Find out over in my latest blog post at Babble (hint: it’s holiday-related).

It was a good one – the best ever, said E (he says that every year though).

Hope yours was merry, merry as well!

Happy Holidays from the HickJu Clan!

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Last night on Christmas Eve, C and NC – along with J and E and cousins ET and MT – participated in the Nativity Pageant at our church. The toddlers played sheep in the pageant, and we talked 14 year old J into playing the part of a sheep as well, for the sole purpose of attempting to keep C and NC in line during the service. She was a very good sport about the whole thing.

Hilarity ensued.

These photos don’t do justice to how hard J had to work to try to keep the two naughty little sheep from escaping from the Nativity Scene in which they were supposed to remain in place up on the altar at the front of our church sanctuary. They kept wriggling free from her grasp, then crawling commando style down the steps before easing themselves out between the altar railings. Then they would grin at the audience, trot back up the steps and do it all over again.

They did this throughout the pageant, even as all the OTHER children behaved very well. Look how irritated J looks by the final photo in the series…and can you blame her? Wild, marauding lambs were going berserk, and she had no shepherd’s crook with which to whack them or hook them…or whatever it is one does with a shepherd’s crook.

Guess which one of The Baby Cousins was the instigator?

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

C and NC wait to be measured and fitted for their costumes (they’re both playing sheep) for the church Christmas pageant. The cupcakes helped make the wait more bearable.

Also today, C suddenly stood up and yelled out, “THIS IS THE BEST CHWISSMAS EVER!!”

The holiday season is in full swing here at Casa HickJu, and I am loving it. My only complaints are that as usual, I seem to have spent far too much money, after promising myself – as I do each year – that THIS YEAR, I will spend less. And secondly, it’s going way too fast

To point #1, the overspending, it’s very, very hard not to go overboard on holiday spending when you love Christmas like I do. It’s the only time each year when I really go all out on “stuff.” I am very much not a “stuff” person; we have a lot of hand me down furniture, and I don’t have jewelry to speak of or lots of clothing (although I do love clothes and if I had plenty of money to spend on them, I certainly would. But I don’t) I very, very rarely buy my children any sort of “between times” toys or superfluous clothing (meaning between birthdays or Christmas) In fact they would tell you that I am downright cheap compared to their friends’ parents.

And this year, money is VERY tight because after my bizarre, major illness from October, I have 5k or more in out of pocket medical costs (after insurance payout) for which we are responsible. Sigh. We also had some other large, unexpected expenses this year that have been tricky to manage. I can’t say this hasn’t made for a somewhat stressful 2009, and for the first time ever, we had to stick to buying gifts for all of the children in our large, extended family instead of buying for both children and all the grown-ups, too.

Despite this, I still likely spent too much on Christmas this year. Good thing Santa supplies most of the gifts, and I only have to cover some. As I always tell the kids when they occasionally suggest that Santa might not be real (blasphemy!), do they really think that I could pay for all the stuff they find under the tree on Christmas morning? I think not!

But anyway, yeah, the holiday season is zipping by far too quickly. It always seems to go by too fast because my older kids spend every other week with their father, so I only get tham half the time in the run-up to Christmas, and seeing the kids enjoy the decorations and the popcorn and the Christmas movies and the tree are what make Christmas so fun. So in the past seven years, since we started this schedule where we split the holidays, Christmastime has always seemed somewhat abbreviated to me. This year, of course, C is old enough to enjoy all of the above, and she lives at our house all the time, so it’s a little better, but even all these years later, and even knowing that it’s the best option – because we obviously want to make sure that the kids get plenty of time during the holidays in both of their homes – I miss them extra during the holidays. They are at their Dad’s this week, and then they will return home Sunday and stay until Christmas Day afternoon, when they will go back to their other house for the remainder of the holiday. I cannot WAIT to get them home on Sunday evening, and start our holiday season in earnest. I know that C can’t wait to have them here either. She’s getting old enough now that she really misses “Sissy,” “Ewwiot” and “Henwy” when they are not here. She prefers to have her sibs about. (H, by the way, finished high school in November, and is currently spending his time couch surfing and attending concerts across the state of Tennessee. Don’t get me started…)

A few holiday snaps from the week past (and remember that I tend to do all of my photo taking with the crummy camera on my BlackBerry, so I end up with quantity over quality. Oh well.)

Stockings hung by the chimney with care.

Jon and me at the Ackermann Holiday Party last night. (Hats courtesy of Flickr/Piknik)

C loves the Christmas snow globes. She’s on her Daddy’s lap here.

I asked Dr. Neighbor if he thought he could make some toffee with chocolate crust on top, like my mother always makes during the holidays, and without a recipe or even going to the store for ingredients, he whipped some right up for me. It’s super tasty! He’s awesome like that. Here he is in his candymaking workshop – AKA his kitchen.

