puer natus in Bethlehem

I've sung in church on Christmas Eve every year since 1990. This year, I went with Dear Daughter to the Children's Mass (5:30pm) at St James Cathedral, where she sings in the Schola Cantorum. The kids sounded great, although they were underutilized as the tenor soloist sang some of their bits, and I had the (uncommon - for me) experience of sitting through a Christmas Eve service as part of the congregation. It was lovely.

After the 5:30 Mass, we slowly drove from the Cathedral to St Catherine's. The roads were terrible - snow and slush and ice - and even with chains on it was a tricky drive. But both kids sing in the Children's Choir at St Catherine's, where they go to school, and that Christmas Eve Mass had started at 7pm. Dear Husband and Son were already there, and while I'd told the choir director that Dear Daughter would be late, I think I'd imagined we'd be there before the Offertory ended. Oh well. It was a tricky drive, and we did the best we could.

Then once Communion started at that Mass, I took off for Blessed Sacrament. I was the solo cantor for the 9pm Mass, along with a harp, cello & organ. We had planned some pretty cool music for Communion, although the cellist either fainted or had a seizure right before the Creed, which was scary. They took her over to the Priory and she was able to walk on her own, but I don't know how she's doing now. After that Mass was the rehearsal for the Carol Service, which started at 11pm, and then Midnight Mass. The choir was the best I've sung with at Blessed Sacrament, and it was all a lot of fun. Then I went home and made a cup of hot chocolate with peppermint schnapps and whipped cream out of the can. Tasty. We have some Trader Joes "Sipping Chocolate" that's dark and not too sweet and really good. It was a just reward for my night's effort.

sunday evening post

Finally! Two pairs of socks are done. Only 3 more to go before Christmas. Or thereabouts. It did turn out that with both socks from the larger pair the variagations lined up in a fairly regular chevron pattern. Didn't look for anything special in the yarn when I started each one off, so it must have been the difference between making 48 stitches around vs 44 stitches. The next pair I make will be with a similar variagated yarn, but will be even larger, so we'll see how that works out.

And then at work the other night I had time to finish one more bookmark. It might be a bad thing to post about stitching at work, but really I'm there on call, so if the babies behave, I have time to stitch. I kinda like this bookmark. Instead of using perle cotton to make the kloster blocks, I used a fine alpaca wool. It's really soft, and I like the contrast between the wool, the silk thread I used for the rest of the stitching, and the linen I worked it on. I only have one more bookmark to work, and then I'll have a dozen for the Advent Fair. I started the last one this evening at a birthday party. The party was for a good friend's daughter, and since this friend is the one who's coordinating my participation in the Advent Fair anyway, it seemed appropriate to work on the bookmark at her house. And I thought if I was stitching I wouldn't eat as much. Yah, right. But I got a fair amount of work done on the bookmark, and the Advent Fair's not until next weekend, so I'm in good shape. And then I can go back to crocheting socks.

I have to say that I'm a lot more relaxed about The Coming Of Christmas than I've been the last couple of years. Last year I remember approaching Advent with an almost overwhelming feeling of dread. I just had no idea how I was going to get everything done. Well, this year I have no more time and even less money, but I'm pretty sure it'll all work out. I've been thinking a lot about what's important to me at Christmas, and it's really 3 main things. I want to spend good time with my husband and children, spend good time with friends, and make good music. Not necessarily in that order. ;)

Toward that end, I can say that this weekend has covered all those bases. Laughed a lot with friends at the party tonight, had a date with the Dear Husband last night, have hugged the kids at least once every day, and made some good music at Mass last night. The Women's Chant Choir and I did the Verbum Supernum Prodiens hymn that I posted about a couple weeks ago, and if I do say so myself, it rocked. Hard. If it's possible for a 1000 year old Gregorian hymn to rock, it did. So Advent's gotten off to a good start, and I'm almost done with the bookmarks, and the socks look do-able, and I'm in an ok place.

what I am thankful for

I am exceedingly thankful for the three people in the photo above. Dear Husband is a wonderful man, and the Dear Children are bright and happy and healthy and a lot of fun to be around.

I am thankful for all the benefits the Lord has shared with me: a warm house, a good job, and wonderful friends.

I am thankful for our new President and I am thankful to be alive now, in challenging times, and hope to be up to the challenge.

I am thankful for my garden.

I am thankful that I have the eyes and hands that can do really cool needlework and crochet.

I am thankful that I have the opportunity to share my music with others.

Illumina faciem tuam super servum tuum, et salvum me fac in tua misericordia: Domina, non confundar, quonium invocavite. (Make thy face to shine upon thy servant: save me in thy mercy. Let me not be confounded, O Lord, for I have called upon thee.)

cool Advent hymn

Last night was a chant choir rehearsal. We're getting ready to sing the Vigil for the First Sunday in Advent. When I put the schedule together (last August) I'd picked an Advent hymn, Verbum Supernum Prodiens, for the choir to sing at Communion. The problem was, there are two sets of texts associated with the title "Verbum Supernum Prodiens". (Also two hymn tunes that I've found, but that's another story). One text is the Advent hymn, which is early, possibly 2nd half of the 5th century but likely 7-8th century. The other (later, associated with St Thomas) is a hymn for Corpus Christi.

