so he can read. Oh well. I think the (now almost) 2-year-old might be willing to sit through the stories next year!

All that’s left to do is go to the Christmas Eve stuff: the live nativity at church, and the service of lessons and carols. Well, and some more wrapping. But I’m happy looking back at how many festivities we’ve managed to fit into the last 6 weeks or so. That’s a lot of memories — which is the point of these seasonal fun lists, and why I keep making them.

Perhaps this shouldn’t astonish me, but it does. Work was heavy, though not overly so. The planned personal events consumed many hours — the new house end-of-project walk-through, organizing and wrapping presents (that took over 3 hours to ensure under-the-tree equity…), a child’s band performance, choir practice — but these were built into the model. The complications happen when you throw in the curveballs: the forgotten earth science project materials that necessitated a trip to Michaels, the 6-year-old scratching his eye with the foam at gymnastics last night such that it is swollen and he can’t keep it comfortably open so he is home with me today, a during-the-week house showing that came up yesterday….

Life seldom goes as planned. But the upside of thinking through the week ahead of time — which I do each Friday — is that you can identify what absolutely has to happen. Then you can think about when it can happen. And then you can build in open space for when the inevitable crises arise. Since you know what has to happen, those priorities get automatically rescheduled for the available open space. And one way or another, stuff gets done.

Well, most of it. I didn’t order the mat to go under the exercise equipment at the new house, but to be honest, despite the time sensitivity there, it probably wasn’t a top priority…

Do you plan your weeks on Fridays?

Getting out the door with crowds of people — and occasionally a dog — is just a pain. Is everyone wearing shoes and a coat? Do we have masks if we’ll need them? Do we have a packed diaper bag or at least a diaper and wipes in my purse? Even for shorter trips, everything goes smoother if we have water and snacks. Five kids require a lot of snacks, and then there is never universal happiness with the snacks I have packed. Outings in the Covid era have the additional complication of timed reservations. In general I am not opposed — it forces pre-commitment which, given the pain required to get out the door, is probably a good thing — but it does nudge up the time pressure.

There are, of course, ways to make the process slightly easier. I have taken to simply keeping a packed snack bag in the pantry and occasionally throwing other stuff in it. If you are hungry enough you will take what is on offer. I usually just have a diaper and wipes in my purse (unless I don’t…which was fun for a very messy diaper at Longwood Gardens last weekend!). Shoes and coats are required to be in the mudroom so at least theoretically time won’t be wasted hunting for them.

But there is no way to make the process seamless. Getting out the door is a pain, but if I refused to accept that pain we’d never go anywhere. Which would itself be painful over time. So the reality is that every family trip is going to start with some aggravation, and it will probably start at least a few minutes later than planned. Oh well.

In any case, I enjoyed ice skating and seeing the holiday trains. So at least there’s that!

We have now seen LumiNature at the Philadelphia Zoo, the Holiday Garden Railway at Morris Arboretum, and Longwood Christmas at Longwood Gardens. I’m glad we saw all of them, though with the kids, it’s important to keep expectations in check. Nothing is ever fun for the whole family for the entire time. However, we’ve generally been making the family go for walks most weekends anyway, and walks with lights and Christmas trees are better than walks without lights and Christmas trees. So there’s that.

Now that December is upon us, Sassy the Elf has returned. I just hope Sassy has the good sense not to perch anywhere that Max the puppy can reach, since that could go horribly for everyone. We have a torn-up Nerf football that could attest to that. The 12-year-old and 10-year-old and I are building the Lego Christmas house. The Christmas cards arrived, featuring our November family photo shoot. My husband has sent his half. I have yet to send mine. Someday.

We got the Christmas tree over Thanksgiving weekend. In the interest of keeping it away from Max (well, and the toddler) I decided to put it in the front entry way, outside the puppy gates, instead of in the family room. Since it is in the entry way, I was also able to enforce an “only white lights and no broken or tacky ornaments rule.” As a result the tree actually looks nice! I quite like this set-up. Perhaps in the future we’ll do two trees. A sophisticated one for me and the kids can have a smaller one with whatever color lights and ornaments they want to stick on it.

