more advent music + Chesterton on Santa

Two quick things I mentioned on the radio today!

First up: more of the Advent music we love in our house.

Night of Silence - Marty Haugen

Christmas Eve - David Lanz

Hymns - Beth Neilsen Chapman 

Advent at Ephesus - Benedictines of Mary Queen of Apostles

And here's why G. K. Chesterton believed in Santa Claus, even more as an adult than when he was a child. Don't miss the other article linked at the bottom of the post, about whether telling children about Santa Claus is lying. Spoiler alert: it's not. :)

A blessed Gaudete Sunday to all this weekend. And a great big thanks as always to the crew at Mater Dei Radio's Morning Drive program for having me as a guest.

domestic tips and tricks for December

Hello! The Advent of our Lord is upon us! And currently, I'm in bed with some weird stomach bug/food poisoning grossness. I'm praying it's one of those blessed 12 or 24 hour miracle bugs that does it's awful business and then leaves my house in peace. Praying praying praying.

I'm not jumping into the "how early is too early to pull out the Christmas decorations?" fracas because my own reasons for holding off are completely non-liturgical: I just cannot stand the the stockings, Santas and snowmen getting a fine layer of DUST on them before the Christmas Eve. Dusting and cleaning are depressing enough without having to dust and clean the stuff you pull out of the closet each year to MAKE EVERYONE HAPPY!!!

So, family rule is that it all the tinsel comes out and the tree goes up on the 2nd or 3rd Sunday of Advent, and then comes down by Epiphany, all dusty and sad. But by then I don't care as much.

Here are 7 things I'm loving at home this month:

1. Budget friendly Christmas card photos

We only had to take 4,000 photos to get a good one! This was shot 3,403. We were still warming up.

I had grand plans to hire a photographer and have a big ol' family photo shoot with my family (three sisters, two sons-in-law, two grandparents and nine grandkids under the age of eight).

Yeah. That didn't come together. But instead we went to a nearby park with benches and this little gadget with a remote shutterfly, and it went pretty darn well:

I plan on just taking one of the photos of Sean and I with our kids, embellishing it with a little photoshop magic, then printing them for like .09 cents or something at Costco. Done and done cheaply.

2. Cheap frames for kid art

So many times I've tried to sneak one of my dear kid's masterpieces into the recycling bin (after the proper period of admiration and praise for their aesthetic sense, of course), only to have them see the smallest corner of it sticking out and scream HEY, I WANTED TO KEEP THAT!!

Since this is the season of 9,000 art projects, I picked up a 3-pack of these cute 8x10 pop-in front loader frames from Walmart for $5.97. I can only find the link to the 3-pack of 11x17 frames online, but still, at $11.56 for three, that's pretty good. 

3. Free foliage 

My rose bushes and nandinas start to quake when they see me head outside with the scissors.

As much as I love having fresh flowers in my home and on my table, I still have a hard time biting the $5 bullet to buy a cut arrangement at the store. It's a thrill to go see what I have outside in the yard, instead.

3. My Dollar Store Advent wreath.

This year I'm using little $1 candlestick holders, prickly evergreen branches, and candles my mom picked up for me because I forgot to buy my own!! (Thanks, Mom.)

4. Advent music that sounds like Christmas music

I've had this album, Hymns, on repeat for weeks now. It's free on Amazon Prime Music. Beth Neilsen Chapman's voice has a way of taking Catholic classics (many of them in Latin) and making them sound lush and festive with nary a whiff of misplaced-Chrsitmas cheer.

Bonus: I play it in the afternoons when the kids are going bonkers and supposed to be doing their homework, and it smokes the bees, as they say. Lifesaver. 

6. Toy purge

Something about knowing that in influx of NEW STUFF (which I myself am buying at a ridiculous speed) will be descending into our home in a few weeks at Christmas makes me want to clean out all the closets. I've been going room to room with paper grocery bags, trying to furtively trash all of the broken-past-fixing items that have accrued since we moved.  

Hint: Doing this purge while the 5 year old is present makes it 91% less effective.

7. Always always always shop Amazon Warehouse Deals

It's just second nature anymore, but for any item I'm searching for on Amazon (most especially toys or household goods), I look for it in the Warehouse Deals dept. first. A little tutorial for mobile users:

Buying something from the Warehouse Deals means sacrificing the pristine beauty of opening the original packing of an item yourself. But if that's no big deal, then there are deep savings to be had--usually about 30-50% off of Amazon's original prices.

Blessed Advent to us all!

that baby life

I've noticed something the last few weeks.

For the first time, we finally have "older kids" with our 5.5 and 7.5 year old boys. And between the two of them and Sean and I, we collectively reference the bottom two as "the babies."

Before, I felt like I just had a rather large herd of small and adorably needy little people to shepherd around. Now I have two big boys that help with the household chores, and that includes helping with THE BABIES. And now, my little ones are not just mine to dress, mine to feed, mine to play with.

"Joseph, please put on Gussie's shoes."

"Amby, please feed Stevie some yogurt."

"Joseph, please play pat-a-cake with Steve."

"Amby, please get Gussie a cracker... and then please catapult Gussie off an air matress."

Heheheh.

The amazing thing to me is that as I've delegated more responsibility of the babies' care to the big boys, their love for the little ones has grown so much. Sure, I'm often breaking up squabbles or removing a baby from his or her assault on a big kid's Lego creation. But more often than not, the big boys are being genuinely and sweetly helpful.

It shouldn't be surprising to me, since I've been reading the Catholic mommy blogs for years. Heck, Kate wrote an awesome series of posts titled "Before I had a 7 year old," marking that magic transition a family makes when kids start pulling some blessed weight around the house.

But even if I knew it worked in theory, I'm still tickled pink to see it actually happen in my own home.

For that, along with so much more this Advent, I am truly grateful.