Merry and bright...

 When the light twinkles just so.

 And the performances are all done.
(Nutcracker and It's a Wonderful Life, two icons of Christmas, checked off our list.)

 Time for silly cousins to have some fun.

 Remembering the reason we love, the reason we live.

 It's quiet at the farm.
For two weeks (minus a day or two) we had no drama, no dance, no classes.

Just scrumptious board games and naps and archery practice in our little woods.

Oh! And I read several books that have been on my list including
Morton's "Forgotten Garden" -- lovely; and Smiley's "Barn Blind" -- an author who amazed me again.

 We, like many of you, opened some gifts.

That girl does not like her bear. She loves it.
And her nightgown, sewn with love by her grandma and passed down by her sister.

 It's been a deliciously slow end to another fast-paced wonderful year.

I am not making resolutions but I do like to reflect and redirect at this time of year.

How about you?
I wish you a beautiful 2014.

On the fifth day of Christmas (sing a little song with me)

How about a snap of the church across the road with a dusting of Christmastime snow to put us in the mood for a singalong? These are a few of my favorite things.

Speaking of favorites, here's Sarah snuggling with Bonnie Belle on the couch. I love that dog more than is reasonable.

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Sort of makes me want to cozy up with some hot chocolate and the piano for a few rounds of I'll be home for Christmas.

I think maybe I like taking pictures of the chicken yard in the snow because, well, it looks a lot cleaner that way. But there aren't any Christmas carols about chickens. I don't think. Hmm... Away in a manger? Alas, a roosting box is not the same as a manger. But I'm dreaming of a white Christmas anyway.

And God decorates for the season with or without snow. There's a song on the radio called Christmas in the Northwest. Its lyrics include "a gift God wrapped in green" and it's uber sappy. Just how I like 'em.

But dashing through the snow is more fun than contemplating inedible berries.

Ever since finding my Christmas I find it everywhere. To the tune of all I want for Christmas are my two front teeth.

I discover I'm singing carols in my head all the time. But it's not so much you better watch out.

It's a Silent Night, a miracle in the everyday that fills my head and heart and makes me a little dizzy.

I can't seem to take a decent photograph these days. Nor to string a coherent sentence together with another. I read recently -- can't remember where (search "mommy mush brain") -- a theory of the impending demise of the English language (presumably other languages also?) due to the prevalence of quick-type Twitter- and text-centric lifestyles.

I was prepared to freak out, because, let's be honest, I'm always prepared to freak out. And? I was a double major in journalism and English lit so somehow feel it's my duty to stand for all things Jane Eyre, King James, and, er, Chaucer. Wait. If those examples of the English language can all be, oh, exemplary, and yet so different.... Wait. Gotta think.

Huh. In a barely related vein I've read some alarming studies about the endangered family unit. About the rarity of the family dinner table and the paucity of surviving nuclear families (ooh... sounds dire indeed). These same articles, even books devoted to the subject, don't so much give a guideline or roadmap "back" to family unity but rather stop short at bemoaning our cultural abandonment of "traditional" family values.

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While I can follow the logic of each of those arguments (barely -- let's remember I have five children who've stolen most of my brainpower for the foreseeable future) I don't personally find them to be all that scary.

I don't think the written word is dying. I think it's changing. The purist in me is mildly concerned but the realist says, meh, it's an evolving language. Change is inevitable. The proliferation of texting at least means most of this new generation is communicating with one another, possibly even with their parents. Do my kids use "text spelling" in their writing? Nope. (But they don't have electronic communication devices.) Will I be worried when the first of my children writes "ROFLOL" instead of something more articulate? For goodness sakes, no.

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Nor do I think the family is an endangered species. Does my family look different than your family? Probably a lot different. Does my family look different than the Ingalls of Little House? Or The Marches of Little Women? Certainly. But I think the love my family shares looks exactly the same. (Every good and perfect gift has the same source.) I think my generation was raised with a keen understanding of the pain of a broken family and an equally sharp focus on building family, fostering love, and creating an unshakable sense of stability for the next generation.

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So in the midst of my hymn singing and carol babbling I find some more Christmas, some more sacred in the everyday.

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I may not be taking great photos. I may not be writing, or often even reading, great works of literature. I may not be raising the next president of the United Nations. However, I am taking a lot of snapshot pictures, hugging my and other people's babies, eating more than my share of fudge and singing a lot of goofy songs in my head while counting the dishes as a meditation.

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That has to stand for something.

Found my Christmas

For some reason I had a hard time articulating the way this Christmas has felt to me.

I read a little story over at a lovely writer's site and then I understood something new about myself. Isn't that the best kind of reading, after all? I was missing my Christmas.