I have been having moving companies come by to give estimates on moving our stuff. This has really made me interested in having less stuff under the tree for Christmas, but at least one attempt backfired. I decided the older children could do a Secret Santa gift exchange for each other, rather than giving presents to all their siblings. People agreed, and then this brought out every negative sibling dynamic that exists in this house. Within a day people had broken secrecy, taunted others with broken secrecy, etc. So we’re back to giving everyone presents. Oh well.

As I mentioned last week, I was having some real trouble figuring out what to buy the 12-year-old. I didn’t want to get him only video games.

I went to the “better” Target yesterday (slightly farther from the house, but more merchandise) thinking I would mostly round out what I’d gotten the 6-year-old. But, while there, I realized that the genius minds at toy and game and general consumer product companies don’t want to write off the 12-year-old boy market either. There were all kinds of options! I wound up getting a number of non-screen things I’m quite happy about and that I think he’ll love.

(Sorry for the vagueness for those looking for ideas…my kids sometimes read the blog!)

Anyway, it was a reminder to me of the trade-offs of in-person and online shopping. I love online shopping. That is how I will do most of my holiday purchasing. It is so efficient to choose presents while, say, nursing a toddler. Driving all the way to the not-closest Target took a fair amount of time. Even maneuvering the cart was kind of a challenge since little kid toys are often quite big (and big kid toys are small…go figure!) On the other hand, it feels harder, online, to discover things you didn’t know you were looking for. I think there is a similar trade off with reading news online vs. reading a “real” newspaper. I read the New York Times online and we get the Wall Street Journal delivered. I definitely read more random stuff in the WSJ. Then again, there are a great many days when I don’t read the WSJ because there was never a good time to sit down with the print newspaper. I almost always glance at the online headlines.

So it’s probably good to get a balance of both. But I will be trying not to go to physical stores on the Friday after Thanksgiving. That day always just seems crazy….

Photo: Many packages. Though I’m pretty sure this Amazon delivery is a pair of immediately-needed kid shoes, and not a Christmas present. 

That’s particularly important around the holidays, which are all about conjuring up special feelings. Longtime readers know — as we head into Thanksgiving next week — that I’m not into simplifying the season. Indeed, to me, Christmas is a great occasion to consciously make time feel a little more full and rich. Much like the season’s cuisine! I’m especially cognizant of that this year, when January will bring a newborn who — for all his cuteness — will make going out in fancy clothes more complicated.

A side note: We have a fair amount planned because we are not traveling anywhere this year (due to the impending arrival of said newborn). The kids are out of school for 8 days or so, and we have been making daily plans to avoid going stir crazy.

So here’s what’s on the holiday fun list this year:

Matching family pajamas! I bought these but we have not tried them on yet. I got winter-themed ones so we’ll get some post-Christmas use out of them. And I bought an 0-3 month size one! He’ll be part of the family, so why not make it official?

Learn to play Linus and Lucy. I’d put this on a previous goal list and not done it. I finally ordered the sheet music for the Charlie Brown Christmas show. I’ve played it through a few times. Kind of tricky, as I’ve not done jazz piano before. But I’m enjoying a new challenge, especially now this year when I have a real piano!

Build the Lego Gingerbread house. My 10-year-old and 8-year-old are assisting on this project. Next year we will not be able to leave small Lego pieces in accessible places, so this is the year for putting together the 1000-piece sets. There are 200-plus steps, and we’re at about 50, so this may take all the way to Christmas.

Put candles in the windows. We have done this (electric candles, of course), and it really makes the house look welcoming as dark comes early.

Philadelphia Zoo LumiNature. We have tickets for the zoo’s new winter light show. I’m looking forward to seeing what they’ve done with this.

The Choo Choo Barn. This train display in a small strip mall store in Lancaster was honestly one of my holiday highlights last year. We’ll likely go over Thanksgiving, and may also stop by the PA Railroad museum, and possibly Dutch Wonderland for their lights.

Sing in my choir’s Christmas concert in mid-December, and on Christmas Eve (7:30 p.m. service). I can see from upcoming music lists that we’re singing “Jesus Christ the Apple Tree,” which is one of my favorite pieces. The concert also features the Brandywine Brass. I don’t think I’ll sing in the midnight service, lest that result in Santa skipping our house, but I love singing Christmas music, and I’ll be doing a lot of that this month.

