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a strange Christmas
Dec. 26th, 2013 11:36 amChristmas 2011 is hands-down the best Christmas I've had in my adulthood. Gwen was 6 weeks old, we went back to the States to introduce her to all the family, my mom's side of the family got together at my grandparents' place like we hadn't done in years but like we had every year growing up, my aunt and cousins from NY were there (which I hadn't known was part of the plan until they knocked on the door!) and it was just perfect.
Christmas 2012 was rather marred by Typhoid Gwen. There was rather more vomit involved in that Christmas than in any other, and while it was still good, it certainly doesn't stand out in any positive way.
This year, we weren't planning to go back to the States for Christmas since we were just there in Nov., and we celebrated Christmas with my parents there, and received presents from Joel's parents to take home for Gwen. When we got home from that trip, we were surprised to have come back to the Christmas market already set up on the Marktplatz (I never did get good pictures of it, unfortunately). There was a merry-go-round in it, and we told Gwen that she could go on it the last weekend of the market, the weekend before Christmas. Last Thursday I took a few hours off work in the afternoon, and Joel and I went to all the markets in the area w/o Gwen, enjoying the Christmasy feeling and doing some shopping. Then Saturday we went out with Gwen and she rode the merry-go-round four times.
Sunday night the market started tearing down, and by the end of Monday the square was empty again: Christmas was over before it had even started. Christmas Eve in the afternoon we skyped with my parents and sister and her family, and I opened my gifts from Joel after Gwen went to bed. Yesterday we made an herb-crusted leg of lamb with 40 cloves of garlic and opened some presents with Gwen in the morning, and some more in the afternoon over skype with her other grandparents, and I hung up a string of lights in the hall way, but Joel is still violently anti-tree (doesn't want to clean up all the needles, or keep it safe from the cats), so that was the extent of our decoration.
So I'm not sure whether this was a Merry Christmas or not. Christmas in the States was. Christmas at Yule Ball was. But this was yet another long day at home with Gwen bracketed by other long days home with Gwen (Monday it was lovely out and we went to the park. It's been raining pretty steadily since then, so no outdoors for us). During the day itself there was an endless stream of things I was trying to do that Joel thwarted. Nothing big or important in itself, but it was just all day long, and really frustrating.
Christmas 2012 was rather marred by Typhoid Gwen. There was rather more vomit involved in that Christmas than in any other, and while it was still good, it certainly doesn't stand out in any positive way.
This year, we weren't planning to go back to the States for Christmas since we were just there in Nov., and we celebrated Christmas with my parents there, and received presents from Joel's parents to take home for Gwen. When we got home from that trip, we were surprised to have come back to the Christmas market already set up on the Marktplatz (I never did get good pictures of it, unfortunately). There was a merry-go-round in it, and we told Gwen that she could go on it the last weekend of the market, the weekend before Christmas. Last Thursday I took a few hours off work in the afternoon, and Joel and I went to all the markets in the area w/o Gwen, enjoying the Christmasy feeling and doing some shopping. Then Saturday we went out with Gwen and she rode the merry-go-round four times.
Sunday night the market started tearing down, and by the end of Monday the square was empty again: Christmas was over before it had even started. Christmas Eve in the afternoon we skyped with my parents and sister and her family, and I opened my gifts from Joel after Gwen went to bed. Yesterday we made an herb-crusted leg of lamb with 40 cloves of garlic and opened some presents with Gwen in the morning, and some more in the afternoon over skype with her other grandparents, and I hung up a string of lights in the hall way, but Joel is still violently anti-tree (doesn't want to clean up all the needles, or keep it safe from the cats), so that was the extent of our decoration.
So I'm not sure whether this was a Merry Christmas or not. Christmas in the States was. Christmas at Yule Ball was. But this was yet another long day at home with Gwen bracketed by other long days home with Gwen (Monday it was lovely out and we went to the park. It's been raining pretty steadily since then, so no outdoors for us). During the day itself there was an endless stream of things I was trying to do that Joel thwarted. Nothing big or important in itself, but it was just all day long, and really frustrating.
