On Christmas Night All Christians Sing

This was our year for a Rochester Christmas.
Dad got his box of old family ornaments from the basement, full of ancient treasures.

Very much wish my brother could be here in person!

After our overnight drive, we spent the 23rd recovering. Christmas Eve, we felt good enough to go over to Leah and Matthew's house. We'd heard a rumor they had some gingerbread houses that needed decorating.

Tai-Tai, 3, was the most willing to let Leah help. 

Uncle Matthew kept us laughing.

Miles' design was unique.

Adele let me contribute to her cathedral. 

After the focused activity, we gave in to our usual tradition of letting the kids run completely wild.

First, the dress-up pageant. There was swordplay and a lively chase!

There's always some kind of mishap during this independent cousin romps. A few years ago, it was the dress-up picnic party which ended with Miles running downstairs naked and grinning, and Abby in a princess gown. This year, everyone but Adele was playing nicely downstairs at one point and we decided to look into Adele's activities.
Then came some hurried cleaning. She found the tempera paint and was doing some artwork, using Abby's bed as her art table. She was painting on paper, though the paper she'd been using as easel was leakier than she'd reckoned, and her palms and the soles of her feet were red. And so were many other patches upstairs.
I think we got everything cleaned up sufficiently that it was worth it, the time spent ignoring the children and catching up with family.

Soon it was time to put on our Christmas Eve best.

They walked to church hand in hand. South Wedge Mission Christmas was gorgeous! The kids all got bells and wooden rainbow angels on sticks, and were instructed to wave the angels and ring the bells whenever they heard anything that sounded like good news.
It was a livelier than usual service at SWM!

We tucked in after leaving our customary letter to Santa. This year, the kids wanted to call him Father Christmas, and were more than usually affectionate to him in their letter. This is almost certainly due to the nightly readings from Letters From Father Christmas, by J. R. R. Tolkien. Father Nicholas Christmas cuts a delightful character in those letters; I recommend the book heartily, whether you have children at home or not.

Christmas Day was wholesome and simple and tender. Though we all felt the beginnings (and Dad the peak) of the illnesses that were soon to afflict us (flu/head colds have only spared Jon so far), we enjoyed our day very much. We opened our wonderful gifts quite early, went to a sweet, simple service at Dad's church, and had a delicious dinner more gifts at Agnes' home. All the ingredients that I love best in a Christmas day: stockings and gifts, church, good food and a dinner in company. 

We're now trying to do the things we'd looked forward to doing in Rochester without killing ourselves, since we're all down with various illnesses in various degrees. I think I've had at least 3 distinct bugs just since we arrived on Wednesday. Still, it's so good to be here, and to be at rest and at play. Pray that we recover soon, though? There's so much we'd wanted to do.

And it's less than 2 weeks before I leave for Guatemala! Welcome, 2015!