Our Halloween this year was off-kilter. Because I was really sick in the weeks leading up to the actual event, our usual family pumpking carving event with the cousins didn’t happen.  On the night we finally got it done, I was still unable to get out of bed, so my mother and Dr. Neighbor (the guy professor edition, as opposed to the female MD edition) helped Jon oversee J and E in getting their respective jack o’ lanterns carved at our kitchen table. My mom had come up from Bell Buckle to spend that night following my first full day back at work since I had gotten sick. She helped with dinner and with general kid wrangling because she knew I would be exhausted. And she was right.

All three younger kids have been anxious and out of sorts  in the past month due to my illness (which really did end up lasting an entire month, start to finish) and other challenging family issues that we are dealing with at the moment, including the fact that our plan to have Eldest Child live at home after his recent return from Big Learning Experience has fallen through. We have all been struggling with this, each in our own way.  His younger siblings were stressed by the conversations that led up to this decision, and are now stressed by adjusting to their big brother’s absence from our house, which wasn’t what we expected after his eight months away.  All of this has made for a really hard autumn season for our family, and as a result, no one seemed to have their usual enthusiasm for the jack o’ lantern carving.

But somehow, with the help from my mother & Dr. Neighbor that night, it got done. J started out by insisting that she had NO interest in joining in without participation by the absent H and her cousins (she was feeling very glum about everything), but the grown-ups insisted, and within just a few minutes, she had cheered up and gotten into the spirit of things.  C thought it was great fun, as this was the first year that she understood what was going on. By the end of the evening, the children had turned out three pretty good jack o’ lanterns, although definitely not our family’s most impressive efforts ever, and Dr. Neighbor had done this wonderful saute/roast thing with the pumpkin seeds – best pumpkin seeds I have ever had, hands down.  We did the best we could considering the gloomy household mood.

A few days later, it was time for Halloween. J and E’s schedule happened to have them at their father’s house on Halloween proper, so 2 year old C was the only child in the household that day.   All week, she had been enjoying dressing up in various loaned costumes (bunny, dragon) passed along by an older cousin.  She surely would have enjoyed some trick or treating up and down our street. But on the 31st, it was pouring rain all day – a bad harbinger for Halloween night activities. Then, for only the second time in her life, she refused to nap. That meant that by the time she and Jon returned from the church Halloween party in the late afternoon, she was hysterically exhausted.

Note glazed expression and flushed cheeks. Portrait of an almost-sick bunny-toddler.

It was also pretty obvious by Halloween afternoon that she was getting sick  – fever erupted within 24 hours. Her cheeks were flushed and her mood was rotten. She had clearly been picking up on my stress, and that day, she finally began letting us know that she was stressed, too – whining, clinging, and flinging herself on the floor in floods of tears if you looked at her wrong.

By 6pm, she was out for the night.  This left Jon and me in the unusual situation of having not one of the four kids around for the actual holiday festivities. It ended up being a very low-key, all adult Halloween. And frankly, that was fantastic.  Dr. Neighbor hung out for part of the evening and fixed a yummy pasta dish that involved spicy sausage. He prepared a special beverage I have been known to enjoy – one that only he makes as well.  I laid around on the couch in my bathrobe and we three – Jon, Dr. Neighbor and I – listened to Girl Talk (not appropriate with kids in the room) with the guys answering the occasional doorbell to hand out candy to the few trick or treaters who braved the drizzle in the ‘hood to approach out front door.  I was feeling so antisocial that evening that even offering cheery greetings to kids in costumes seemed daunting.

So yeah, we’ve had a rough go of it lately at our house, and in some ways Halloween seemed like the denouement.  But at least we had pumpkins. Back in 2005, I stupidly waited until the last minute to go out for pumpkins, only to find that no pumpkins were to be had anywhere at any price in the greater Knoxville area.  In a fit of desperation, I brought home….decorative gourds.

Yes, my children had GOURDS instead of pumpkins that Halloween. They were pretty good natured about it actually.

As you can see, E actually fell asleep on the floor at my sister’s house that night, clutching his gourd. He really took to it. I finally had to insist that we throw it out when it began attracting fruit flies in his room, where he kept it for longer than a good parent would have allowed

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I really have no excuse for The Year of the Gourds except poor planning on my part. I’m sure it’s one of the stories about me that my kids will tell in therapy.  But I can now take small solace in the fact that my wildly capable and well organized friend K had a similar experience this year. She couldn’t find pumpkins either, and her kids ended up with….jack o’ loupes.

Our holiday weekend, in video over at Babble.

A year or two ago, my children left a note for the Easter Bunny asking him to reveal his “real name.” He left a note in return. His answer: “Bob Thornton”

Thanks to Stepdad Man and his bride, as well as Dr. Neighbor for inviting us to such fun soirees yesterday! We had a blast.

Happy New Year!!!!