It Came Upon A Midnight Clear

Well I had to expect that I'd be up past midnight, so the title is appropriate. I had a couple of posts that I wanted to do before Christmas, but time has gotten away from me. So for now, I'll just post a few pictures of the seasonal artwork floating around my house these days.

Above: Tristan's Polar Express

Below: Julien's untitled Christmas artwork

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night

The following is a fun little "lip sync" we did long ago to a song called Fifteen Animals from the album Philadelphia Chickens, by Sandra Boynton & Michael Ford. This one would be fun to do at the school "talent" show, although I need to work on my directing skills. (I need a sound editor to get rid of the baby jumping in the background on this video, too.) But it was a fun waste of time. The lyrics are below.




Fifteen Animals

I really like animals.
I like them a lot.
Fifteen animals is what I've got.
I've got fifteen animals,
they're friendly and tame,
and I've given each one a special name:

I've got a cat named Bob, and a dog named Bob,
and two fish called Bob and Bob.
Then there's Bob, my hamster, and Bob, my horse,
and my piglet known as Bob, of course.

Yeah, I really like animals.
I like them a lot.
Fifteen animals is what I've got.
I've got fifteen animals, they're friendly and tame,
and I've given each one a special name:

Well, there's my rabbit, Bob,
and his bunny wife, Bob,
and their kids, Bob, Bob, and Bob,
There's Bob the mouse,
and Bob the bird,
and my turtle,
Simon James Alexander Ragsdale III. (Here Bob!)

Pat-a-Pan

More video! This time of the LOUD little angel playing with the sweet little baby child.

While I was videotaping Rosalind playing pat-a-cake kinds of things with Brendan, Enoch was with the boys "patting the pans" in the kitchen. (That's the unusual background sounds you'll hear.) I apologize for the terrible lighting; blame it on those nifty eco-friendly lightbulbs we purchased. All those dim bulbs... We'll call it "eco-ambiance."

Angels We Have Heard On High

(I am new at posting video, so I'm not sure if this will work. And even if it does, I'm not sure how to rotate the video picture, so I apologize to all of you who watch this and get a sore neck. Thankfully it's short.)

Isn't she pleasant? Isn't she lovely? What a little angel! If pictures could only talk. Yes, she's sweet and lovely. And very very LOUD. And very very ASSERTIVE. And a two year old. But to her credit, the following video was taken before the lovely pictures above.

O Christmas Tree

This year I enjoyed taking a step back and letting the Enoch and kids do most of the decorating of the tree. My job was to untangle the ornament hooks, and give each ornament a hook that needed one, and I really enjoyed it! Occasionally I'd have to help bring "balance" when one or two branches became particularly overdecorated, or hang a particularly fragile or special ornament up high, but I really enjoyed watching the kids enjoy the process.

Enoch and I reminisced about some of the tree decorations: We still have a handful of small wooden ornaments purchased in Bethlehem, shortly after we were married. The blue and silver ornament balls were purchased a few years ago from IKEA. They are plastic, and one of the best Christmas ornament purchases we made, especially with our young kids. We also have a box of red berry sprigs, which were the results of a failed craft project a couple of years ago. Last year we decided to stick them on the tree, and were very pleased with the splashes of color and the simplicity of being able to just put them anywhere without a hook. Each year we all get new ornaments from Enoch's parents, and it's fun to see how the collections are growing.

I got to thinking about how eclectic our tree has become, and how relatively "unplanned" are the assortment of ornaments. It's mostly looking very "red-white-and-blue," but not in a patriotic sense. I began to think about what our tree looked like when I was a kid, and I wondered what our tree will look like when our children are grown and take their ornaments with them to decorate their own trees. I made sure the kids knew that I wanted them to be very careful with my twirly glass icicle ornaments (also bought from IKEA), because I think I'll want those on my tree years and years from now. And I really, really enjoy the tradition of having the decorated Christmas tree in our home at Christmas time.



How about you? What do you like or dislike about your Christmas tree?

What Child Is This?

I've been wanting to do a post about this for some time. You'll see why. When people look at the "newest addition" to our family, they often try to determine "who does this one look like?" Now that we've had four of them, we have a good number to look at and compare, and a photo library to sort through. And what we have discovered is: they all look like each other!

Clockwise from top left: Julien, Tristan, Brendan, Rosalind

Clockwise from top left: Julien, Tristan, Brendan, Rosalind

Above: Brendan and Rosalind look alike in these newborn photos.

Above: Tristan (left) and Brendan looking very much alike here!

Below: Set #1 on the left, and set #2 on the right.

This wasn't easy to do! I have SO many photos of them, it was hard to choose. I have a few funny ones of Julien that I might have to string together in a future post.

It's The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Well, we're a week into it, and I'm finally getting around to posting in December. After a month of daily blog entries that practically wrote themselves, I'm now taking it easy. Blogging with small children is challenging; you have to commit to getting up early and doing it in the morning or when they're napping. And if you have other projects or things to do, something has to give. Well, this month is full of projects and things to do, isn't it? It never all gets done, it seems, but there's still plenty of month left to work on things. So I'm just posting to get past that first bump, and perhaps it will get easier, not harder, to be consistent. I'll try to use Christmas carols as all my posts titles just for fun. And I'll post a couple of photos so the grandparents and aunts and uncles can remember what the kids look like. They change so fast!