Not for the hustle and bustle of it all. I haven't been near the mall this year... nor even the specialty shops. Not a single online "doorbuster" has busted thanks to me.

We've loved the handmade, homegrown Christmas of our own little family's creation.

And we've not forgotten, of course, the reason for the season: Jesus Christ come to Earth for love's sake.

But the joy? The joy was somehow muted until yesterday, when a box full of dress-up clothes, some superfun friends, and the Bible story read aloud brought it all out in me.

I was missing my Christmas. But I found it.

Merry Christmas, dear friends. May God bless your season abundantly.

Ho ho homemade Christmas

Welcome to another in the continuing if sporadic series I like to call "Simplify? Did I say simplify?"

While I pour you a cup of virtual tea I'd really love if you noticed in the first photo our incredibly authentic, clearly historically significant, thoroughly researched nativity scene, in which elephants march with drums right behind the wise men and camel as all are apparently on their way past the main event (you know, the babe in the manger?) in search of a somewhat Victorian, differently scaled schoolhouse from the Village Otherwise Located Across the Room On the Bookcases.

Suite's the name, anachronism's the game. Imagination, improvisation, justification. Anyone?

In this most beautiful of all seasons, the time of celebration of God's gift to the world, we at the Suite place are careful to edit the busy-ness even more than usual.

We strive for a heavy emphasis on Advent, on the waiting of the world for God's son, on love, on blessing others. We craft. We clip evergreen boughs. We light candles. And we rarely mention that secondary icon of Christmas. Oh, sure, the kids think it's a fun story, the Mr. Claus legend. But this year we didn't even write him letters.

So JUST WHEN WE LEAST EXPECTED HIM, Santa showed up at the girls' Christmas concert.

Laura was out of Aunt Maureen's lap before the Good Saint Nick could be seated. I just noticed that her shoes were on the wrong feet. Classic.

And then? He gave away TREATS. Can you imagine?

Little Sal certainly couldn't. He was unsure of the situation. Stranger danger? Meh. (Behind that big white beard are the sparkling blue eyes of Randy, an elder at our church and a retired sheriff to boot.)

Random. Not Santa- nor Christmas-related. But Grace and her friend Julianne are treasures beyond compare. That's what I'm talking about.

And by the way, the girls played beautifully. Have I mentioned before how I live for this stuff? How blessed I am to live in a tiny rural village where music and friendship are part of our everyday lives? The fact that we didn't have to choose between homeschooling and participation in fantastic community events is one of the highlights of living here.

Here's another picture, for Grandma who couldn't make it, of the musicians looking cute despite the terrible gymnasium lighting.


Stay tuned for more from this supposedly simple homesteading life.

And may your Christmas season be more blessed with love, with friendship, with grace, than you or I can imagine. Because I have a pretty big imagination. It's even big enough to enjoy a visit from St. Nick.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch

Gee. Where's that Miriamblogger been?
Watching snowflakes fall.


Baking a rustic pie (or a dozen).


Thinking about the gardening (quilting, gift-making, you-name-it) that didn't get done.


However.
It is ever so much more edifying to think of what we have accomplished:

The big girls had a couple of music performances this month.
One with the whole band
and one just the two Suite musicians
at the Grange hall's Christmas banquet.
Oh? And also? We got a piano! More music to follow.

We've been sewing.
Madeleine and Sarah and I are participating in a hand-quilting class on Monday nights.
In addition I have some crazy amazing projects in my new secret sewing corner.
I thought briefly about being all together-like and blogging the various
cuter-than-cute projects but we'd hate to spoil Christmas surprises
for any readers who also happen to be friends in real life.



We've been partying with friends and family.
Madeleine turned 12 and invited 24 friends to her party. She goes big, that one.
We sang carols at some sweet friends' home after enjoying soup
and homemade French bread.
We hosted a lovely family of ten at our home for a celebration of our own making.
We were blessed with a visit from our former neighbors
pre-deployment.
I hosted some sweet girlfriends for a girls' night in of crafting and, of course, eating.


...which leads me back to...



I've been baking.
French bread, apple galettes galore, the odd Christmas goodie.



And I've been thinking. About all of you.
What have you been doing? How have you been?

The stockings were hung... finally

Our property is graced with about seven enormous big-leaf maples and thankfully just one massive old-growth fir tree. It's a community landmark and I'm just gonna guess about it's about 300 years old. (Yes, that's my highly scientific raised-by-forester-in-the-heart-of-timber-country estimate.) What I know for sure is that the big tree is the skyscraper of our village and it drops a lot of branches. Well, I should clarify to say that it drops too many branches for my meager decorating needs. Sometimes it "drops" branches that would qualify as full-size trees in an established suburban neighborhood. One time it dropped such a branch on my husband's shop. But that wasn't very Christmassy at all.

