Smorby Christmas '09

Ah, the Morby & Smith Family Christmas dinner and exchange. Fondly called the Smorby Christmas. This was held 4 hours after Derek and I landed at the airport from New York. We like to live dangerously.

These boys can clean up pretty nice.


Dinner is always entertaining when you have this many people all in one line.


Tim and Joannie did a great job of packing us all in, though once in your seat, you were stuck until the end of the meal.


Which normally is not a big deal until snickers start occurring while looking in my direction.


That could possibly be because your brother is throwing this...


...into this. Uncle Shane doesn't realize what's coming his way once the tables are turned. I had to just leave my mommy hat at home and just let all the boy cousins and uncles entertain themselves at the cost of a three year old boy. Thankfully he hasn't wanted to repeat this since the event.


Nothing like a dessert that is literally calling your name.


I came to get the cake and found my son just watching it, waiting for the first slice.


He kept asking em if Amy was going to be there. He was overjoyed to get to see his Amy.


Then the opening of gifts begins. There are always some gifts that were given on purpose...


...and then there's the slew of gag gifts. Every year more and more of them turn up, with no one ever being quite sure who provides this entertainment.


At least they make for good laughs.


With now 4 UT grads in the family


we got to see plenty of orange opened up.


Justin says that these hats "are not right". He doesn't think the hair should be coming out of the top.


Justin was quite the helper, always bringing everyone their gift and helping them open them as well. He was a one-man stop.


The laughs continued all night.


Derek and I opted out of the exchange this year, only letting Justin do the honors for the Michaelis family. So we just sat back and wacthed the show.


Justin got himself some Lightning McQueen and Mater houseshoes. Bu the end of the evening, Uncle Steve was helping him roar through the crowd.


Such fun times. As this decade comes to a close, I think of what I was doing exactly 10 years ago, with the millennium right around the corner. I was making memories of my own - getting engaged....

A different kind of Advent Season

I could say I didn't know when it all started, but it really began when I went to a Living Water Gala in September. We learned about billions of people all over the world that don't have clean water. We watched this video that I am sure some of you have seen on you tube about the advent conspiracy.

The entire evening moved me, even to the point that when one pastor's wife talked about her non-profit organization of women giving their engagement rings in exchange for building wells for people that had nothing, I almost took my ring off then and there. I am not kidding - there we were in out nice dresses eating fabulous food watching these children walk 8 kilometers to a water area full of cow manure, fill up these huge tins of that dirty water, and haul it back home on their backs. Every mother needs to see it, for perspective in our over-indulged children's lives.

In November Justin and I had an opportunity to do Samaritan's Purse for Jenn Heitmann's daughter's birthday. Instead of bringing a gift, Justin and I filled up a shoe box for a kid his age who didn't have anything. Justin kept telling me as we were shopping for things at HEB how this little boy "needed this". Let's just say that we came home with more than I would have bought, but Justin was sincerely concerned that this little boy needed a toothbrush, a flashlight, etc. It really hit home with my three year old what we were doing. And I just got an email confirmation that the shoe box went to Mexico - so it's neat that this organization follows up like that.

In December Justin had a toy chapel at his school. They were encouraged to bring a gently used toy to put on the chapel as on offering so that another child could find joy in the reused gift. I told him to find a gift for a little boy to find great joy in, and he picks this big Thomas the Train toy that plays music when you push it. Every kid that comes to my house fights over it. It's a toy my neighbor Denise gave him one Christmas. I tell Justin to get another toy, one we don't play with as much. He insists that he wants another little boy to play with this toy. And then it hits me - I am the one who needs the heart change here. I want to keep this prize toy so we can have yet another toy for other kids to play with. Why not take the prize toy, which holds that much more value in this toy chapel, versus an unused toy. Justin was really starting to get it.

Which is why I decided to get Justin only one big thing for Christmas this year. Derek and I talked a long time about this, and we decided that it was time for us to have a Compassion child. I wanted a three year old so Justin could relate, but I ended up with a needier little boy who was six from Indonesia. My heart has really been pricked for the needy all over the world, and I was tearing up reading the packet that came in the mail for our little boy. They have so little, and here we drive a Camry that my grandfather gave to us, packed to the hilt with gifts, clothes, and lots of extras for the Christmas drive to Waco. We have been given much, and my heart has been stirred to give that much more away lately.

So on Christmas morning, Justin got to watch the Compassion video, we talked about our little boy that we could write letters to, pray for, encourage, etc., and we as a family just had perspective as to what our calling is as Christians. Justin can't wait to send a letter and our family photo, and I am just hoping that he can "get" what this is all about.

