Preparing for Christmas 2025

We always decorate for Christmas on the days following Thanksgiving. 

We have Advent traditions that begin on December 1, so we like to have the house ready when those begin. 

There are many decorations that the kids look forward to seeing again. 

But decorating in and of itself has become a tradition, too. 

This is so much so that the girls were eager to help without even being asked this year. 

Sometime after breakfast the day after Thanksgiving, we all get dressed with shoes on. 

Dwayne goes up to the attic and with help from our girls, now that they are big enough to catch and carry boxes coming from the attic, he brings down the tree and the several boxes and Tupperwares filled with Christmas items. 

We turn on Christmas music. 

In years past, we would play our Christmas CDs starting with Jars of Clay's "Little Drummer Boy." 

But this year, we actually switched things up and played our Christmas records. 

With the music on, we all get to work. 

We always have to rearrange furniture in order to fit the tree in the living room. 

This year, you can see in the pictures, we put the tree in front of the bookshelves where my computer desk usually sits. 

Note: We haven't put the angel on the tree yet. We've decided to wait and put her up on the first night of Advent. 

As we rearrange furniture and set up the tree, we also take the opportunity to sweep, mop, dust and reorganize thoroughly. 

I take the opportunity to purge, throwing away old magazines and papers and donating books we don't want anymore, etc.  

I reorganize closets and drawers as we take items to them. 

We have so much decor, that we have to get rid of our regular, everyday knick-knacks to make room for all the Christmas items.  

So, as we unpack Christmas decor from tissue paper, we take down our knick- knacks and wrap those in the same tissue paper and pack them carefully away in the Christmas boxes to go back to the attic until we take all the Christmas decor back down sometime January, maybe. 

Last year, we added a smaller tree with colorful lights in the homeschool classroom.  

It's a lot of work to decorate for Christmas, but the house ends up totally reset and refreshed.  

All our feet end up aching, but when we finally sit down, the house ends up clean and reorganized and beautiful. 

 

Poetry for Neanderthals

New game this day. 

Big hit with fam. 

Man and I, one team. 

Girls, one team. 

Neck and neck whole time. 

Man says, "North and East. Part of here. Soup." 

"Clam Chowder!" I yell. 

For the win. 

High five. 

Girls in awe. 

Much years one flesh. 

Now one mind.

Thanksgiving 2025

 Happy Thanksgiving!

Mid-day

Productivity is messy. We grab gym shorts from the dryer before running out of the house for weight lifting. I prep dinner but have to take a phone call before I can clean up. I am reading Plato and posting assignments online. The girls are doing Latin, and Math, poetry... and the books and notebooks pile up by the end of the day. I'm thankful for the beautiful things we get to do here every day, but sometimes, mid-day is not so beautiful unless one has eyes to see. 

Sourdough

I made sourdough again. 

This time the loaf was huge! 

The recipe I use is from "Sourdough for Lazy People" on You Tube. 

It says to let the dough rise overnight, briefly shape the loaf on a floured surface, put it in the pan, then let it rise for 90 minutes before baking, etc. 

But this time, when I checked it after 90 minutes, the shaped loaf hadn't risen that much. 

So I let it rise longer before baking, for 2-3 hours actually. 

The loaf had filled up the bottom of its pan when I put it in the oven, and of course, it ended up rising even more while baking. 

So the loaf came out larger than ever. 

So from now on, after shaping my loaf, I may adjust my rise time from 90 minutes to anywhere from 2-3 hours before baking. 

Sourdough loaves cost around $8, so this is a wonderful thing to be able to make for myself with just a few cups of flour, some salt, and water.

Amazing! 

Frisian Sugar Loaf

I am working my way through Bernard Clayton's Complete Book of Breads.

So I made the Frisian Sugar Loaf. 

This bread is pretty special. 

You take a cup of sugar cubes, cover them in cinnamon, and knead them into the bread dough. 

You can still see the sugar cubes in the photo above, popping out of the top of the hot bread. 

A day later, those sugar cubes "melted" and became sticky, sugary spots of deliciousness throughout the bread that taste exactly like the inside of a cinnamon roll. 

We ate one loaf in one day, so we gave the second loaf to friends.

Baking bread is amazing, but sharing bread is the only way to make sure we don't overdo it.   

Annie The Musical at Walnut Hill

Our church is putting on Annie The Musical. Our youngest daughter, Adele, is one of the orphans in the cast. You can see her in the picture above in the blue dress and orange coat.

Here she's dancing with other orphans. She's wearing the blue dress with a pink apron.

Our middle daughter, Avril, is in the stage crew. Here, you can see her on the right behind Annie when she and the other crew members came out to take a bow.