Some of my favorite snaps from the holiday season just past…

Christmas Morning

Christmas Eve

Here’s G, having gone rogue during the Christmas pageant. She stripped off her sheep ears, wandered out into the audience, snagged a Book of Common Prayer, went back up front and planted herself in front of the other manger animals and proceeded to page through it for the rest of the performance.

In other words, she went rogue on us.

Here she is before the performance, out in the courtyard at the church, still wearing her sheep ears and tail.

Here are C and NC waiting to take the stage as Angels We Have Heard on High.

More Christmas morning fun.

New bike. Wheeee!!! (Yes. We wear helmets. This was a quick zip back and forth in front of house after receiving bike.)

G loves her new baby bear slanket from Uncle Robert & Aunt Nicole.

Annnnnnd… back to Christmas Eve for a few more photos.

Ready for church.

We alternate years, spending one Christmas Eve at our house and then the next at the Knoxville cousins’ house, and this year was their turn to host. We always do the same thing on Christmas Eve: early church/pageant, then a yummy spaghetti feast prepared by the masterful Uncle R, then on to opening gifts. The kids get to open their gifts to one another on Christmas Eve, as well as their gifts from the wily Uncle Louie, who always seems to miss us when he drops his box of Allison family treasures off in Knoxville each Christmas. Alas, that was the case again this year; Uncle Louie delivered his box of gifts and annual letter to the family to the cousins’ house while they were out on the 24th.

Here is NC on Christmas Eve, so excited she could pop waiting to read Uncle Louie’s letter and open gifts!

This was my gift to Auntie B this year. She misses him just about as much as I do, I think.

Reading Uncle Louie’s letter aloud to the assembled fam.

Silly Uncle Louie gifts.

Finally, at about 10 pm, we headed back to Casa Hickju. G fell asleep on the way home, and was tucked into her bed. Cookies and milk were set out for St. Nick, and then C,E and a VERY patient J piled into J’s bed (which was my bed as a girl, and was my great grandmother’s 16th birthday gift), where we read “The Night Before Christmas,” and then we all went to sleep for the night, with dreams of sugarplums dancing in our respective heads.

This third Christmas without Henry was less acutely painful for all of us than the first two, I think. We felt him with us. But we also still very much felt him not with us. That’s how it will be now, I suppose.

Love to all of you, from all of us.