One Dad's Life

Question of the Day

Why is it that when I purchase something at a store, I end up being the one to say, "Thank you?"  Shouldn't the clerk be thanking me? This trend seems to be getting worse.  What's up with that?

Christmas Eve!

Well, it's Christmas Eve and a busy busy day in our house.  For us, our Christmas Eve activities totally revolve around church services celebrating Jesus' birth, the second most important event for a Christian!

(photo caption: a small manger scene my very artistic wife made out of modeling clay this year)

Due to our general business, I don't have time to post our "Christmas Traditions, part 2" post, yet. However, here is a quick snapshot of our morning.

One of the most anticipated activities is the removing of the last Advent Calendar door to reveal the manger scene of Christ's birth. 

Then its on to last minute tasks, such as cleaning (wife and daughter did this), and arranging one last piece of music for our contemporary service.  I never quite liked how this song worked out before.  Below is photos of the computer screen (using Finale) and the final printed music for the last four measures of the piece.

 

Then I put the finishing touches on two pies for Christmas evening.  It is my daughter's birthday (on Christmas!) and she picks the desert and meal.  This year, she has asked for pumpkin and cherry pies.  Here are the mouth-watering close-ups!

Finally, I roasted some walnuts with sugar for salad toppings tomorrow.

Now, it is off to church to do a children's service, and our contemporary service.  This year, our contemporary service will be a drama my wife wrote, as well as tons of great music.  If you want stay out later, come to our traditional Christmas service at 10:00PM with a full orchestra and choir.  It is guaranteed to give you chills!

For details on the drama, visit this link.

Times: 3:00PM Children's service with children's choirs

5:00PM Choral Service

7:00PM Contemporary service with drama and band. (Come say hi, if you come!)

10:00PM Traditional Service with full orchestra.

Christ Memorial Lutheran Church

5252 South Lindbergh

St. Louis, MO 63126

(Site of the old South County Target Store, next to Incredible Pizza and Ronnies Plaza.)

Snow!!! (for real this time)

As it turned out, the ice and snow storm that started up the other day turned into a non-event.  Bummer.  Then, last night, we were promised snow for real!  Nothing much materialized.  We "celebrated" the inch or two of snow by having a snow-ball fight in the middle of the streets of downtown...well at least the girls did.  I was busy trying to keep the camera dry and staying upright on the icy sidewalks!

But then, this evening, it happened.  Real honest snow!  We were out holding auditions for a February passion play, and also had a Sunday School Christmas service to do.  However, at 7:00 or so, we were ready to deal appropriately with the snow.

Now, a reasonable person would head home as quickly and safely as possible.  After all, the roads were actually slick, the visibility was poor, and who knew what was coming our way.  A slightly less reasonable and less responsible person would pack up the sleds and head to Art Hill in the middle of the night!

So what did we do?  Well, we went straight to Ted Drewes of course!

These are unretouched photos.  The big blobs of light are out of focus snowflakes reflecting my flash.  And yes, there was a line!  In this first photo, this was a short as the line was the entire time we were there.  More and more people came while we ate our concretes!

Photo info:  Top photo, Rachel with her pumpkin pie concrete.  Middle: Ted Drewes in the snow!  Left: The rapidly growing line.  My family is in the front of that line.

Below: Rachel, Najma, and Rebecca eating their concretes of pumpkin pie, some kind of chocolate-chocolate concrete, and vanilla.

Bottom picture: Rebecca and her friend Najma eating in the snow!

   

Photo(s) of the Day

Today's post is 99% not Christmas related.  Amazing!  Tonight I was driving to the St. Louis Zoo to pick up my oldest daughter.  She was performing in a Christmas show with Leaping Lizards Performing Arts Studio's "On Stage" performance group for one of the Marlin Perkins Society's annual parties.  (Full disclosure: We are not members of the Marlin Perkins Society!  Those memberships start at $1000 per year!  Goodness!)

As I was driving up to the zoo, the Art Museum caught my eye at the top of the hill.  The statue of St. Louis, our city's namesake, was lit up against the night sky.  I had to have that picture!  This is why I nearly always have a camera with me.  You never know what will catch your eye! So, after getting my daughter, we drove up the hill and jumped out to get these stereotypical St. Louis tourist pictures...but at night and in bitter cold!  Well, it felt bitter at least.   Enjoy!

Our Christmas Tree

We have a beautiful Christmas tree.

There.  I have said it.  I realize that it may not be entirely socially acceptable to come right out and say that our Christmas tree is beautiful.  It would probably be fine to say that our tree was ugly, or skinny, or lopsided, or had broken ornaments, or was too big, too small, too religious, too secular...anything but that it was just right and beautiful on top of it all!  Perhaps it would be fine to say that the tree was beautiful if someone else designed it or decorated it, but the truth is...this tree is all ours!

My wife and I "designed" this tree right around the time we were married.  Our initial goal was to create a tree that was traditional, maybe even a little Victorian looking.  We bought lights that were just the right color, ornaments to match our intended color palette, searched for the perfect angel for the top of the tree and started collecting exactly the right ribbons to stream down the tree.

Over the years, the tree slowly changed.  Oh, all of those original goals and designs are still there of course but it's been added to, bit by bit.  Each year, new ornaments and decorations have been added.  Many of these ornaments have a special meaning, or are related to different activities and interests in our life.  The tree is loaded with music themed decorations, for example.  When my grandmother died, an ornament that I gave her as a kid - a mouse in a Santa outfit - that she displayed year-round found its way to the tree.  Now that ornament represents my grandmother, not just a mouse in a Santa suit!

