A Merry Little Christmas

It may have taken Christmas a while to get off the ground at our place, but by the time Christmas morning hit yesterday, we were in full celebratory mode. One of our own little Christmas traditions since we got married is to go to the theatre (clearly the tradition of a couple without children)--last year it was The Nutcracker at the Kennedy Center, a few years ago it was A Christmas Carol at Ford's Theatre, etc. So on Monday night we went out for a delicious dinner at Olive's, one of our favorite DC eateries, and then to see Twelfth Night at the Shakespeare Theatre--not so Christmassy, but still great fun.

The next day we loaded up the car and made it to Mount Vernon by dinnertime. We celebrated Christmas Eve at the skating rink, where Jason showed off his new moves, then went to the candlelight service, as is tradition in the Small house. I didn't grow up going to the candlelight service, and I have really loved singing "Silent Night" by candlelight on Christmas Eve when we've been able to celebrate Christmas here!

Christmas morning we had fun opening up gifts and all ate dinner together. Then we took up the other classic Small tradition--the annual viewing of Independence Day, complete with surround sound. It seems to be the Christmas for hats, and one of our favorite pictures is one of the Georges, Sr. and Jr., with Grandpa's Christmas hats!

Today we drove to Akron to visit Stan Hywet Hall, a Tudor-style manor house built in 1912 for the family that co-founded the Goodyear Tire Company (Jason's note: we learned that the company was named after Charles Goodyear, who discovered how to vulcanize rubber in 1839, but died before its use found wide application -- rubber for wagon and then car tires.) It was rainy and cold, but it was fun to see the fancy house (seriously, who says "Hmmm, I think I'll build a mansion for myself in the Tudor style, complete with authentic Tudor paneling shipped in from England"?) all lit up for Christmas!

We feel so blessed to be able to celebrate the birth of Christ and the newness He brings with our family--both here and afar. And tomorrow we will continue the celebration with a visit to friends in Harrisburg and a wedding we've been looking forward to!

Published on Christmas

So, Merry Christmas everyone. I (Jason) trust your morning of wrapping paper and turkey was all you hoped. In Mount Vernon, Mom received an unexpected Christmas gift -- a letter to the editor she wrote published today in the Columbus Dispatch. While we tend to keep our blog politically neutral, we couldn't help but brag a bit... enjoy!

A Perfect Moment

There are times amidst the chaos of our lives that everything seems to fall just perfectly into place, where you could hardly ask for things to be better and you are suddenly overwhelmed with gratitude, you know? Our evening was just such a perfect moment. Christmas has not come gracefully at our house this year. For some reason I thought that having most of the Christmas shopping done before Thanksgiving would make this season less stressful, and I imagined a blissful December of coming home from London and reading A Christmas Carol and delivering homemade fudge and peanut brittle wrapped up in pretty bows to the neighbors. Instead, we've given up all pretenses of putting lights on our house and we are feeling lucky that the Christmas tree has not fallen down this week.

So it was absolutely lovely to find ourselves sitting by said tree late this afternoon. In our cozy living room we could ignore the disaster of unwrapped gifts in the basement and pretend that we had not left the kitchen in a state of disarray after making muffins for a Christmas brunch with friends today. We just sat there quietly, the Christmas lights twinkling and the fire crackling, wrapped up in blankets and reading. Even when we got up and started doing stuff that magical feeling of peace and contentedness remained. From the kitchen where I was chopping up butternut squash and humming along to some Christmas music, I heard Jason call my mom to see how Baby Mason is doing, and it made me happy that we are now a part of each others' families. We ate dinner together and chatted comfortably about working for Congress and what we should make for our family for Christmas Eve dinner and whether Dick's would still be having a big sale on winter coats after we get back from Ohio. And tomorrow we get to go to church and sing, "O come let us adore him!" and then do it all over again (only hopefully with more gifts wrapped at the end of the day).

It is so pleasant to be in our lives sometimes, which is funny because I keep wracking my brain to figure out how we can simplify or slow down or just change the status quo. We are blessed to be warm and full and loved by each other and so many people around us, even when we are spinning around so fast we can hardly see straight. Maybe all that spinning makes me appreciate perfect moments when they come.

So Long, Sudan.

