the Eve

i'm very weary but the night is not over. not yet. it streaches out before me and i don't see the ending. i'm waiting for mom to give me bethany's stocking and she's waiting for layne's kids to go to bed because they are all still believers. that's nice, i think.

yesterday i woke up and i brought out all the wrapping stuff into the dining room and made a station. i found, to my delight, a drawer full, chock full of ribbon. delightful ribbon. not gaudy. special. mom bought them at a garage sale and there was some old antique cloth ribbon that was really beautiful. rich. anyways, wrapping at the table instead of on the floor in the sewing room, like i usually do and all the different ribbon made wrapping fun and relaxing this year. not stressful and pressured like when i do it on christmas eve. i wrapped all day. different people would come and go, wrap, visit and help me make decorative decisions, give me their fingers when i was tying ribbon and it was nice. i didn't stop until eight thirty at night. i did it all day.

at eight thirty sarah and i went to katie's and watched miracle on 34th street. then we took katie with us, picked up bethanyandamay and went to sugar loaf. this was our second annual sugar loaf mountain lusty-sing. we all stand under the giant christmas tree made out of lights, clinging to the centre pole and to each other and sing christmas carols at the top of our lungs. we always start and end with hey ho. this time we left one by one while singing hey ho like in little women. on our treck out over the slippery bluffs katie slipped and went down on her bum/back. clumsy hey? :) on the mountain it was misty.

today i woke up and wrapped all the mom presents. mom from me and sarah and mom from dad. sarah and i went to chapters and save-on to do a few deeds and on the way we got some christmas eve fries and had a christmas eve fry chow down. later i picked amay up at the mall and bought a few last minute items. by the time i got home, i was so tired and exhausted that i lay down on my bed in the dark and let the world ebb away for half an hour. by the time i got up, most people were here for the christmas eve potluck. of course ev and esther were very late. we didn't wait.

highlights of the massive christmas eve caroling:
1. singing deck the halls in the two-syllable round way in our car and kyle's really loud "LA!"
2. the never ending loud round of hey ho on our treck to the lobby of the hospital, that startled the ambulance guys and the injured alike
3. being the ones that got lost/ left behind this year.
4. listening to lullay with the new found understanding that katie gave us. sorrowful holy song. and the other song that gives us shivers.

mom sang her lullabye song to start off our night. she tried to get out of it, but we were firm, and it was really nice. we didn't really do the candle ceramony this year, and i missed it. there was no candle and dad just asked people to talk about their memories of christmas. that was ok, but not as nice. it doesn't really bring the spirit. jordan sang joseph and then bore his testimony and then mom prompted dad to prompt me, so i did, and brent did too. and then the grankids opened one present. basically this started a hard time for me. all my works of art were being trampled because the pile of presents was so high and so deep around the tree and the grankid presents were all mixed in and they were all there getting their own. to make matters worse, mom couldn't find joshie's. mom rummaged through all of them once, and dad did. by the time i got there to do a once over, i kept finding the perfection of my creations marred. it was hard for me. i was/am tired and it was vexing. i set to work fixing them, but one was proving very difficult and i was in no shape to deal. finally i was able to calm down and fix the problem. after a while i stopped caring as much, but it's hard. i don't know why. so sarah and i were playing with carmen who i saw for the first time today. she has a little spanish head with evan's face right in the middle. we put a little barrette in her hair and then a santa hat and took pictures of her. she's a little chunk. she likes to sit up. she drooled all over my arm.

ok i'm too wasted to have any emotion or write with any animation or expression, so i'm going to go stuff beth's stocking and get into my pjs.

done deal


Comments