Our Thanksgiving weekend is usually packed with a lot of lying around trying to digest all the food combined with frantic maximizing of the potential of able bodies to do heavy lifting. It's hard getting them to move but it's worth it to accomplish the last of the raking and other late-fall rock-bottom necessities.
For instance, getting the plow on the Suburban. For this task, you need some strong guys.
The plow is naturally stowed at the very back of the Garage of Death and well packed in with bikes, lawn equipment including mower, various camp chairs, tomato cages, and other summer sundries. The mower has to be gotten clear out of the middle distance so that the plow can be dragged out, and in order to run it out of gas, at which point it takes its turn in the depths.
Part of putting on the plow is the gut-gnawing certainty that something will go pretty awry with the wiring. There is the moment when it's on and going up and down and left and right, and then there's the inevitable click of no response. At least half and hour of grumbling, frigid-fingered fumbling, and pessimistic re-connecting of all contact points ensues. At last, randomly, it works again and then can be taken off with the relief of knowing that that test of character has been passed.
Running the mower requires raking up the last of the leaves and going over what's left, although of course it won't pick up the pine needles, of which, as Suzanne points out, there is an infinite supply. No matter how many pine needles you laboriously rake up and lug out, there are more.
(Besides being ubiquitous they are bad for the lawn, and mean that we will never have a yard that looks anything other than barely presentable.)
The bees have already been tucked into bed, their entrances reduced and their tops insulated with straw.
A branch the size of a respectable tree has to be bucked up for firewood.
The sticks left over have to be gleaned. Helpers are needed for that as well. You know, all this hard work is the best argument for a big family, if you can get one! We just need all those bodies! No rest for the weary!
And then, hard on the heels of all the Thanksgiving preparations and aftermath, as well as all this battening down and winterizing, comes the turn of the year, no pause allowed, no falling back to gather oneself for the coming leap. Just plunge in to the next season!
So that's why I'm posting on a Sunday, which you know I seldom do, just to remind you of how very important this time is. Of all the things you can do to instill in your family the habit of mind that catches the little darts of understanding, of seeing upwards, of being open to the great beyond, marking the seasons of grace is the most important.
I do believe that children learn so much wonder during the season of Advent. I think that Christian families can begin to transform the world just by celebrating this season simply and with great trust.
Few words of explanation are needed.
Just live it, year in and year out, with all your faith and love. Don't worry about having things be just so -- it's useful to remember that young children are entranced by just about everything, especially if it involves candlelight, and that gives you time to get your act together!
Even older children are open to new "old" ways of doing things. The key is not to seek affirmation from them, which they will seize as an excuse to oppose you, being opportunistic little buggers by nature, but rather to present things with naturalness and confidence (even if you are more nervous than confident) and because you are genuinely interested in doing them.
It's perfectly fine to state humbly, "I wish I had known about this before, but we're going to give it a go, because it's lovely. It's never too late to start!"
That's a great object lesson, when you think about it -- one that may stand them in good stead at some time in the future, in ways you can't anticipate.
This year the azalea in my very haphazard front yard is brilliant with red leaves. I decided to try something a little different with my wreath. If you would like to see the efforts of years past with the Advent wreath, go here.
You are only limited by whatever you can get to with your scissors and shears!
Now, I do recommend something that slowly penetrated this thick old skull after many years of pawing through the Christmas decorations up in the Dark Attic (as Bridget dubbed one of ours; yes, we have two attics).
If you don't want to spend more time than you have to with the bat carcasses, why don't you have a separate bin for the Advent wreath forms, calendars, Jesse tree ornaments, and whatever else you would like to bring down first? And maybe mark it? Just trying to save you a couple of dozen years here.
As you can read in my previous post on the Advent wreath, this is just one of those metal forms attached to a ribbon-covered cardboard ring with wire. The gold ribbon is for hanging from the chandelier. If you don't have this capability, just place it on your dining room table, perhaps on a round tray or large dish to keep stray candle drips and leaves off your furniture.
So this year, not getting to any evergreen trimmings, I glue-gunned some pinecones I had gotten from Michael's a while ago (they were 90% off or something) onto that ring.
A little tip that you probably already know:
When you are decorating anything with a finite number of other things -- a cake with strawberries, a wreath with pinecones -- especially where the decorations are themselves not of equal size -- rather than starting on one side with your decorations and going along and suddenly realizing you didn't allocate properly and your proportion is all off, do it this way:
Put one item on one side, another on the opposite side, a third halfway in between those two, the fourth opposite that, continuing to apply the things in a balanced way in the resulting quadrants until you've distributed the embellishments evenly.
To further avoid lopsidedness, rotate the whole shebang every once in a while.
Then I used the pinecones as a matrix for holding the azalea stems and that other greenery, whatever it is.
I think that will be very pretty. Here are all my Advent posts for your consideration. Enjoy!