Yesterday was Jason's last day at the Sudan Programs Group at the State Department--after two weeks of vacation (during which he apparently means to sleep a lot), he is starting a one-year fellowship on Capitol Hill (during which we will have to become accustomed to sharing the same side of the city). Thursday afternoon his office held a really wonderful farewell party for him, which was attended by all sorts of people with whom he's worked on this issue for the past six years. People said wonderful things about him and his wife nodded in wholehearted agreement. He was lavished with awards and commemorative items, including a framed letter of appreciation from the Assistant Secretary for Africa and a really awesome scrapbook that his staff put together with notes from people who have worked with him--both here and abroad--and newsclips that mention him and his work on Sudan. It was a great way to end a good era of his career.

Jason has been doing Sudan almost as long as I've known him, and it seems strange that I'm no longer married to "that Sudan guy." Now maybe I'll be married to "that guy who works down the hall"...

Baby Mason

Wow, after a long blogging dry spell, four posts in three days! This is the latest pic of the Bucher boys. Here is Mom's email out to the extended fam, announcing the birth--both Jason and I laughed at loud: "When Denny told Cole we needed to get his coat on to go to the hospital because his mom had a baby, his response was, 'another one?' He is a proud brother, even though he's not completely clear on all the details."

Nephew Number Three!

This morning we got a text message that Mason Benjamin Bucher had arrived, in all his 8 lb. 7 oz, full-head-of-dark-hair glory! I love technology--by mid-morning Shaanti herself had sent a picture of him to my cell phone. He is sweet and gorgeous and looks an awful lot like his big brother Cole. We are definitely getting into this having nephews thing!

Seven Things I Love About London:

Tea Drinking: I am a tea drinker, and in a world of mochachinolatte drinkers, I feel a bit out of place ordering my usual cuppa with milk and sugar. But I fit right in in London, where tea drinking—and a lovely afternoon tea with scones and tea cakes—is as normal as bobbies and royalty. I’ve always liked tea, but when I was in England in college I decided to do as the British do and take milk with it. It is a habit that stuck, and when I met Jason and he took milk in his tea, too, well…

Buskers in the Underground: Navigating the tunnels of the Tube is so much nicer with someone playing “Silent Night” on the saxophone, even if you keep calling the Central Line the Red Line.

Book Shopping: The nice man who tried to help me get my suitcase out of the overhead compartment about threw his back out. I tried to warn him; my bag was full of books. Maybe it was the three months I spent in the library, but bookshops and London just go together…especially the iconic Blackwell’s, whose flagship store is across from the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford. I stocked up on all the things that I can’t get in the U.S.—another volume for my Shakespeare collection, the British versions of Harry Potter, and a couple more adorable little Jane Austen editions that sell themselves as modern chick lit. Mmm… Just sitting among the stacks in Blackwell’s makes me happy.

Whirring around on the wrong side of the street: It’s sort of exhilarating to turn right in an iconic British taxi—it feels splendidly out of control for just one second. Actually, what’s really a treat is sitting in the top of a double-decker bus and spinning around the streets of London. Remember that scene in Harry Potter where the Knight Bus squeezes through London? Sometimes it almost feels like that. I also like looking right first when I cross the street. It makes me feel like a local—and, after all, I did sort of learn to cross streets in Oxford. It took a long time to learn to do it the American way when I moved to DC. (Yeah, this picture doesn't match. Go with it.)

British Money: No offense to U.S. currency, but there is nothing like a pound, sitting gold and weighty in your hand. Or like the five-sided 20p coin, that always looks worn and stable. Or like the little 5p coin, which is actually smaller than the 10p coin—imagine! Rational money! I like holding it and feeling it and being able to pick out the right change quickly. And I like spending it, especially when that uninspiring dollar is buying me more pence for the penny than I expected!

Pub Eating: You go to London for lots of reasons, but eating isn’t one of them. Pub food is warm and cozy—shepherd’s pie, stew, fish and chips, bacon sandwiches that I love—but nothing to write home about. It is the experience of eating in pubs that I like. It’s the names, like the Lamb and Flag or the Dog and Gun or the Eagle and Child. It’s the dark wood and the tiny, rickety tables with the numbers on the corner. It’s mastering the art of ordering your food in a pub, which is trickier than it seems. It’s the atmosphere that makes you laugh heartily and talk books and swagger just a bit more than you probably should. (Of course, it totally weirded me out that the pub we lunched in offered a choice of white or whole wheat bread. And they came and took our order, like a normal American restaurant. What the--?)

