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…

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.