Winter 2008

Molbaks, December

Every November Mom takes us to Molbak’s for our annual Christmas photo, and this year was no exception. Jan’s mom, Betty, and aunt, Corriene, were visiting from Holland, and they came, too. Thankfully, Sofia was much more cooperative about taking photos this year than in the past.

For a week before December 5th, Sofia and I left our wooden shoes on the family room hearth, and Sinterklaas came each night and put a few candies and little toys in them.  Sofia loved the "evidence" of Sinterklaas,  and I didn’t mind the candy.

Then on December 5th, we had our special Sinterklaas dinner: berries and whipped cream on waffles (awesome). When dinner had finished, Sinterklaas knocked on the front door.  (Mysteriously, just like last year, Jan had just excused himself from the table.) Sofia and I ran to the door; no one was there, but someone had left a big burlap bag full of gifts. As I lifted it into the house, Sofia practically jumped out of her socks with excitement. 

We all gathered by the fire in the family room. Sofia crawled to the bottom of the bag [left] to be sure she reached every last present. Everyone got at least one poem (Mom had written me a mushy one that cleverly incorporated the four kinds of questions I’d just been complaining about learning in Language Arts), which we read out loud. Sinterklaas also left us each a traditional Dutch chocolate letter. My gift was a CD of the soundtrack from the movie Across the Universe, which I’d just seen. Sofia was excited about ripping the paper off a couple games. 

Christmas Traditions, December

This year I helped put lights outside on the roof line and the bushes [not at right]. I did a pretty good job, if I do say so myself. I’m also becoming the tree light expert inside. To decorate the tree, every year we start with the special ornament that Sofia and I have collected for the year (Mom has a box of these for each of us so that when we grow up and move away we’ll have a collection of ornaments for our own Christmas trees). There are also always a couple new ornaments from our travels; we have lots of ornaments from around the world, now. Then we do the rest, with the smallest and oldest at the very top. While we decorated we watched animated Christmas classics (since Sofia didn’t last long with the tree) and drank hot chocolate.

One weekend we decorated Christmas cookies. I took it as a challenge to make works of icing art. Of course, it reminded me that I'm not artistic, but I had fun anyway. Later though, I made sure not to eat Sofia’s cookies, as her idea of “decorating” was to remove half the icing off each cookie with her finger and lick it. Blech.

A couple times we drove around to look at fancy house lights after dinner. Two houses we made a special effort to visit, one in Woodinville and one in Kirkland, had thousands of lights that were synchronized to blink in time with Christmas music. They were really cool, and we must have spent 10 or 15 minutes just watching the lights and listening to the music. 

For Christmas Eve, Mom, Sofia, Jan, and I went to Grandpa's house in the late afternoon. For dinner everyone from Sofia to Jeff and Kyle sat at the kids' table, even though Jeff, Kyle, and I are now taller than most of the adults.

Next was the musical “entertainment.” I played Chris Botti's arrangement of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" on Grandpa's 1940s-era trumpet, Erika and Jenny played the keyboard, Jeff played his oboe, and Kyle the guitar. 

Then it was time for presents! Sofia helped pass them out, which was pretty great because she didn't know who everybody was and kept giving gifts to the wrong person. As always, everyone opened gifts all at once, which was noisy and chaotic. I helped Sofia open a big box from Bonnie [left]. Grandpa and Bonnie gave me a T-shirt and $100. Woohoo! Gas money! To finish up, we conducted WWIII, in which the most technologically advanced ballistics were wads of wrapping paper.

I got to Mom's house at noon, just about the same time that Grandma Joanie arrived.  Dad, Suzy, Brennan, and Grandma Joyce stayed long enough to have some cookies and for Sofia to open her gifts from them. Then they left and we all began opening a tree-full of gifts, as Sofia had barely dented the pile in the morning.

It took a couple hours, since at Mom's we open presents one at a time.  Some of my favorites were an Xbox Live 13-month on-line subscription from Grandma, a telescope from Jan, a Hot Rod magazine subscription (you can never have too many car magazines), and two really nice button-down shirts and a tie from Mom. Best of all might be the memory foam mattress cover [right] from Santa. It's so great that I've had to make sure it doesn't disappear from my bed and end up on Dad's.

On Monday, January 28^th, after thousands of us kids had hoped and prayed for weeks, we finally had a snow day!  We woke up to 6 to 8 inches of snow in Kirkland [left]. 

As soon as I got up, I popped some bread in the toaster.