Christmas preparations - at last!

Perhaps you have to finish work and school term in order to feel Christmassy.

Perhaps you have to finally buy the tree and buy the food from the shops.

Perhaps it simply needs to be the shortest day of the year.



Whatever it is, at long last my 'bah humbug' attitude to Christmas this year is waning and I am being sucked into the magic and mystery of the festive season. I have done my duties - school play, band concert, another band concert, nativity - and now I can relax into it all.

I'm more organised than some years. The Christmas Letter has been drafted but is awaiting my husband's edits before being sent out (yes, it will have to be an email now!) The presents that needed to be sent abroad have gone (yes, they will arrive late but better than not at all?) and the UK presents have been despatched too. In fact, if it weren't for my son's birthday tomorrow (such bad timing on our part!) it would all seem a lot more relaxed. Today's shopping trip was for a birthday cake which, oddly enough, is not what the shops are promoting at this time of year!

One thing I've not made or bought is a Christmas Cake. Below is a recipe my friend sent me, and might just be the one I follow...

Christmas Cake

Ingredients:

* 2 cups flour
* 1 block butter
* 1 cup of water
* 1 tsp baking soda
* 1 cup of sugar
* 1 tsp salt
* 1 cup of brown sugar
* Lemon juice
* 4 large eggs
* Nuts
* 1 bottle wine
* 2 cups of dried fruit

Method:
Sample the wine to check quality. Take a large bowl, check the wine again. To be sure it is of the highest quality, pour one level cup and drink. Repeat. 

Turn on the electric mixer. Beat one cup of butter in a large fluffy bowl. Add one teaspoon of sugar. Beat again. At this point it's best to make sure the wine is still OK. Try another cup... Just in case. 

Turn off the mixerer thingy. Break 2 eggs and add to the bowl and chuck in the cup of dried fruit. Pick the frigging fruit up off floor. Mix on the turner.. If the fried druit gets stuck in the beaterers just pry it loose with a drewscriver. Sample the wine to check for tonsisticity. 

Next, sift two cups of salt. Or something. Check the wine. Now shift the lemon juice and strain your nuts. Add one table. Add a spoon of sugar, or some fink. Whatever you can find. Greash the oven. Turn the cake tin 360 degrees and try not to fall over. Don't forget to beat off the turner. 

Finally, throw the bowl through the window. Finish the wine and wipe counter with the cat.

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

A little late...

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Yes, yes: I know my greeting is a little late, on both counts but my excuses are many.

1. It is still the season of Christmas (up to and including, I believe, Twelfth Night or Epiphany, when the celebration of the arrival of the Wise Men concludes the Christmas story). On this ground, I am not (yet) late in wishing you a Merry Christmas.
2. We may be a few days in, but I still hope that the rest of 2012 is good for you. Indeed, this year we have an extra day to celebrate in.
3. Who really gets time to blog in the run-up to and during the festive season itself? (Oh yes: those who are more organised than me. Oops.)

To maintain that festive mood, here are two photos of the Withenay family Christmas. Firstly, the tree.

(It looked even better with the presents under it.)

And then a picture taken in the garden a couple of days before.

Isn't it great to see the beginning of Spring before you've roasted the turkey or brought lumps of coal to people's houses? What topsy-turvy weather we have been having!

So, to reassure all my lovely blogging friends, I haven't disappeared off the face of the earth. We have had a lovely family Christmas, full of good food, parties, games, fun with friends and wonderful presents. Celebrations may now be over as school and work resume their humdrum routine but it will be a year of many happy memories.

I'd love to say that I have a list of marvellous, virtuous New Year Resolutions, but I haven't. Last year I managed a month which (on past form) isn't bad. If I can myself, my house and (spot where this all falls apart) my family a little more organised, that will suit me fine.

Here's hoping God richly blesses your year ahead, filling it with love, joy and peace.

Five Festive Fridays - Witnesses

It is our Final Friday - week Five of Five Festive Fridays.

With Christmas Day past and New Year looming, it stops feeling quite so festive, but this week we are looking at the witnesses to Christ's birth: the shepherds and the wise men.

Shepherds (incongruously watching sheep in the fields, in the bleak mid-winter ... some bits of the story really don't add up with our assigned date of 25 December for the birthday) were lowly, poor people in the society of their time.

The wise men had travelled from afar, come by the signs in the stars, wealthy and respectable enough to be given audience with King Herod. What a peculiar mix of people to witness the birth of God's son.

The shepherds went home rejoicing.

The kings went home by a different route, avoiding Herod. Mary, Joseph & Jesus escaped to Egypt, before Herod unleashed his infanticide on Bethlehem.

I was thinking the other day of how awful events can taint so many lives. Take for example the recent story of Jo Yeates, missing for eight days before her body was found on Christmas Day. My sympathies go out to her family and boyfriend, worrying for days and only brought closure on what should be the most joyful day of the year. But I also thought about the couple walking their dog who found the body. Likewise, their day of peace and joy was shattered.

At the moment I am in the middle of the most escapist book (hoping for enough peace from the children to finish it this afternoon). There has been a lot of (fictional) death: shootings, explosions and wild escapes. I can tell there will be more blood and grief before the book ends! Anyone who might vaguely be a witness to the crime is on a hit list, as are their family, the police, the courts, judge and jury.

No-one can tell when they will be a witness to a major event. Sometimes we witness important events, such as car crashes or arguments. But every day we witness minor events, events that have no meaning at all to anyone but ourselves. We notice the grey hair in amongst the brown. We see our children sit, crawl, walk. We note the time that they beat us at a game without any assistance, and when we have tried really hard to beat them. We know when we are beaten, when the homework is more difficult than any that we remember. We watch our parents become more frail, need a stick more often, require glasses all the time.

