Guess What? It's Christmas!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We Houghtons have a lot of traditions for Christmas time, so here, I'm going to tell you a little about them! 

• You must be singing (either out loud, or in your head) Christmas carols constantly between Thanksgiving and New Years Day. Only between those times.  There shall be no singing of Christmas Carols outside of those dates.
• Christmas Eve is Family Baking Day, and is to be devoted to making tea rings, eggnog rolls, cookies, and other assorted goodies to be distributed while caroling in the evening.
• The Happy Prince must be read aloud, part of Luke must be read aloud (by Luke), and Dad must give a schpeel about the true meaning of Christmas
• Each year, whenever Christmas presents are mentioned, Dad must say "Kids, this year we've decided to have a really low key, inexpensive Christmas."
•  Mom and Levi must haggle over how early we're getting up
• Christmas day Schedule:  Kids wake up at the time agreed upon by Mom and Levi, kids rouse parents, kids sit on stairs sleepily while Mom and Dad take pictures of them, kids are released, one by one, to go open stockings, stockings are dug into, breakfast is eaten (tea ring and eggs of some sort), presents are opened one by one (for about the first 15 minutes), kids run around the house and play with new toys/gifts until Mom and Dad decide it's time to make dinner, we eat dinner, we sing carols at the top of our lungs around the piano (Dad plays) until we're all hoarse, Mom and Dad order the kids to bed.

I think those are all of the major rules/traditions of a Houghton Christmas.  Of course the gift giving goes without saying.  Now, here are the pictures from our latest Christmas Adventure!

(I just LOVE this Picture)

Christmas Eve:

Marta and Tess cutting out cookies

Eggnog rolls, toffee, cranberry bread, lemon squares, cashew triangles, and cookies, in the prep. stage still

 The family decorating the menagerie of cookies (Tess bandaging some blistered toes)

The completed menagerie, please notice the detail

I love this story.  It is beautiful, and I would recommend reading it if you have not already

Mom and Dad always do a good job of reminding us of the true meaning of Christmas.  We usually talk about the things that have helped us feel the true spirit of Christmas, and we talk about the Saviors birth, and the wise men, shepherds, and the baby Jesus. Some of the things that were mentioned that bring the true spirit of Christmas were: giving the gift of music by caroling and singing in the choir at church, participating in the adopt-a-family program at school, bagging food for the ATCAA food bank, and singing, baking, and doing dishes, with the family.

Christmas Day:

 Sleepy on the Stairs, Christmas morning

Battles at the Stockings

 (Mom got a pedicure pistol)

 Gifts from Non-Santa Clauses 

Luke loves his new memory foam pillow... (love, Levi)

 To Mom

From, the Bad Wrappers

 Dad and Luke got embroidered socks (they always accuse each other of stealing the other's) and Mariokart Love, Marta and Tess

 Luke encourages Eliza to use gel in her new short hair-do

(Eliza re-wrapped up the CTR ring that she gave Luke in November)

   Marta got pants, and a hat from Mom and Dad 

 Levi was dying of curiosity concerning this package, turns out it was a bean bag (love Marta)

 Grandma Houghton sent Marry Poppins-themed items to the girls

The Kempers sent animal hats which have been quite a hit around the house

 Mom and Dad like to give practical gifts, for Christmas, and (almost) everyone received a coat or jacket for the winter months...

Let it Snow!

Thank you for reading about our Christmas, now I would encourage you to write down memories from your own Holiday experience.  It is my belief that every Christmas is better than the last (hopefully) because with each new year, you learn something new about the spirit of Christmas, or you get to serve in a new way, or you spend the holidays with new people.  Each Christmas is new and special, even better than the last.

Love,

Marta with help from whoever took all these pictures (I certainly didn't)

Christmas in the Air!

Tess and Marta, far right, part of the "Fiddle Gang" for many years running
at the annual Sonora Bean Feed

It has been two music-filled weeks for our Houghton crew.  Just this week included a wonderful (small town, but wonderful still) Messiah singalong last Sunday, group piano for Levi on Tuesday, Soulsbyville Christmas Concert with Levi on trumpet on Thursday, Sonora Bean Feed and violin music provided by Marta and Tess (and others) on Friday, choir practice on Friday night (and potluck), "Nutcracker" in Oakland on Temple Hill (http://www.templehillevents.com/)  Saturday night, choir performance today in church, more choir practice after church, and tonight, our annual caroling party!  Oh, and then there's the Christmas music constantly playing on the stereo system, radio, and every MP3 around.  Not tired of it yet, but maybe it is a good thing that our music Nazi (aka Mark) restricts Christmas music the time between Thanksgiving and New Year's!

Sorry, don't know how to rotate this. . .

Eliza arrived from BYU on Friday night in her blue 1991 Volvo.  We posted a few signs to welcome her, and  to counteract the one a grouchy neighbor posted last summer (the "Blue Volvo Slow Down" sign below the other two.)  She's hoping to find a few minutes to settle in during the coming days.  It feels complete when Eliza's home.  Though it's taking some getting used-to her new very short haircut--she's having fun playing with scarves, headbands, and spiking gel.

