Christmas update

I know it’s been quite a while since I posted last.  I don’t understand how some people find the time to do it every day or even once a week.  I know I find it much more interesting when they do regular posts, but still…

In any case, it has been a crazy busy semester.  And it isn’t over yet; there’s all of term-end marking to get through and p/t meetings and so forth.  So I am forcing myself to sit down and write now because I probably won’t do it later.  I was assured recently by my semi-retired neighbour that the time goes even faster at his stage in life.  I don’t see how that could be possible; I’m pretty sure the Earth is spinning faster and that explains this unbelievably fast semester.  I can scarcely remember a lot of what has happened.  Good thing I have a calendar; it tells me not only what’s coming up, but it reminds me what I have done.

So in the past couple of months here is what we have been up to:

David:  David actually had a pretty interesting couple of months because he attended two worship conferences.  He went to one at Hope College which was actually a preaching “festival” and he gave a couple talks about worship a la SBCRC (our church).  Everyone seemed to appreciate his ideas.   Almost directly from there he went to another conference in Nashville.  This one was put on by the Willow Creek gang (sounds like an old movie) of all people.  He thought it was the greatest conference ever.  He met lots of great people and gave talks that were very well received.  He hopes it will be an annual thing because he thought it was wonderful.  He had an art gallery opening that went well.  Not fantastic art, but a decent collection of photos.  He has lately been busy, as you can imagine, with doing all the Christmas business.  We had a lessons and carols service with all in-house musicians and it was fine.  He has been cooking up a storm too.  He got a pasta roller and we have had some superdedupe pasta.  Plus, you should have tasted the goose we had for Christmas.  Oh my goodness.  It was the best ever.  WOW!  sooooo tasty.  I keep thinking about it.   This week he is not going in to work as much and he is recovering from what has been a very demanding term.  Here he is having just received his white elephant gift at the annual Small Group party.  It’s a plaster angel with no hands.  A bit creepy.  It has, however, already showed up at church in sneaky spots.  I think it’s going to become a mascot.

Jan:  I don’t know if I ever mentioned that Jan is now fully using the toilet.  I probably didn’t go on about it because I thought you were tired of hearing about it, but also because it sort of crept up gradually yet suddenly all at the same time.  He wasn’t using it and then one day he was with no fanfare or anything else.  I’m sure all of you were knowing this was going to happen, and we were too; it just seemed like a long time at the time.  Now we are working on the eating thing.  He has never been a good eater, but lately he is swearing off foods we thought he loved.  He eats very very little.  I’m not worried about his health; he hasn’t even been sick at all this semester.  However, it is about as difficult to get him to eat as it was to get him to use the toilet.  I guess he is just switching his battles.  In any case, he is eating so little and being so stubborn about what he will eat that a friend suggested he have an OT evaluation to see if he has any over-arching problems, like food avoidance issues or texture issues or something.  She said she works with one child who will only eat yellow foods.  Jan isn’t that bad.  So we had our evaluation and we discovered that Jan is 10 months behind in “grasping.”  We have some tactics we can use to improve that which we will start implementing.  But in terms of the food issue, the OT didn’t think that there was really anything to worry about.  So that’s nice to know.  I had visions of having to go to once-a-week sessions for sensory issues.   The OT recommended a book that we will get and hopefully that will give us some good strategies.

Here is a photo of Jan helping David put up the new installation:

He was so proud of himself.  He loves having “jobs” at church when we go there for work days.  Obviously this is one job that he needed some help with.

Jan has been enjoying school.  We had our first parent/teacher meeting where we were the parents (kinda weird, yet terribly terribly familiar) instead of the teacher. The teacher said he is very bright, but a bit aggressive.  Since all his friends are older and bigger and he constantly has to “defend” himself, we were not surprised at this at all.  I don’t remember anything else she said.  Nothing that stood out in particular.  Jan also had his first Christmas pageant which, although needlessly long and boring because of one teacher who talked for 45 minutes about her “path in life,” had to have been one of the more hilarious things I’ve seen.  Here are some photos of that evening.

He wasn’t too sure about being on stage in front of all those people.  What you don’t see is he spent the preceding half hour sitting on the teacher’s lap almost in tears.  I think additionally it was a bit of a sensory overload for him.  So here he is looking worried.

He warmed up a bit

Reese aka Reesee Cup (because there are 3 girls named Reese in that class, if you can believe; the others are, of course, Reesee Peesee and just Reese) is his good friend.  His other good friend, Brady, wasn’t there.  He talks about Legend all the time, but I’m not sure if he actually thinks of him as a friend.  And the infamous Peyton and Jaxon who “do naughty things” all the time are there too.

Finally, he seemed to be enjoying himself.

Reindeer antlers help, of course.  Christmas is all about children and Jan is no exception.  Here are a bunch of photos of him on the big day.

Wearing the new pj from Grandma; stocking; tree; card from Jacob & Lucy; walkie-talkies from Aaron and Lauren

He also received a camera for Christmas that will be prominently featured in the next blog post that I will do right after this one.

Here are a couple family photos.  I wasn’t sure which one was the best, or really, which one was not as bad as the others.  Why am I always making a weird face in every photo ever taken of me in my life?  Sigh. In my defense I will say that I went to bed shortly after this in the middle of the day and slept for almost two hours.

Me:  I have been fine.  I am glad to be done a semester of overloading, although the course I was teaching, the World Issues course, was really interesting and I hope I will teach it again.  I am now facing down another marathon session of marking, writing evaluations, and p/t meetings.  This year, as last, I am running the Trinity Medieval Winter on Saturdays in January.  This year, as last, I am desperately hoping no students show up because I haven’t had time to prepare.  Somehow I survived last year, so I am assuming I won’t die this year either.  I will have two hours off this semester, which is normal, but one more than this past term, so it should feel like luxury.  I have to say that there really isn’t anything else I’ve been doing.  That sounds kind of lame, but when I work so much, what else is there?  I’m hoping to have more to say about life in general next time I write.

Since I don’t have any particular news about me, I’ll just say that Christmas day was quiet: church service in the morning, afternoon naps for all, opening presents and tasty dinner en famille.  The next day, Boxing day, yesterday for those keeping track, was much much busier.  We had a dinner for 12 adults and 9 children (I think that’s how many were there) so David and I cooked all day.  I will not be in any great hurry to cook with hazelnuts nor chestnuts any time soon, but the resulting stuffings were really really tasty, I will say.  And of course, have I mentioned the goose?  It was good.  Here are some photos from that event:

cracking hazelnuts with a channel-lock in a towel; roasted chestnuts over a not-so-open fire; most of the gang in Christmas cracker crowns; some close-ups.

So that’s the story morning glory (where did that phrase come from?).  Stay tuned for another blog post following this one where we delve into the not-quite-magical world of a 3-year-old’s photos.  I hope everyone reading this had a blessed Christmas, another season of testifying to God’s on-going re-creation of everything.  All things shall be made new, Amen and Amen.