When we had our first daughter, Rebecca, we soon had ornaments that either she made or that she had her picture on at various ages.  This process began again with the birth of our second daughter, Rachel.  More ornaments found their way into the tapestry of our tree.

There are ornaments of our church, nativity ornaments, ornaments of cookie baking, ornaments of gingerbread houses, ornaments of musical instruments, ornaments of wine (I love good wine...as they say, life is too short for bad wine!), ornaments for nearly every part of our life.

   

We put a lot of work into our tree!  Taken as a whole, the tree literally lights up our house with amber light and is sparkly and just amazingly wonderful.  As you look closer and closer you find that it is made up of hundreds of intricately related individual pieces woven together and it is even more amazing.  It is impossible to get an accurate picture of the tree in a single shot.  I know, I've tried!  Too much exposure and you miss the depth, a picture of the whole misses the detail, a shot of any particular ornament misses the whole.

The tree is not perfect, of course, there are burnt out bulbs, ornaments losing their glitter, pieces missing, and peeling paint.  However, it is hard to see the imperfections without concentrated effort as they are overwhelmed by the wonderful. 

We have a beautiful Christmas tree.

Car Quote of the Day

Setting: Driving home after eight hours of church, practices, dance shows, and clean-up from all of the above.

(Sound on the road):  CA-THUNK!

Me: (joking) Boy, I sure hope that wasn't something important falling off the car!

Family: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

(several moments pass)

Me:  Um, actually, I think that was something important falling off the car.

Family: (somewhat uncomfortably) Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha........ ha?

Wife: Are you serious?

Me: Um, yep.  I can't steer.

Family: (sound effect: screaming.)

Free Eggnog

Free eggnog on "One Dad's Life" today in celebration of the following post:

Counting My Blessings

Snow!!!

OK, I know it is just starting, and there is no guarantee.  BUT...it is just starting to snow/sleet where I am right now (as of 4:25PM).

To me, this can only mean one thing:

PHOTO OPPORTUNITIES!!!!

Here is one sample photo from an snow/ice storm last year.  Location is beautiful Lafayette Park, near downtown St. Louis.

Christmas Traditions, part 1

Christmas is a big deal in our family.  In fact, it is so big that it can't be contained by a single day, or a single week, or a single post, for that matter.  The amount of material to cover here could easily overwhelm you, so I'll summarize for now.  More pictures will come later in the month, so be fore-warned!

For us, the END of the non-Christmas season is our annual trip to the Kansas City area for a visit with my wife's family.  We attend a couple of Thanksgiving dinners there!  Due to our music schedule with our church, we come home on the day after Thanksgiving.  This is when Christmas begins for us.  You see, the drive back to St. Louis is the first point in the year where our family is allowed to listen to Christmas music (outside of the necessary work preparing for Christmas at church, of course!).   And listen we do....all four and a half hours back to St. Louis.  This is a new tradition...since our marriage.

That night, we get our two daughters in bed as quickly as possible, unpack, and my wife and I prepare cookie dough for our next tradition...baking Christmas cookies.  This is an old tradition...long before our marriage...in fact....going back to my childhood.  We do this at my parent's house, along with my sister and her family (including two children of her own).  My brother...he's more of a cookie eater than a cookie baker. 

This picture shows my oldest daughter Rebecca, youngest daughter Rachel, and my mom working on the first batches of 2007 cookies.

In the last couple of years, we have donated the majority of the cookies we make to a fund raising "Cookie Walk" at our church.

Usually, the next tradition that happens (also new since we've had children) is creating Gingerbread houses.  These are different each year, largely dependent on the available time and creative energy level of my wife.  This year, the girls (as I call them all) actually did their houses before Thanksgiving.  For some reason, I just noticed that I don't have pictures!  Here's a shot of one from last year:

 

Another old tradition is taking the doors off our Advent Calendar.  My mom made this calendar many years ago.  I can't remember offhand what year, but I remember her putting this together.  Somehow, my family was lucky enough to be bequeathed this calendar.  It still has the listing on the back of which years each of my siblings took the first door off!  Now my kids are taking the doors off.  I'll be posting closeups of the doors and pictures behind it as the month goes on.

Of course, no Christmas is complete without the Sunday School Christmas program!  Since we've started doing musicals at our church the past couple of years, our Sunday School Christmas program has really been upgraded.  The whole thing is amazingly built by the guy who builds most of our sets and his wife, who is the principal organist at the church.  Here is the set and video screens from last year's performance:

Our house is totally decked out, inside and out.  Here are our daughters hanging ornaments on our amazingly fabulous Christmas tree (humble, aren't I?  Actually, it's safe for me to say this, since I didn't do anything on this tree.)

Even the one of our cats got in on the decorating festivities by crawling into one of our numerous manger scenes:

Sorry for the slightly blurry photo, but the lighting looks much more realistic than with a flash!

Stay tuned for more Christmas traditions and more photos! 

Amanda Quote of the Day

(On Yahoo! chat)

The story of my life:

Amanda: "Hi, real quickly, who is this online, D or G?"

Me: "Gregg"

Amanda: "K. Nevermind. I want the woman. Thanks!"