My Holiday Recap Part #2 and Part #3

Yeah, I meant to do this ages ago, but I haven't been able to actually sit and write until now.

Christmas Eve

Okay, so.
Christmas '06 was, to date, the biggest Christmas our family has seen. I guess because Dad said, "Let's make this a good Christmas," and Nana said, "Let's make this a good Christmas," and neighbors and churchgoers and friends and strangers said, "Let's make this a good Christmas," and all of them went and bought us bookoos of presents. So many presents, in fact, that we stacked them under the tree till the branches were bending, and then stacked them outward, away from the tree....three feet out and two and a half feet high.
No joke.

We've never seen so many gifts at one time!
Amanda, in particular, made out like a bandit.
See, a primary source of our giftish income came from a couple of groups of people that decided that they would like to make it a good Christmas, and they obtained a list of our names/genders/ages/basic interests from Daddio and made the information available to memebers of their church who would want to, ah, donate gifts to our family. (personally, I really had to swallow some pride this year.....what exactly makes us charity, anyway?? We're not poor. Not even a little bit. Anyway...)
So the tags on our gifts would read like this:

Ashley
19-year-old girl
Misses' size [insert a number that could be smaller here]
Likes reading, music, and knitting

Bobby
17-year-old boy
Mens' size [I have no idea. Make something up]
Likes sports and movies

Amanda
14-year-old girl
Misses' size [insert another number here....I think she might kill me if I gave away her clothing size. It's what sisters do for each other. ;-) ]
Likes cooking (and anything British)

So anyway, I guess a lot of people either thought that a 14-year-old girl would be easier to shop for, or they had daughters her age, or they thought she'd be overlooked since she falls somewhere in the middlish or something, because she CLEANED UP on Christmas Eve!! The overwhelming majority of the gifts were for her.
We opened all our gifts on Christmas Eve. Most of us had somewhere around 20 presents to open (which is about three times more than we ever have before).

Amanda opened 42.

Yeah. That's right. Four-two. Forty-two.
Craziness....
On the cooler end of the spectrum, she had a load of CDs, and some adorable sweaters I've begged to borrow more than once, and a silver iPod Nano.
On the not-quite-as-cool-but-very-practical side of the spectrum.........she got a cheese grater.

It's very practical.

She has five of them now.

But this isn't Amanda's blog....this is Ashley's blog....what did Ashley get for Christmas?

-A ton of clothes. Some I can wear, some I can't. Those I can't will get passed on. (Jo, I still haven't forgotten to send that shirt to you...it's on its way.)
-Socks
-CDs...David Crowder Band's "A Collision" (because my first copy was scratched up)...TobyMac's "Momentum"....Matt Redman's "Blessed Be Your Name: The Songs of Matt Redman, Vol.1"....Audio Adrenaline's "Adios"....just to name a few. ;-)
-A guitar chord chart "bible"...*grin* very cool indeed.
-Makeup and makeup brushes
-An iPod Mini. (YAY!!) A lime-green one from someone who donated it to Ashley-19-year-old-girl-likes-music. *is so happy*
-"Scene It? - Friends Edition", from someone who donated it to Ashley-19-year-old-girl-likes-etc....someone who must not know I've never really been into the show because for years I wasn't allowed to watch it. lol
-A boatload of gift cards to be redeemed at Hancock Fabrics, Michaels, Wolf Camera, and iTunes, among others.
-A gift basket containing oodles of girly goodies for Amanda and me to share
And, most notably...
-A wedding ring from Dad.

I have found several quizzical looks result from my mention of the last item on that list, so I will explain.
I wanted a wedding ring for two reasons:

1) It serves as a visible, tangible reminder of the way God wants me to live my life.
God made it abundantly clear to me that He wants me to save myself--not only physically, but emotionally--for my future husband. And that means not allowing myself to get crushes on, flirt with, or to try to attract the attention of anyone else, and to conduct myself in a way that honors my husband-to-be...to conduct myself with modesty, as though I were already married.
I wanted a ring as an outward manifestation of that inward commitment.

2) Wedding rings are fantastic for weeding out the losers.
Seriously.
What kind of guys hit on ladies with wedding rings? Losers.
So, if some guy is dropping lines and leaning in close, it won't take any brilliant deduction to conclude that he is, in fact, a loser.
*wicked laugh* I've found a few at work already. ;-)

[NOTE: A few people have argued that if that's the case, I'll never gain the interest of anyone honorable. But you see, if he's close enough to me to be considering such a thing, then he'll know me well enough to know that I'm not married--and why I look like I am.]

Andie (Mom's cousin) and Josh (her son) and Andie's beau Stephan, and their baby Chloe, and Aunt Margaret (Andie's Mom), and Nana all came over to exchange gifts and hang out for the afternoon. Great fun. Chloe is getting sooo big!


So that was Christmas Eve.


Christmas

Christmas Day was nice.
Usually, we open all but one and save the one gift and stockings for the morning.
I don't know why. We just do.
But this year, we didn't do stockings, and we opened everything on Christmas Eve, so there wasn't really anything to "do" on the 25th.
We hung around the house, messed around with our new stuff, watched movies, watched football, compared presents....whatever.
Sometime in the afternoon, Amanda and I wanted to visit Mom. So I made a sweep over the house to see if anyone else wanted to go with me.
The boys weren't up to it. So we went to the cemetery on our own. And we stood, and we shivered, and we cried. And then it hit me. We were alone this year. It was "just the three of us" for so long...Mom and Amanda and I spent a lot of time together. And here, Amanda and I stood at her grave. Just the two of us.
It was seeing her name on the headstone that did it:

In God's Loving Care
Laura Paulding Belt
February 18, 1967 - February 3, 2006

There was something about seeing it written in cold, grey granite and bronze. It made everything tangible and real and lonely. Being a nineteen-year-old girl is a frightening thing. A very frightening thing. And I just bawled. I did. And Amanda and I sniffled together in the cold, thinking about Mom....Amanda remarked that it's been nearly a year....I said that was a weird thought....more silence....I told Amanda how much she looked like Mom....she said I have her mannerisms.....more silence.....
Gradually, thoughts turned to the other graves around us. We always pay special attention to Shai Ambrisha Rogers' grave, which is right next to Mom's....she was three. We straighten her flowers and set the little crosses and ornaments uprights before we go. And we looked at all the people who weren't with their families today....some of them obviously missed and remembered, with extra flowers and wreaths and balloons and windchimes adorning the grave markers....some seemingly forgotten. It made everything seem bigger than us, I think.
And so we took a breath and looked around for a few minutes before making our way down the path to the car and returning home.

Christmas became bittersweet.

All in all, it was a nice holiday. A little melancholy toward the end...but nice nonetheless.
..........

I was trying to think of a happier note on which to end this post....but I can't think of anything. Amanda suggested I just tell you all that she's pretty.

Amanda is pretty.

;-)

The end.