As far as my Christmas, I decided to not run around all month in search of the perfect gift. I gave memories instead of filling their house with more stuff - a night at a Bed and Breakfast, a wine club subscription, or monthly movie rental. I get no joy in trying to wrap the most perfect gift (stresses me out!), so I put everything in gift bags with sometimes mismatching tissue paper. I wasn't going to drive my family crazy trying to please others. Thought that counts, and leave the rest of the time to just enjoy what Christmas is all about. I realized that I don't enjoy cookie exchanges. They stress me out, and I receive no joy in making the over-the-top cookies or in wanting to eat the 2 dozen ones I return with. So I just opted out.

I made time for laughs, like our Baptist Sunday School teacher dressing up as Santa at our Christmas party (does anyone else see the irony in this?).


I made time for our best buds, the Junods, who got to stay and play with Justin for a few days. I don't get much time with Wendi, and I have to eat it up as much as I can.


Nothing like eating lunch while watching the workmen right outside your house. Making time for tractor gazing this month was definitely on the agenda.


The only new decor I added to the Christmas stash this year was a nativity set that we put up on the ledge in our kitchen. Justin kept calling the baby Moses, since they were talking about Moses in the basket at school. We finally got it down that this was Jesus, and every morning he would walk out of his room to point at Jesus.


I finally got the Advent calendar I was looking for. Each day we pull out a character from the nativity scene, and then we would read the scripture in the Bible that would coincide with the story. We read a lot of Luke 2 this past month, but the best was when my mom kept Justin while we were in New York. She and Justin would get under the covers early in the morning and read Luke 2 under the covers with a flashlight.


I was very last minute this past month, which is highly out of character for me. And you know what, it didn't matter at all. I last minute made gifts for my neighbors out of this huge stash of homemade hot chocolate mix that I had made from my mother's recipe.


Hot chocolate mix, marshmallows, and chocolate peppermint stirring straws from Williams Sonoma. I always stress about what to do as a nice gesture, and here I already had it all on hand. Justin and I kept talking about why this was a season of giving, even if others can't do the same in return.


I gave myself 10 hours one day to decorate for Christmas and then I was done. No adding more ribbon, extras here and there, etc. I have never done so little, but since I wasn't hosting much, did it really matter? Derek and I only put up about 1/3 of our ornaments, and both of us thought the tree (which is real, we are not a fakey tree family) looked so clean and simple. Kind of like the theme of my Christmas this year- simple. We ended up putting the Justin and Roxy ornaments on the tree right by Justin's room.


I take back the statement about not adding anything extra to the decor. I love looking at the Christmas cards we get in the mail. I still don't have a great way of displaying all of them. So the afternoon of the 22nd (um yes, three days before Christmas), just hours before hosting a mini shower for Wendi that evening, I decide to start on a project. I decided to put up 4 long ribbons on these columns in my entryway and tape the photos to them.


Innocent, right? It's hard to see in these photos (can I get someone to edit some photos around here?), but the one on the left is all ribbon and no photos. The one on the right shows you why - they were sticking to each other, NOT the ribbon. I begin to start stapling and taking stick pins to make these photos stay with the ribbon. It was pure madness, and doubled the time of the entire project, Should have stuck with the theme and not worried about it.


In the end, it all lasted for 24 hours. And when I went over to Amanda Stewart's house and saw the same display but only paper clips were holding them up, I was stunned into realizing that I should never do a time waster again. Yes, small clothes pin would have worked great, if I had had them...


All in all, I got some great time with this little boy and we spent a lot more time talking about Jesus' birthday then we did running around like madmen all month. And with a month where we had an activity every day or evening on the calendar, I jealously wanted every minute I could get.

Because the truth of it is, are we "brave enough and worthy enough to bear the name of Jesus"? (Epicenter, by Joel Rosenberg)

New York, New York

What's a girl to do with so many posts due for the month of December! I have to start somewhere, so I'll start with the most relaxed week. Derek and I went to New York City on a last minute whim a couple weeks ago. We just love NYC at Christmastime, with the cold weather and the festive decorations. Roxy was bummed she couldn't hide in our suitcase and go with us.


If you want to know what our days looked like, it was pretty much shopping and eating. Century 21 is a must for us - we always find some great finds at this four story designer outlet building.


I had rented a lens from Photo Rental Source specifically for this trip to see if I really wanted to pony up the money for a very heavy zoom lens. So tried to take a lot of photos this trip, unlike last year's total of 9 photos. I wanted to compare the quality of the photos to my current lens.


Derek found a great place to stay - the Soho Grand. Everytime we have gone to New York we have never had to pay very much for our room and board. This was definitely a treat, especially since we love this part of town. It was so close to everything we wanted to do. Here's a view from our corner room on the 15th floor.


We gad a 180 degree view of the streets below. We could even see the Hudson River from our window. We loved all of it, except the queen bed. Derek had booked a king, as we were stumped when they kept insisting the room had a European King. Long story short, the housekeeping had not updated the records, and halfway through our stay, we got a king bed.


