I’ve taken plenty of pictures the past few days, but the dial-up internet connection here at the folks’ house isn’t up to uploading them, so they’ll wait until we get home on Sunday. (To be quite fair, my folks aren’t Luddites in the least when it comes to the internet; they simply live so far out that their only options are dial-up or ridiculously-expensive satellite. But I digress.)
It’s such fun to have the whole family together again for a weekend – Andrew and Heather are in from Washington; Ryan is here from Chicago; we’ve come up from Iowa and the rest are, for the moment, locals of Richland Center, WI. I have a feeling these full-family gatherings will be fewer and farther between as the years go on, so we need to enjoy these when we have the chance.
New Years’ Eve we celebrated Christmas as a family, exchanging gifts and eating rather too much. I was blessed with a case for my iPod and a copy of N. T. Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God, a lengthy volume that will likely keep me busy for a long while this upcoming year. (Thanks, Ryan!) New Years’ Day was rather uneventful; much decorating was done at the church, and it was concluded by my brother Aaron’s bachelor party – a party much unlike what typically comes to mind when you say “bachelor party”. Let’s just say it was attended by nearly 20 men who carried Bibles and weren’t afraid to use them. 
It was a good, encouraging time, enjoyed by all.
Yesterday, though, the preparations continued in earnest for Aaron and Emily’s wedding. Final decorations were hung; we walked through the rehearsal; finally, we ate a LOT of tasty catered Mexican food for the rehearsal dinner, and celebrated Aaron’s birthday. Oh, and Rebecca made the cakes, and whipped up a LOT of frosting. (Pictures to follow.)
Now it’s Saturday morning and we’re praying that the freezing rain forecast for late this afternoon holds off for a few extra hours so everyone can make it to the wedding. The big event is at 4:30 this afternoon, with dinner and dancing to follow. Big congratulations go out to Aaron and Emily on this landmark day in their lives. Now if you’ll excuse me… I think I have a shirt to go iron.
Nothing like a holiday and a week off work to slow down the blog posting.
We started our Christmas celebration on Christmas Eve, attending the service at Stonebridge. While it was a bit longer service than I expected, it was quite good, and the girls managed to sit through it (a whole hour!) without making too much ruckus. Then we made a quick trip down to the Fedex office to pick up the new laptop that had made it as far as the distribution office but not actually delivered.
Christmas morning we opened presents. Highlights for the girls: Addie got a little tent and sleeping bag; Laura got a scooter and a “spotting scope”. (It looks like a pirate spyglass to me, but Diego calls his a “spotting scope” and that’s all that matters to Laura. ) The girls also ended up with a multitude of puzzles and DVDs. I got some good stuff, too: some gift cards to my favorite local fast-food places (guilt-free eat outs!), a new fountain pen (OK, I’ve had it for a few weeks, but it’s a Christmas present none the less), and a couple of CDs. I got Becky a new jewelry box and a Baby Blues book; she appears to be enjoying both of them.
More Christmas photos on Flickr
On Wednesday we’re headed up to Wisconsin to see my family; Andrew and Heather are in from Washington; Ryan is in from the other Washington (DC), and Aaron and Emily are getting married on Saturday! Exciting times for the Hubbs family. Then next week “real life” starts again and I have to go back to work. I am thankful, though, for this Christmas break. A week and a half off of work is such a lovely thing this time of year. Happy New Year to you all!
In the 11 or 12 Christmases Becky and I have spent together, each has been celebrated with one set of parents or the other; most of them with my family, which has always lived closer, but a few Christmases we’ve made the drive to North Carolina to celebrate with Becky’s family. This year, though, a convergence of plans and events has set things up so that we will be spending Christmas day at home, just us and the girls. We’ll get to see my family the following week (for a wedding, no less!) but this week it’ll just be us.
Becky and I now get to start to decide what our family Christmases will look like. There’s a huge amount of latitude, given that there are no expectations from anyone. If we want to make changes, now is the time. If you think about it too long, it becomes a little bit overwhelming. Becky touched on it yesterday when we were discussing our Christmas dinner menu. She said she didn’t plan on making all the usual side dishes to go with the ham, but when I noted this was her chance to start a new tradition, she said she didn’t really know where to start.