Go on a festive “baby moon” with my husband. It’s more of a mini-moon, but we plan to go to New York City, possibly take in an art museum, go out to eat, sleep in a hotel, and do brunch the next day.

See the Nutcracker. This is a holiday tradition at this point. My three older children, and my mother-in-law (who is visiting for the holidays) will accompany me to the PA Ballet’s production.

See the Morris Garden Railway. Another holiday train display! We may have gotten tickets to just about every holiday light show in the greater Philadelphia region….

Longwood Gardens Christmas lights. We normally do breakfast with Santa, but I never saw anything about that this year. So, instead, I got tickets to walk around and see the lights after dark.

Host my extended family holiday party. Now that my parents have moved to the East Coast, we’re all within two hours from each other. I know tradition calls for a Christmas dinner ham but the truth is…I don’t like ham. Maybe I can supplement with something else. Tenderloin?

See the kids in the church Christmas pageant. All four of them are now old enough to be in it!

See the Cirque du Soleil Christmas show. Another one we got tickets for in order to get the kids out of the house. We’ve got cousins visiting for a while too, so we’re also looking at Disney on Ice, Elmwood Park Zoo’s Wild Lights…

Purchase gifts in a calm and orderly fashion. My husband and I have made a pact to really think through what we’re giving each kid, so we can avoid realizing late that we’ve forgotten something, or one kid is getting a lot more than someone else, and so forth. In general, it’s better to shop early and thus preserve the option to triage later, rather than being forced into gifts you aren’t thrilled about. The goal is happy faces on Christmas morning, without a lot of junk that doesn’t get played with.

What’s on your holiday fun list this year?

We had a good weekend with a lot of active time and family time. On Friday evening, my husband and I went out to dinner at Talula’s Daily Secret Supper Club, one of our favorite Philadelphia restaurants. They do a new prix fixe menu every month, and since they posted the December one in advance, I’m already scheming to go back. Humorously, when we were in the elevator in the parking garage, this lady said “Nice coat” — I looked over and she was wearing the same maternity coat I was! Guess it must be the popular one this winter.

On Saturday morning, I got up and ran a 5k outside around my neighborhood. It felt quite good, for which I am grateful. Even the cold felt more like it was waking me up than anything else (I’m wearing an Under Armour cold weather first layer, which is stretchy enough to cover my stomach, and then a large fleece on top of that. My Polar-tec running pants have an elastic waist band so they are also stretchy enough to work). Unlike a previous weekend I may have written about, when I returned the little kids were up and in the process of getting ready, so I was able to make it to karate on time with them. We now get donuts in between the two lessons — it did not take long to make that a tradition!

After “family lunch” (like dinner, but in the middle of the day…) we all went to the YMCA indoor pool. This was pretty fun, because even my little guy has become quite a swimmer. He now has his orange band, which means he doesn’t have to wear a life vest, and he was swimming all over the place. The big kids went down the water slides multiple times (I elected to skip this). We dropped the 10-year-old off at an escape room birthday party, and went over to the King of Prussia mall to shop for dress clothes for the 12-year-old. In addition to the black pants and white shirt he needs for his choir, we wound up getting him an actual suit — he looked so handsome I just couldn’t resist! I’m kind of stuck on the shoes, though — I think he grew out of boys’ sizes, so I’m trying to figure out what a size 7.5/8 boys would translate to in men’s sizes. (I should probably just go get him measured). This is a new world for me. My daughter wound up falling in love with a Boden Harry Potter dress. Hedwig and the letter. She had changed into it in the car before we even got home.

The kids amused themselves with Disney Plus for much of the evening while the adults watched the Texas A&M game. My Uber driver on Friday night told me he had lost two days of his life to Disney Plus; I can see how this might happen.

Sunday I also got up early to run. This run felt pretty good too! After church, it was off to Washington Crossing State Park to meet my parents for a walk. We saw various Revolutionary War-era bullets and supplies, and visited the Johnson Ferry House before walking a bit on the tow path. It was pretty cold, but it’s good to be outside in winter, or at least I thought so. There was some complaining from the kids. My husband wound up carrying the 4-year-old for big chunks of the walk back to the car.

Now I’m trying to triage the Christmas activity list and possibly look at spring break ideas. At least the Christmas card is done — adding to the festive feeling!