We witness the passage of time in ourselves and in others. Now that Christmas is over, we witness the passage of Jesus life as he goes to his inevitable death on the cross. And after all, given that some supermarkets are already putting Easter Eggs on their shelves, shouldn't we begin to think about that sacrifice now?

  Truth of our life,
  Mary's child,
You tell us God is good;
  Prove it is true,
  Mary's child,
Got to your cross of wood.


From 'Born in the night' by Geoffrey Ainger

The effect of disciplining children

Happy New Year!

The children are back at school (despite the snow today) and I have the chance to return to the computer, to the blog, and to the enormous pile of ironing...

I love this time of the year, when we actually get a week at home to spend time together as a family. We had no anxieties about travelling anywhere - choosing to walk around the village in the snow rather than drive and having The Oldies visiting us for Christmas itself. The four of us had a lovely time together: playing games, reading books, watching Mary Poppins, being beaten by son at Mario Cart Wii.

We all eat together, which I think is one of the most important things a family can do. We sit at the table and talk. And (as I push the boat out) usually have dessert (I assume Christmas Cake counts in this category). It also gives us, the nasty, horrid parents, the chance to discipline our children. This year, we tried to emphasise the use of the word please.

Why is it so difficult? We have been harping on about its use for the last eight years!

Please can I have the milk?

Please will you stop singing at the dinner table?

Please sit with all four legs of the chair on the floor.

The children both struggled badly. My husband and I gave out silent screams of frustration.

But something must have sunk in. One day last week we were getting ready to go out for a walk. Like using the 'P' word, this is something the children object to (until they are actually out in the fresh air, when they love running around and throwing snowballs and clambering over tree stumps). For a good ten minutes before we leave there was whining, whinging and moaning.

"Mu-um, do we have to go?"

"Yes!"

"Mu-um, I'm too hot, I don't want to wear my coat."

"It'll be freezing outside. Put it back on, love. And your wellies."

Then, of course, there was the sibling rivalry. The arguments ("That's mine!") were unending ("She stood on my toe!"... "Well, he hit me!" ... "But it was an accident!")

I stood in the hallway and raised my head to heaven.

"God, give me strength!"

"Please!" my son pipes up. "You forgot to say please..."

Life has no purpose

The other day, in a fit of melancholy, as I walked back from dropping the kids at school I thought to myself that my life has no purpose. The day was stretching endlessly before me, and what could I plan to achieve? The washing? Is this what sums my life up now?

Thinking a little more, I realised that my anxiety was not about having no purpose, but having too many purposes. So many purposes that I wasn't really sure which to tackle next. (It just happened that the washing was becoming more and more urgent!)

Many of the things I do have been shared on this blog, so in a way of an update and partly to try to sort out what I ought to be doing next, here is what is currently going on.

The writing

I am trying to write a chapter a day during the month of November of The Professor, The Bishop and Me, the third and final book telling the story of our time in Zambia. I am failing on my initial lofty goal, but I have written around 17,500 words, which is not to be sniffed at. There have been days when this has been nearly impossible to write and days when I have wept whilst typing about stories that are so personal and upsetting to me. It is only the 16th today, so I still have half the month to go - maybe half the book will be finished then?

The house

I haven't updated about this for ages. We have received planning permission for our proposed changes and are now in the process of submitting building regs. We will then have to put the job out to tender (yikes!) so I am spending far too much time on-line working out exactly which tiles and baths and lights and kitchen units I actually want. Everything requires a decision and, given decisions are not my strong point, the next few weeks could be excruciating. And we haven't even begun building yet...

The family

Husband's job still takes up too much time (personal opinion!) and the PhD has still to be completed (personal frustration!) which does seem to leave me on my own more than either of us would like.

Having had parent's evening at school last week I am proud to say that my son is absolutely flying through school, the teacher being very pleased with everything but his handwriting (he's a boy, and can't be bothered with it!)

And I am delighted with my daughter's progress too! She is talking more in class, sitting still on the carpet with more consistency and generally improving all round. Her reading and spellings are fine, her numeracy is still way behind but her teachers were very positive about her and her progress. If she learns to concentrate better then maybe she'll pick everything up more quickly: that is the current theory we are working on. But she is talking - woo hoo!

Church

I have to write a sermon by the end of the month. (I've read the bible passages and they seem all doom and gloom, which doesn't feel appropriate just before Christmas!)

So, if you add in that I am trying to fund-raise in order to take some money or equipment out to Zambia when we go on holiday next year, to a project that works with women and orphans; and planning for Christmas, with family coming and going throughout the fortnight's 'holiday'; and the usual taxi service to run for the children, household jobs to do and an elderly grandmother that I really ought to visit more often ... well, I am not allowed to be idle.

There probably is some purpose to my life after all!

Dear Santa

My son has come home from school with his neatly written letter for Santa.  Here it is, in all its glory, spellings and all.

Dear Santa

Please can I have a choclate orange, a Nintendo wii (with Mario and Sonic at Olimpic games), a big tV, mario and sonic at the Olimpic games on DS, a pokemon ball with a cuddely toy Picatu in side, some the collection of the atrosaur books, a aroplane, one of your Elves, a real! Koala, Kung fo panda DVD, madagasta 2 DVD, Lourel and hardy DVD, Totankumhons death mask, a time mecian a pet unicorn, and Gold.

PS A plastasion 2 (and games) Xbox 360 (and games)

Love, xxx

Now I'm just worrying about how you look after a Koala and a pet unicorn in the same house...