Christmas 09, part I

I realized last night that this blog has been in my draft folder for a very long time. I am planning on making this year's blog into a photo album. I will be adding blogs from the beach (better late than never), summer pictures and Christmas blogs. It will happen, I just don't know how quickly! Today we have a basketball game at 10am, 12pm, 1pm, a soccer game at 3, Tobin is running a leagues 2 mile race at 1pm in Fitchburg (that's a 45 minute drive from our house), Sarai has travel basketball practice at 6:30, Carmen has a birthday party at 6ish and Abram and I are trying to go out for a valentine's day party in the evening. As you can see, our Saturdays are packed. This is a small reason why the blog is not kept up, but when I do we have a lot to share with you!

Christmas celebrations lasted for over 48 hours, so it will be broken up into at least 3 separate blogs. Enjoy, we did!

It all began at our house on Christmas Eve. For the first time we went to midnight mass. Tobin and Carmen were assigned to serve at the midnight mass. In our parish midnight mass is actually at midnight, unlike others when "midnight" mass is held at 10pm! We weren't sure when to arrive for mass so we called a friend in the parish who frequents this mass time. The message taken by Tobin said to arrive no later than 11:15. We tried to take a nap in the late evening, most of us were unsuccessful. We arrived at the church parking lot at 11:10 to find only two other cars in the lot! We were very early. Tobin and Carmen could not light any candles until 11:30. Most of the choir singers began arriving around 11:20ish. It is laughable, but we will never forget that you don't have to arrive very early for midnight mass again! Midnight mass was beautiful. The trumpets and drums kept everyone awake.

Sleeping in the next day only lasted until 7:30. I get excited about Christmas still. I needed my coffee, but I wanted to wake up before the kids so I could see them come into the room and open stockings.

You will notice how full of wonderful gifts our tree is. The Boylston Dancy's (that's our new name for Isaac and Jenna) celebrated Christmas morning over our house. Isaac, Jenna and Aidan came over by 8. There's no sleeping in with Aidan either.



One of the biggest gifts for Tobin and Sarai were new cell phones. Tobin and I had independent servers prior to Christmas. We decided to get a family plan when we needed to add Sarai to the pool of phones.

My wonderful gift this Christmas was a new lens. Abram wrote about it the previous blog. It is often called a portrait lens because it has a fantastic zoom allowing you to view the subject close up even though you are far away. I enjoy how crisp the pictures are inside.

Aidan loved banging this toy. It was actually difficult to capture Aidan playing because the lens has a zoom built in.

I love how Aidan's pj's match the wrapping Isaac is undoing.

Abram found these great helicopters for Rachel, himself and Isaac to play with. Isaac can navigate around his living room. I've heard that Aidan loves watching it fly. Rachel is good at flying it around. We have a blue helicopter and Isaac has a red one.

Jenna now has an embroidery and quilting sewing machine. She is going to help me embroider Tobin's name on some jackets so it will look like his track jackets. I cannot wait to learn how.

Tobin is a dedicated runner; if you haven't learned that yet from our blogs! This Christmas Isaac and Jenna gave him a runners log for 2010. He has written in it since Christmas day!

Carmen is a great model. She is always ready to smile when someone has the camera. Clothing was a theme this year.

Every time Abram gets the camera he takes a number of picture of me. I am flattered, but I don't usually smile well. He did capture a good one of me with the new lens and I thought I'd include it in the blog for him.

Aidan had pulled Sarai's name for the Dancy gift giving. He gave her Celtic slippers. They are huge, but soooo warm. Sarai loves them!

Rachel was disappointed to notice that I had few pictures of her from Christmas morning. I will end this blog with her wearing new pj bottoms. She was in many of the pictures from Christmas evening which is the next blog.