Derek missed the view, but the pair of us tall people slept a lot better.


I was glad to have a wide angle lens for these photos to get everything I wanted in the photo.


If Derek had had it his way, we would have slept with the windows open and the shades wide open as we fell asleep to the sounds of the city. This high maintenance sleeper just couldn't handle it.


It was pretty cool watching TV at night with a view like this.


We traveled up and down the streets of Soho each day. The weather was chilly but we enjoyed the exercise.


We ate at the first ever coal-oven pizza parlor in the country. Lombardi's is literally America's first pizzeria, and it was darn good pizza.


The problem with having a complicated, heavy camera is that no one else can use it. I had one waiter offer to take our photo, and a second came around to retake the fuzzy photo of us. He insisted he knew what he was doing, since he had a Canon 7D, an updated version of my camera. So imagine my disappointment in another fuzzy photo of us. That's why automatic is for the birds!


We love us some Italian sausage on our pizza, especially when it looks like this.


I wasn't kidding that all we did was eat and shop, as you can tell by the monotonous theme of the photos. We went to the Tribeca Grill for dinner one night after a suggestion from Jen McWilliams a couple years ago. It was right around the corner from our hotel, and excellent food.


I got a martini with thyme in it for a Christmas splash.


The wreaths in front of our hotel were so cool. The photo on the left is on manual, with an automatic shot from the bellman on the right. See what a difference manual can make?


I loved all the decor in the hotel.


This wreath made out of corkscrews.


The mini bar. I took this photo because we eventually had to go buy snacks since this was right as we walked into our room each day. So tempting.


Until you look at the prices!


I had fun taking this nighttime photos from our hotel room.


What's fun at Christmastime is all the shops are decorated in basically one big competition to have the best store front.


It was just fun to play around with my rented lens to see how the photos turned out sans flash.


We were waiting around for lunch and stopped into a three story Dylan's Candy Bar. Justin is head over heels for Candy Land, and this special board game has specific Dylan's Candy Bar stops at each turn on the game. I told Derek I would go into a sugar panic everytime I played the game if my game board looked like this. My fingers would twitch for jelly beans like no other.


Lunch was at Serendipity, the only eatery I have frequented 3 times in New York. I try not to revisit places I have eaten before, since there are so many choices. But I had to get my frozzzen hot chocolate. They had a mint one for the winter, and boy was it tasty.


We sat upstairs this time, which I have never been in this shop before. Love this chandelier! It stays up year round.


Fun decor all over this big room. Upstairs was definitely a lot less congested than the overly cramped downstairs.


We went and saw Billy Elliott the musical since the movie is one of our top faves. We loved the dancing - it was phenomenal. The music, not so music. I was expecting much more since Elton John wrote the entire score of music, but Derek and I both were left wanting for more. We always leave these shows wishing we could both dance better.


A local tourist happened to take our photo by this Christmas tree on a day where the high was 32 and the winds were 15 mph.


At least it was in focus - I'll take it!


We decide to try out the Boat House in Central Park for lunch. This was another Jen recommendation that we had been wanting to try, and this one did not disappoint. They were handing out free apple cider as we waited for an hour for our lunch reservation. It was fine for us since it took us that long to thaw out from the cold. My cider looks rather funny up next to Derek's drink of choice to help warm himself up.


We sat looking onto the water as we ate. Like the fuzzy photo of us on the right? Are you seeing a trend? Why can no one take a photo of us?


Later that evening, when we were on the hunt for the tall brown boots I had been casually looking for the entire trip (and found on the last day of the trip), we stopped by the Rockefeller tree.


Both of these photos were taken on, you guessed it, automatic. I played with the one on the right, which is very noisy and grainy. But at least you can tell who we are.


When we were at the Boat House for lunch, our waiter, who had worked all over town, told us of the best pastry chef in town. So we on a whim went on his suggestion and went to Fishtail to dinner. Definitely the best meal we had all trip, which was saying a lot. The bad news was someone's sensitive stomach had returned after a week of indulging foods (aka no Type A food diet). So I didn't eat like I would have, but look at this crab cake. It is stacked like a log house with pretzel sticks and you dip it in honey. And yes, dessert was fabulous, though I only ate one bite.


For all you of class '96 who read Lord of the Flies, please tell me this makes you think of Piggy and Mrs. Moak.


All in all, my most favorite thing about the trip was being able to catch my breath during a time of year when everyone is panicking with errands and to-do lists. More on that on another post and how I decided I would not do all that this year. I did no take my computer on this trip, which was the longest I have been away from my Mac since I got it. That's saying a lot, and I really haven't had the urge to get on it very much ever since coming back. Derek told me as we landed back in Houston that this trip reminded him of old times, great times with just me and him. That's why this trip was so invaluable to the both of us!

And thanks to my mom for keeping Justin while were out playing!