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This year I gathered a few branches still holding on to their pretty little fir cones. Isn't it a miracle, the thousands of tree possibilities in those tiny cones?

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We put those miracles, found free in my yard, on the mantle with a string of lights. Then we added some candles, for looking at only as Grace says, and hung the stockings.

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I made our stockings, six of them, about seven years ago when our family was still just a cozy foursome and I still drove a Volkswagen. Cutting into those vintage holiday tablecloths (long-lived slight obsession with the vintage linens? check), I planned and thought of the biggest family with which we might someday be blessed. So now we have six stockings of faded turkey red, nearly pink with age, and soft sage green.

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One stocking is ever so cleverly decorated with Sarah's four-year-old lettering in Sharpie marker. I'll never know how she found the permanent pen but what was unfortunate graffiti five years ago is now the sweetest little reminder of days when she couldn't string letters together for hundreds of words on end as she does today in stories so beautiful it makes both the mother and the writer in me incredibly and inexplicably proud. (Despite my own blogsome run-on sentence problems!)

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Look what we've done, this family! Look at what a few years can bring. (Look how many stockings we can hang.) Not only are we a Suburban-filling family of six, we are blessed beyond measure. In just a few rings on an enormous tree's growth pattern, it seems we've grown more than those years would account for.

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Sometimes, especially when mired in the mundane, I look back on where we were and marvel at how life's seemingly meandering path has moved us so far. Even if I'm "late" hanging the stockings and "late" finding the ornament bins in the shop. Even if I haven't mailed my Christmas cards and the gingerbread house is still plain and brown. For just a minute I realize: today's tiny miraculous finds and even today's disappointments, when viewed from tomorrow, will be as beautiful as yesterday is to me now.

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We are decorated with the incomparable peace and love of this season. The mundane, the day-to-day, will surely pass. But we are steady as the tree out front, a landmark of our own lives growing so imperceptibly but surely in faith, and love, and beauty.

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May your season be blessed as ours has. Even if you haven't mailed your cards yet! (See what I did there? Throwing in a little forgiveness? Oh yeah. Feel free to join my procrastination station.)

As I was doing my chores

We have three sick little girls in our house this week. I think all moms will understand when I say that this adds to my load more than a little: caregiving, laundry, chores, (worry). It also reminds me how blessed I am to have a safe and warm home for my babies.

A few of my favorite things

I love homeschool with all of my heart. I love being there when a certain light of understanding dawns. I love letting the girls spend as long as they want on the subjects they enjoy. I love being done with "school" by lunchtime and leaving the afternoons free for creating art, playing, reading, making up big science experiments and exploring outside.

But last year, in our first year of having school at home, I really, really missed the community Christmas program. I missed seeing all the children of our rural area perform with instruments and voices and big personalities.

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So it is wonderful this year to be a part of the school's music program. Madeleine is learning clarinet and Sarah is playing flute. That's Madeleine in a solo (!) and I am so proud of both of them for taking on these instruments at ages 9 and just-turned-11.

And this year Grace is a Kindergartener who loves learning at home and visiting with her "school" friends on Mondays and Wednesdays for music. When we were getting dressed for the program (she was one of "nine ladies dancing") Gracie chattered on about how excited she was to see her sisters perform. When I mentioned that she would be on "stage" too, she went white and still despite two weeks of rehearsal. She hadn't realized she was in the show. Her stage fright lasted all the way until we arrived at the school gymnasium.

And then the dancing began. From the left, above: Clara, our Sarah, our Madeleine, Olivia with the smooth moves.

There's Madeleine helping Olivia up from the fall after the big dip. You can see Grace on the far right, spinning.

Laura enjoyed time with Grandpa and Grandma. She even shared the contents of her Santa treat bag.

Gracie was sure this wasn't the real Santa.

But she was sure that these are her real(ly adorable) friends Clara and Shelby. Aren't they sweet?

Staying warm?

It's nine degrees outside in our little corner of Oregon. The chickens don't know what to do with themselves: They rush out of the heated henhouse into the frigid air and hop from foot to foot before hurtling over one another to get back inside. And then they repeat the troop movements minutes later. No one ever said chickens were the brightest of farm animals.


Our outside decorations consist of a few windfallen fir branches draped over the picket fence and tucked randomly into the basket of my vintage bicycle. Honestly, I am a weather wimp or something, because a little frost won't stop me but the sub-20s will.