In the Liber Usualis, there's the Corpus Christi hymn, and I found the Advent text on-line (but no music, just words). The challenge was to somehow get something on paper that had the music with the Advent text. If I was a more organized person, I could have contact St Meinrad and ordered a copy of their chant writing software, but I'm not. I tried to find something I could just download, hopefully for free, but didn't have any luck w/ that, either. So after spending a good three hours yesterday afternoon trying to figure something out, I ended up taking a sheet of vellum art paper with notebook paper underneath it and writing it out by hand. The girls thought it looked pretty, and they could sing from it fairly easily, so it was a success.

The text is really dark and at rehearsal we spent a while looking it over before we sang it. As an example, the fourth verse goes like this:

Non demum artemur malis/ pro qualitate criminis/ sed cum beatis compotes/ simus perennes caelites.

which translates as:

Saved from the whirling black abyss/ forever more to us be given/ to share the feast of saintly bliss/ and see the face of God in heaven.

I was a little concerned that it might be too dark for the group, but they totally got into it. I loved it when Miss Soprano T said, "it reminds me that He's not a tame lion", and she went on about the strength and power of God, and how we should feel awe at times. It was a great discussion, and we will be singing an ancient Advent hymn for the first Saturday in Advent. Cool.

On the home front, I was over half way done with a crocheted sock, but decided I didn't like how it was going so I ripped it out and started over. The good thing was that if I hadn't ripped it out, I'd have probably finished it last night, which means I crocheted a sock in two days, which is greatly encouraging considering I want to get three pairs of socks (at least) done for Christmas.

And then there's the ongoing saga of my Dear Son and his winter sports choice. He really really really wants to play football next fall, and I'm using that to motivate him to join swim team this winter. I really don't think 9 year olds should play football, but I guess it's probably better to play when everyone's under 100 lbs than it would be when they're all 200+. I need a break from him playing team sports, until he gets his temper under better control, and he's a good swimmer, so I've made him a deal. He swims for several months w/o complaining, and I sign him up for football without complaining. It sounds so simple all written out here, but it's taken sometimes twice-daily phone calls to Mom (MY mother!) to work it all out in my head. Mom is so patient....

Fw: one thing off the list

Got the test pair of socks done today. Dear Daughter says they're very cozy. Didn't take me very long - not quite two weeks to get them done. With luck and persistence I should be able to get 2-3 pairs done before Christmas to give as gifts. Dear Daughter is home this afternoon because she had three teeth pulled this morning. So far she's not too uncomfortable, mainly complaining about the numbness in her lips. She's had tylenol and motrin, and will keep getting whatever she needs. Oh, and she had a double scoop of Baskin Robbins Gold Medal Ribbon for lunch. Hey, it had to be something soft.....

the view from up here

It's that time of year. Foggy time. This is a photo Dear Daughter took from our dining room window. We have a great view of the sky, if you can overlook Pederson's Plastic Roof next door. It's kind of an eyesore, and the power lines provide a lovely accent. But we do get to see the sky.

fall

Yesterday we had a nearly open day. Between work, school, soccer, and various musical activities, someone almost always has something going. But yesterday there wasn't much on the schedule. So I decided it was a good day to plan a family activity. This idea was met with varying levels of enthusiasm. Dear Husband was on board, but wanted to do something way more involved than what I had in mind (like drive an hour away and visit a zoo and a museum and goodness knows what all else). Talked him out of it fairly easily, though, and he got to work with the What's Happening from the Friday paper, trying to find something a little smaller scale.

Both kids asked about playdates as soon as they were awake. Like, "Good morning, mother. Can I have a playdate with ______?" My son was ok with the family day idea, but my daughter, not so much. She's very close to being a teenager, and I think yesterday she got a little closer. We ended up going to the Carpinito Brothers farm, where they had U-pick pumpkins and a corn maze. Dear Son thought it was all very cool, and spent the afternoon leading us all through the corn maze and evaluating the pumpkins to find three that would work for a pumpkin snowman. Daughter sulked. When she wasn't pouting. Somehow we ended up taking home $40 worth of pumpkins - don't ask me how that happened - and she did manage to get engaged with the process of picking out her pumpkin(s). And she also liked eating the caramel kettle corn. Other than that she did a darned fine imitation of a teenager. So maybe we're in the fall of her childhood, and soon she'll be moving full on into a new phase of life. Last month she took the picture of the Aspens that's attached to this post. She's a good kid, a talented kid, and while it's sad to loose my baby, it's going to be cool watching her grow up.

baking bread

The picture above is a loaf of Challah bread I baked a couple of years ago. It was my first attempt at Challah bread, and I was so pleased with how it turned out that I took pictures. I haven't tried Challah again, but I do try to bake regular old wheat bread for the kid's lunches. It's nothing special, but my daughter tells me she likes it when her school lunch is made with fresh baked bread. I use organic wheat flour, but then standard white flour because it gets too expensive to use the good white flour. At least I know they aren't getting any preservatives or anything in their bread. The peanut butter may be full of weird stuff, but the bread is good.

It's not hard to bake decent bread, especially since My Dear Friend gave me a stand mixer last Christmas. The way my life goes, it's almost more about timing and scheduling than anything else. Take today, for instance. I worked night shift last night but the babies behaved and I got a couple of hours of sleep. I mixed the bread this morning and it'll rise while I take a nap this morning (very soon!). Then I have a 1pm meeting back at work (which I might sleep through, although it'll mess up the bread). Before the meeting, I'll set it up in bread pans, but then put it in the fridge because I won't be home before it'll be ready to bake. When I get home (after son's soccer practice), I'll set it out to rise, then bake it this evening. Or the husband can bake it if I have to leave for work before it's ready. It's not always this complicated, but sometimes it seems that way.