It seems to me that part of the reason traditions don’t change too greatly from generation to generation isn’t just the fond memories we have of years gone by, or the actual love of specific foods or songs; it is also the added comfort and ease of just keeping things the same – in other words: change is hard. Now, that’s not a very heartwarming thought for a pre-Christmas afternoon, but it’s what I’ve got for today.
So yeah, I don’t forsee any huge changes for the Hubbs family this Christmas. We might go wild and fix a few different side-dishes to go with the ham. But we’re still having ham. Some things are just too sacred to mess around with.
What a great Christmas, and now how good to be home. We spent several days at my parents’ place in Wisconsin, though for the first day or so they weren’t there… they had to go to Chicago to pick up my sister, who flew in from Panama, and my brother, who flew in from DC. They made it within about 30 miles of home before the snow storm got so intense that they couldn’t manage to get any further. So they got a room, stayed the night, and waited for the snow plows. By noon the next day they made it home. It was sure good to see everyone.
Christmas was a marvelous time. It’s always such fun with small children, and Laura and Addie just loved opening their presents and playing with their new toys. The carnage comes when we bring them all home and add them to the existing pile of toys. I think it’s time for a garage sale or a large donation to Goodwill.
We did manage to get at least one decent family picture taken, so here we wish you a belated Merry Christmas! (For family and friends: I’ll get a bunch more uploaded to Flickr sometime this week.)
Today is my last work day for the year. Thanks to a day of vacation tomorrow and a generous holiday schedule from my employer, I will be able to enjoy the better part of two weeks away from the office. Not that it’ll be slow during that time… we leave Saturday to visit my family in Wisconsin. It will be so good to have everyone back together… Rebecca gets back from Panama on Saturday. Oh, and I’m also very ready to be allowed to dig into the massive pile of cookies that Becky has been making over the past couple of weeks. I think her goal this year was to make so many cookies that she could take them up to my family’s place and still have cookies left at the end of the visit. I’ll bet she achieved it.
Lots of other blogs do Top 10 lists at the end of the year, proclaiming their best new albums or movies or books or the like. I don’t think I’ll be doing that here. First of all, I doubt I’ve bought 10 CDs all year. And I haven’t watched too many movies, either. I may do a book roundup, though – I’m probably gonna be over 80 books for the year, maybe I can do a retrospective.
After reading the above two paragraphs, I’m amazed that content like this keeps anyone coming back to this blog. Thanks for reading, and Merry Christmas.
Christmas shopping is complete. The Christmas program is over. We’ve received a bunch of Christmas cards already. We still haven’t gotten any sent. 
Apologies in advance to organized friends like Stephanie and the Hollands. It’s not that we don’t appreciate you thinking of us and sending us the pictures. We do, really. We’re just not organized enough to get our own sent out this year. When I was growing up it was the family joke that we would send out a New Year’s letter, because our Christmas letter always went out really late. I think this Hubbs household might have to do the same thing.
Tasks for this week: baking cookies. Well, that’s mostly Becky. She has baked so many cookies this last week already. Toll House cookies. Chocolate Espresso cookies. O’Henry bars. Chocolate chip cookie dough balls. I know the Chex Mix is coming up yet this week. She has a schedule for every day divided up into morning, afternoon, and evening, with baking tasks laid out appropriately so that she can finish before we head to Wisconsin on Saturday. I am impressed, as usual, with her organizational determination.
Other tasks for this week: Wrapping presents. Just because they’re all bought doesn’t mean they’re ready for Christmas. We’ll load up the coffee table downstairs with all the wrapping implements and then turn something on the TV. I’m thinking it’ll be more Heroes. I never watched Heroes when it started last year on TV, and once I got behind, I knew it was no use trying to start in the middle. So I got Season 1 and we’ve been saving it until we had time. Now with the writer’s strike and no new shows to watch, it’s the perfect time. We watched five episodes over the weekend. Totally hooked. If not Heroes, it’ll be time to break out the Muppet Christmas Carol. It is pretty much a yearly tradition – who can fail to love Kermit as Bob Crachit and Michael Caine as Mr. Scrooge? So much fun.
I’m taking Friday off work to get a head start on the holidays. Then we pack and head off to see the family. Lots to do between now and then, though. After all, it’s only one more week ’til Christmas.