Inside we've been baking. It's wonderful to warm up the kitchen with the scent of gingerbread. The big girls are studying and reading a lot and Laura... well, Laura's obsessed with her Little People. She knows them all by particular names and chooses her favorites each morning to carry in her pocket.

I've also been in deep, deep denial about Christmas gifts. I have a list. And that's as far as it's gone. Maybe a panic attack over that will help keep me warm?

Get on the bus

I'm wearing my seat belt. Are you?

Thanksgiving at our house was simple. And quiet. Other than the last-minute cancellation of our travel plans and a three-hour power outage on the morning of the big turkey, we enjoyed a peaceful candlelit day with all the trimmings. I made Mrs. G's "one fabulous" (trust me, it's that good) recipe of butternut squash, the girls' favorite cheesy broccoli (so traditionally Thanksgiving; I'm sure the pilgrims partook), an orange-stuffed bird, mashed potatoes. Madeleine made a lemon chiffon cake and Sarah the pumpkin pies. Gracie set the table with red transferware and turkey red taper candles. We missed our extended families but were grateful for everyone's health and safety.

Black Friday? What's that? Friday we stayed far away from malls or anything with a cash register. I sewed some more swing tops and nightgowns. The girls painted with watercolors and Mr. Suite puttered in his shop. Hah. Makes him sound about 80 years old. (Or just male. Anyway he had fun.)

We all spent considerable time reading over the weekend. Madeleine started A Wrinkle In Time so I had to re-visit my pre-teen Madeleine L'Engle favorites. Sarah's reading Sisters Grimm, a hilarious set of fairy tales from a sassy and girly perspective. Perfect. I finished a new favorite: Into the Beautiful North by Urrea. Talk about sassy -- three young Mexican women on a in illegal mission to return young men to their homeland. Coyotes and border patrol and love and hilarity. It was a good holiday weekend read.


But Monday was back to reality. Music lessons and packing the pumpkins and cornstalks to the compost pile. Unearthing the Christmas boxes. Listening to the first installment of the radio show "The Cinnamon Bear."

I'm on the bus called Christmas. I'm buckled in and prepared for some holiday magic. How 'bout y'all?

Sugar

We've been baking a bit.

So much so that I've re-named that powdered white product formerly known as Sugar.

Around here, you'll hear it referred to as Christmas Crack.

Divinity, the Devil's candy, calls for powdered sugar and corn syrup. I think it was very early marketing genius to name it "divinity." But a wolf in sheep's clothing, still.

Icing for the sugar cookies. Um. The cookies are made with sugar and butter, and then we put some nearly liquid sugar on top with a little food coloring for good measure. I find the food coloring is especially helpful in ensuring children sleep well at this time of year.



Cranberry Hooties. Hooties? Who names these things? They're oatmeal and cranberry bars, people. Just some grain and fruit cleverly holding the sugar together in a cookie bar with a vaguely disturbing name.

Cardamom bread. Now this, and I kid you not, has made my Christmas. My Finnish grandmother made cardamom bread around the calendar, but it's still a Christmas must when baking. And as a bonus... no sugar.

My grandmother died four and a half years ago. So an hour ago when I was kneading the dough, aromatic with fresh-crushed cardamom, and 8-year-old Sarah paused in the kitchen to say, "smells like Mumuu's house," I of course immediately dissolved into a puddle of (sugary) tears.

Traditions are funny that way. Some we're conscious of creating. As parents we do some things simply because our children's childhoods make more sense with traditions. It's not particularly fun to make sugar cookies and spread icing from one end of the house to the other. But it wouldn't be a proper child's Christmastime without the opportunity to press the shape of a tree and a wreath and the bells into dough, drop the coloring into icing with abandon, spend hours with flour on our cheeks and sprinkles stuck in our hair.

Some traditions are so entrenched we didn't even know how important they were.

And, by the way, my photos have nothing to do whatsoever with this post. Laura likes to take her baths in the kitchen sink. I like to force my husband to pull over so I can shoot little white churches. The camera is storing up the happiness for me, so I can pull the memories up thanks to the miracle of Random Access Memory. Or is that Read Only Memory? Whatever. They're my memories.

I have a longtime habit of comforting myself with pretty pictures. I used to raid my mother's photo albums when I was a little girl. How much better is it to have a large hard drive and a huge stack of CDs... all mine! Anyway that was me at 11 years old, sitting in the closet with a sheaf of square snapsots and some C.S. Lewis books, breathing through Constant Comment teabags, making the world perfect from my perspective.

I have just a minute between kneading dough and braiding Christmas Eve hair to sit in my (closet of an) office with a cup of tea, a year's worth of pictures, and you. While the world looks much more complicated than it did once, it's still pretty wonderful from here.

Merry Christmas to all!