Christmas: We joined the mobs of people oooing and ahhing at the Selfridges Santa window displays on Oxford Street and listened to the Salvation Army band play "Joy to the World" on the street corner. We spent Saturday afternoon eating nutella covered waffles at a German Christmas market on the South Bank of the Thames. Nothing like London in December to get you into the spirit for a happy Christmas!

There are, of course, lots of other things I love about England, like the way the rows of stovepipe houses look when you fly by on the train or American candy bars with British chocolate (soooo much better) or the green parks where people walk their babies and dogs past palaces or words like “lovely” and “gorgeous” sprinkled throughout sentences in the most unexpected places. Really, it’s sort of amazing that I come home at all.

Thanksmus

On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, Jason joked that Christmas would be at 10 the next day, Thanksgiving would be at 2, and New Year’s would be at midnight. He was almost right. The next morning we finished decorating the tree, put the turkey on the smoker, and then surrounded ourselves with piles of presents and had fun digging in. Opening presents with the Johnson clan always involves someone asking, “Does anyone have a knife?” and at least five people reaching into their pockets. This year it also involved easy clean-up, as Cole designated himself garbage man after opening his first present, urgently asking if I had any wrapping paper for him to throw away. This, of course, was my favorite picture. Apparently you DO start to look alike when you've been married for 33 years...


After Thanksgiving dinner, we all (except the McAfees, who had to work that night) went to the Boise Rescue Mission to serve dinner there. It was a great experience for all of us, but watching Gramps was the highlight—he is definitely in his element welcoming people in the door and thanking them for coming!

Despite our earlier assertions, we didn’t carve out much time in our week for relaxing. In fact, we were on the go most of the time! We loved having dinner with a group of my friends from college, and Black Friday shopping with Mom, Shaanti, and Kim was great fun.

We also had a fun little tea party for Shaanti to pamper her a bit before Baby Mason arrives (any day!), and Mom put together a fabulous blessing quilt for her, made up of squares from all of Mason’s aunts, uncles, grandparents, and great-grandparents (and cousin and brother!).

And, of course, we basked in nephew time. Cole gets funnier every time I see him, and he is so big and smart! We had a great time taking him out for ice cream (where he managed to eat both his cone AND mine!), and we loved chatting, playing, and baking with him. For a taste of the fun, just check out the video below. As Casey said, “This just never gets old.”

And Troy is such a smiley sweetie! I managed (but just barely!) to refrain from waking him up when I thought he had napped too long and needed to come out to play. We were commenting that next time we are all together for Christmas there will be three little boys running around—wow!

Done! (well, mostly)

I had a strong affinity for my college laptop. I'm not really a namer of things (Dawn is the one who named my car Beatrice), but if I was, my laptop would have been the first thing I named. We spent a lot of time together. We traveled overseas together. We mastered Shakespeare and footnotes and surfing the web together. I loved nagivating with its little green finger button (what were those called?). I willingly paid out the nose my senior year when the mouse needed fixed. And I was very sad when suddenly the "b" key stopped working...and then the "t"...and then, well, it's a good thing I met Jason, who knows how to take a hard drive out of an otherwise completely worthless laptop.

My new Dell (which is actually not new, it's two years old, which is, like, really old in computer years) is shiny and pretty and has a DVD player and wireless capabilities and a wide screen. But, like the pet you get to replace Fido when he dies, we've never really been close.

Until now.

After what feels like three solid weeks of doing homework during every waking minute, we have definitely bonded. I carried it to and from Idaho and started putting it in my car on the way to work, just in case. In fact, on Monday night we pulled an all-nighter...or as close to an all-nighter I can come at the ripe old age of almost-thirty-and-have-to-work-the-next-day...finishing my last paper. I seriously, seriously didn't think I would actually get it done. But the Dell and I pulled through, and I walked away from class at 10:00 last night, paper turned in and a small bounce in my step. I'm free. (Mostly. I still have a final in two weeks, but that is so not the same.)

Now I can decorate the Christmas tree that has been standing naked in our living room since Sunday and finally finish Breaking Dawn before Kaylyn sells it on e-bay. And read The Deathly Hallows again before Amazon delivers my Beedle the Bard. And, let's face it, go to bed early. So happy.