We Wish You a Merry Christmas

Here are Daniel and Maggie in their Christmas outfits. Every year the grandparents buy them a wonderful Christmas outfit to wear. These are some mighty fine looking children. Behind them is our sweet little Christmas tree. We have yet to convert over to a pre-lit artifical tree. I grew up with an artificial tree, but after I married Davis I got to experience Christmas with a real tree. Not sure what we will have next year since we will have a crawling child in the house again, but I am sure our home will be filled with joy. As I hope yours is this Christmas. Merry Christmas!

Best of the Home Movies

In my last post, I mentioned watching some home movies this past weekend. The best of these, by far, is the video that my super-talented brother, Bennett, made for Christmas of 2003, when Daniel was about 1 and a half years old. Daniel's big present that year was a First Act acoustic guitar, so Bennett set the video to "The Guitar" by They Might Be Giants. Enjoy!

         

Daniel Christmas 2003

Ghost of Christmas Past

This weekend we pulled out some home movies from the past few years and watched the excitement unfolding on a few different Christmas days for Daniel and Maggie in their slightly younger years. I tend to be hesitant to watch home movies, largely because it can make me feel nostalgic for the days when we were all a little younger. My main problem with nostalgia is that I can become depressed, feeling like my best days are behind me. This is why I never look at any old yearbooks, and why I tend to shy away from investing in many rediscovered old friendships on Facebook. I don't want to reminisce about the good ol' days because, in my mind, that implies that the new days won't be as good.

Having said that, I actually thoroughly enjoyed the Christmas home movies that we watched this weekend. Seeing the joy and wonder on the faces of the kids as they took in all that was happening on Christmas morning was an absolute joy. I think part of the reason I was able to enjoy it this time was because I know it gets better from here. Daniel and Maggie are old enough now to get excited about Christmas well before it arrives, so their enthusiasm and appreciation continues to reach new levels. And, if I long for the cute sweetness of a new baby just discovering Christmas, we've got one due to arrive in late January that will get to experience all of this next year for the first time. And so, for the first time, these shadows of things that have been brought me only happiness, relishing memories of good times past, and eagerly anticipating those to come.

Favorite Christmas Movies

Today, in keeping with my "Christmas Favorites" series that I started yesterday, I was going to discuss my favorite Christmas movies. But then, as I was checking the blogs today, I noticed that our friend, Angela, beat me to it. So, I just commented on her post instead. You should, too!

Favorite Christmas Books

Every year when we bring the Christmas decorations down from the attic, there is a box of Christmas books that comes down as well. My favorite, without a doubt, is A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. I always read it first to make sure I've got enough time to finish before Christmas. It may be a little unadventurous of me, I suppose, to pick a universally acknowledged classic as my favorite, but I can't help that. It's a great story, and I love recognizing the parts that don't make it into the movies. Of these, my favorite is the line at the end that "he had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards;" that one always gives me a chuckle. There are some other great Christmas books that I enjoy as well. Next on the "gotta-read-it" list is a relatively recent addition by Dave Barry entitled The Shepherd, the Angel, and Walter the Christmas Miracle Dog. This is a short but excellent story that may really have happened to Dave as a boy. I base this on the fact that it's extremely similar to a humor article he wrote back in the '80s about his own boyhood. The only other book that I absolutely try to get in is The Autobiography of Santa Claus as told to Jeff Guinn, mostly because of the clever way in which it's written, and all of the fascinating little-known facts about the history / mythology of Santa Claus. Very well done. So that's it. I just thought I'd share that, and also pose the question: "Do you have a favorite Christmas story?"

Postage-Free Christmas Letter

We got our annual copy of the Fatzinger Christmas Letter yesterday, written by our dear friend, Amy. It may sound a bit corny, especially since I talk to them almost every week at church, and thus have at least a general sense of how life's going for them, but I absolutely love reading that thing. Every year, Amy is able to recap the big events of their year and their current state of affairs with that same infectious joy and hope that she exudes when you talk to her in person. I get to the end of it and find myself wishing, once again, that I'd sent a Christmas letter to our friends and family this year. Of course, it's probably getting to be a bit late in the season for that, so I thought I might take a crack at it here on ye olde bloge.

Dear Friends and Family (and anyone who may have stumbled onto our blog),

This has been quite a year for the Hipps family. In some ways, it seemed longer than last year, but in other ways, it just flew right by. This year we went on our first real family vacation to the beach, Daniel lost his first tooth, and we found out that we're expecting our third child, another boy! And, while at times the wallet looks a little thin, we have managed to move our net worth about $10,000 closer to becoming positive this year.



I'm sure I've left out a lot of great things, but this year we started blogging again after a four year hiatus, so a lot of the high points have been covered right here! What else can I say? Our family is healthy, our children are smart and beautiful, we're about to be blessed with yet another little miracle, the election and related advertisements are finally over, and I got good music on my radio!

Merry Christmas to one and all,
The Hipps Family

Sunday School Lesson

In Maggie's Sunday School class, the lesson today was about John the Baptist, and how he prepared the way for Jesus by telling people that the Savior was coming, and that they should repent of their sins. While I do believe it's important that children know about that, I was a little surprised that this was today's lesson, since the overall theme of these weeks leading up to Christmas is "Preparing for Christmas." John preparing the way for Jesus struck me as only loosely related to Christmas, since at the time of the first Christmas, John was maybe 6 months old, according to the Gospel of Luke.

Anyway, later in the day, Maggie was playing with the craft she'd made in class. It's a paper plate with a drawing of water on it and 2 Popsicle stick puppets, 1 man and 1 woman. The plate is cut so that you can stand the puppets up in the water. Not having been one of the teachers today, I asked her what her craft was. She said, "This is John the Dunkinsman, and this is the lady he's dunking. And then they get married." Okay, so that probably wasn't exactly the lesson from class, but hey, at least she got that he dunked people and not doughnuts. Lesson learned, as far as I'm concerned.