Family Christmas Traditions

Our family hates Christmases that start too early. Department stores starting up Christmas in September? No thanks! We avoid department stores altogether in favor of a much simpler, and more authentic, Christmas.

We start off the Christmas season on December 6 (or thereabouts) with St. Nicholas Day, whenever we can. That's the day we try to get our tree. We have a tree-decorating party complete with cookies and egg nog, and after all that we turn out all the lights except the ones on the tree and sing Christmas carols. It's something we all look forward to, and we usually all feel like Christmas is here once we've had our party.

For gifts, we've stuck with the tradition we started when we first moved to Portland. You can read about it here. We only buy locally-made, handmade gifts, preferably from the person who made it so we can actually meet him/her. We love our tradition and are happily on the third year.

Last night we began to read A Christmas Carol, another tradition we started some years back. It only has five staves, or chapters, though they are a bit longish. You can read it in five readings very easily. The story reminds us of the poor and the real meaning of Christmas. I highly recommend it!

And finally, we keep our Christmas tree up until Epiphany, the Baptism of Christ. The "Christmas Season" is really supposed to be the 12 days between Christmas and Epiphany, so we celebrate it until then.

This year we'll also be doing Christmas caroling, which we don't do every year but I like to do it when we can. Our choir is going out on Sunday to sing for shut-ins.

Here's wishing all who celebrate Christmas a peaceful, simple, celebration of the Nativity. Merry Christmas!

Aurora Concert and brotherly visit

I had a blast singing in the Aurora concert on Sunday! That was *just* what I've been looking for--challenging music, performing, working within a community of wonderful women. If you're a woman and live within the Portland metro area and you like to sing, consider Aurora! It's a pretty big time commitment but I think it's well worth it. I will definitely be back next term.

My brother and sister-in-law came for a visit. They've been telling us ever since we moved to Portland that they would, and they finally got around to it! I enjoyed having them in the audience listening and I enjoyed showing off our beautiful city to them on Monday. They saw Powells, of course, AND LaDonna sold a few copies of her latest book of poetry to them to sell. So if you're in Powells, take a look in the small press-poetry section for her book, Secrets of Falling, unless it's sold out already, which wouldn't surprise me.

We also enjoyed Voodoo Doughnuts and the Saturday Market (which, in addition to also being open on Sundays, is open for the whole week before Christmas). We toodled along Mississippi St. and enjoyed the little shops there. And then it was time for them to go home and for me to get a cold. Yep, I've been trying to get sick all fall and not quite making it, and now I have an honest-to-goodness cold, and I'm kind of relieved because now maybe I can quit with the almost-sick thing.

Oops!

I don't know how that happened, but the link for The Story of Stuff wasn't working. I've fixed it now. Go watch it! But make sure you've got 20 minutes to do so.

NoBloInDec?

Yes, I've been busy, too busy to even think of anything to blog about. I've been mostly keeping up with other people's blogs. It's not the Christmas season that's making me so busy--it's Aurora! I've been trying to make sure I have all my music memorized and have had extra rehearsals and a weekend retreat . Tonight is our dress rehearsal. On Tuesday we rehearsed with the instrumentalists for certain pieces. I think it's going to sound amazing--especially John Denver's Amazon. It's going to be cool!

If you still want to come but don't have tickets, the 4 o'clock performance is sold out. I'm pretty sure you can still get tickets to the 7 o'clock. And last I heard they still need a couple of volunteers, for which you get in free.

And I leave you with this, since I don't have anything of substance to blog about. It's a video that's 20 minutes long. When I first started watching it I thought "20 minutes--too long" and almost turned it off. But I kept watching and am very glad I did. It's a concise explanation of the process of "stuff." How it affects our environment and the people in the world we live in.
The Story of Stuff

Just a bit over two weeks until the Aurora Chorus concert! We've been working very hard on this and as of tomorrow all the music should be memorized. We have a retreat this weekend--a whole weekend of rehearsals.

I was a bit disappointed when I found out the concert attire, because I have a black dress that I thought would be just perfect, but it's short sleeved and we're required to wear at least 3/4 length sleeves. In trying to figure out what to wear with it I finally decided to drop by my favorite little sewing shop and see if it was doable to whip something up quickly. And indeed, Ruthie (the store owner) is invaluable in helping me figure out what I can do and how to do it. I came home with black fabric and a pattern for a great little swingy jacket. That was yesterday; today, after a day of working on it, plus cutting it out last night, I have a wonderful jacket to wear with my dress! I don't think I've ever made anything that turned out so well. This picture doesn't do it justice; I guess I'll have to take a picture of it while wearing something else lighter in color under so the detail will show up.

The Burning Question

A conversation had a month ago that I'm still chuckling over...

My in-laws were visiting and we took them to Forest Park for a hike. Forest Park is the largest city park in the US, and except for the sounds of traffic, you could forget that you're within a city. It looks like a mountain hideaway.

We brought a lunch along and when we'd gone as far into the woods as we wanted to go, we found a nice little grassy knoll and sat down to eat. We had garlic cheese bread from Di Prima Dolce--to die for! Get yourself some--they make it on Fridays; apples we'd just picked from Hood River, and a soft cheese with an ash layer. Have you had cheese with an ash layer? It's really good. My mother-in-law was wondering aloud, who thought of putting ash in cheese? Who thought, hey, maybe ash would taste good in cheese! We wondered about that for awhile and had many jokes about eating ash. And then my dear mother-in-law reminded us that they want to be cremated when they die.

You can see where this conversation went from there!

Local Internet Provider?

When we first moved to Portland, we decided to go with Ecosky for our internet provider. It was a local ISP that used solar and wind power to run the business, which we thought was pretty cool. Plus we got cool @ecosky.com email addresses. :-) Then, after just a year, they went out of business. We decided, the heck with small local businesses--let's go back to Earthlink, a business that's huge and global and not going out of business anytime soon. But they have real customer service issues, and we haven't liked talking to someone in who-knows-where when we call, who doesn't know what we're talking about. We never received the modem they said they'd send, either.

I'm hoping to find a stable AND local ISP. One with a social conscience and provides good internet service. Can any of you local Portland area folks help me out with that?