The Christmas tree is up, and hasn't deposited its needles on the skirt beneath, despite our faithlessness in watering it.  (It may help that Levi cut the tree fresh, and it is a Sequoia--without real needles).  Most of our traditional ornaments adorn the tree, though surprisingly, some of the owners of kindergarten-made items have declined to hang those.  We don't have one of those decorator trees, but we love many of the ornaments we do hang.  And Levi and Tess learned to sew a new dove ornament that went as teacher gifts this week!

Amazon.com and other boxes are arriving daily on the front porch. . .in batches.  Can you tell we had some Amazon points to spend.  There are even a few gifts wrapped under the tree--though many givers haven't even begun wrapping!  The wrapping station is set up in hopes that project won't be saved until Christmas Eve.

Shhh. . .what some may not know is that Denise enjoyed this last week of kids in school to finish a hand-made project.  Things went slower than hoped, so some gift ideas may have to surface as after-Christmas "do it together" projects.

Oh, and the ladies got together on Wednesday to dip chocolates--two 6'x2' tables-full.  Denise's hands-down favorites this year are the salted caramels.  The mid-week chocolate-fest may explain jer lack of enthusiasm for making chocolate cookies for the caroling party today.  Yes, there can be too much chocolate. . .but only rarely!  To be honest, much of the production went to the chocolate-dipping friends, and after that, he kids descended upon the tables and filled almost every festive container in the house to give as gifts.  Mark has hidden the remainder of the chocolates, prompting after-church "search and devour" missions by almost all the kids.

And about our annual caroling party. . .there was a little more than singing happening.  But it was well-attended, and hopefully, those who received the carols know they are loved, and those who caroled had a memorable time!

Shopping must be in their blood.  Watch out boys!

Nerf wars. . .just some of the action in the gattic

A little singing (guitar on the left), and eating and visiting.
With Christmas tree in the background.

Babies and hot chocolate and Eliza's short hair
(Marta, Mom, and Eliza, with Elyjah)

Mark has work for only three of the next fifteen days, and we're looking forward to some great family time.  No snow, so it'll be tennis and basketball and swimming.  Mark and Eliza have plans to begin training for a marathon they'd like to run next spring.  Many of the rest of us wonder why they'd like to jar their knees and sweat.  Swimming is just grand for us!

We are sorry.

We are sorry for not having posted lately, but our lives have just been a little bit crazy.  You see, sometimes, we just don't get on the computator at all, because we are so busy.  Haha.  If that ever really happened, Luke might die.  However, I do not have very much time right now, so I am going to give you a brief rundown of all the things that have happened since we last posted.

First, we sighted a new bobcat getting in our chicken coup and we almost got him for it.  Sadly, he has been too smart to come back, so we don't have any cool hats yet.  Or any princess stools, which is what I want.  Anywho, we have been waiting, and waiting, and waiting for the bobcat to come back, and every day she is home, Marta is placed in a position where she can see out the window and spot him, because she has always been the one to spot "Bob" before.

After that, we had normal lives for a little while before we went to Utah for Thanksgiving Break.  Marta, Luke, and Mom all went to tour BYU and pick up Eliza and then rejoined us in farther south where our grandmother lives.  Meanwhile, Levi, Dad, Grandma and Tess played tennis (Grandma included) and went to the Grand Canyon.  We had Thanksgiving at our grandmother's and enjoyed dressing up for the feast.  Then we spent all night Black Friday shopping and sleeping.  Sadly, misfortune was bound to strike, and that night, Marta broke Dad's nose when it got in the way of her head while playing keep-away in the pool.

When at last we returned home, we resumed our normal schedules.  One of those things that is in our "normal schedules" is swimming.  Since Marta and Tess started back after Water Polo, they have had the joy of swimming miles upon miles.  One day, they swam at least a mile of the breaststroke (as part of the set that day), and just this week, they swam they swam freestyle for thirty minutes without stopping to complete more than a mile (as part of the set that day), and then, just yesterday, they each swam a mile of butterfly (with nothing in between).  Tess thinks that she needs only to do a mile of backstroke before she can say she has accomplished everything she set out to do in life.

Another thing that happened recently was a HUGE windstorm.  Across the county, schools were closed due to power outages and at least 21,000 people were without power for at least a day, and as long as three.  Now, during this windstorm, Tess and Mom were two of the main contributors to our Church Christmas Gathering's food.  They spent seven hours on Friday (during the power outage)  buying the food in the valley, and all day Saturday preparing the food for that night.  Tess thinks it was a worthwhile thing to run around Costco with enough food for 200 people.  Mom isn't quite sure about how she feels about that though.  Despite the power outages they got a lot of support and are quite glad that it is done.

That is all I have time for now because we are going to one of the many Christmas concerts that the Houghton children are performing in, so I will say goodbye.

Goodbye,
The 4th Child