First Christmas in Heaven 🎄

Young Emily during Christmas in front of a Christmas tree.

10 But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. 11 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. 12 This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”
- Luke 2:10-12

This was Emily’s favorite time of year that she approached with an almost childlike excitement and anticipation. She never took celebrating another Christmas for granted and loved getting gifts but even more buying and seeing others (especially her Godchildren and nieces) enjoy opening their gifts and of course loved seeing the church decorated and celebrating Jesus’s birth.

As much fun as she experienced here we know that will pale in comparison with her first Christmas in Heaven. We can’t even begin to imagine how awesome that will be, but this poem from Angel Baby Network is a beautiful depiction.

My First Christmas in Heaven poem by Author Unknown

As we approach the last day of this year, we continue to miss her. But we are comforted by the strong force of her spirit spreading her love and the joy that we know she is experiencing in Heaven.

Emily’s Christmas wreath at her grave 2024

Blogmas '22 Day 6: Maddie's First Christmas

It actually ended up being a first Christmas for both my nieces—Hailey, as I wrote in an earlier post, wasn’t supposed to celebrate hers until next year! But she decided she couldn’t wait and had to have it now.

She spent her first Christmas Eve snoozing on my chest, which I have to say is a great way to spend Christmas on my end.

But for Miss Maddie, who is almost a year old, her first Christmas was very exciting!

She loved her Advent calendar—the little figures with their velcro backs were very intriguing to her (and sometimes they got stuck on her clothes!). She loved playing with them and placing them on the nativity scene.

She also had a couple of trees—one in her room:

And one that she could play with:

It had a train and ornaments too!

Her Advent/Christmas corner!

Madeleine did go to see Santa! She wasn’t scared of him, I don’t think, more…intrigued.

And YES, Santa commented on her missing boot! :) Maddie is still fighting against shoes and socks.

And they went to see the lights at the zoo!

For her first Christmas she got….a tricycle! That’s foot powered! I have never seen one of these and I think it’s adorable.

My sister made some great meals, which of course Madeleine enjoyed.

She wants food, lots of food!

And her birthday is at the beginning of January, so it’s going to be party-palooza for Maddie over the next week or so. In my opinion she had a highly excellent first Christmas!

Blogmas Day 2: Christmas Food!

The two recipes I make every year for Christmas, without fail, are these two recipes from Ina Garten:

Hermit Bars (like gingerbread) : I don’t do the glaze on them, to cut down on unnecessary carbs. :) Feel free to try it at your house if you like! (For sixteen bars, they’re 20.6 carbs each—that’s without the glaze.)

Hermit bars with tea, December 23. It was -5 that day! (And that was up from -8!)

Blueberry (at our house!) crumble bars (47 g of carbs per bar (if you make 12)). I leave out the almonds because the granola I use has almonds in it, and I also leave out the confectioner’s sugar.

Blueberry crumble bars

I’m including the carb count for my fellow folks-who-need-to-know-that :)

For today’s music, it’s music AND video! Enjoy the dancing Candy Canes of New York City Ballet while you have some treats!

Second Week of Advent: The Immaculate Conception

One of the most confusing Catholic beliefs, I think, is that of today’s solemnity.

The Immaculate Conception doesn’t refer to Jesus—it refers to Mary. It means that Mary was conceived without original sin in the womb of her mother, St. Ann, as a singular grace. It doesn’t mean she’s a goddess. It means she was special prepared to be the mother of God. In Mother Mary Francis’ words, Mary was “pre-cleaned.”

(For more on the Church’s Marian doctrine, check out this Catholic 101 post I wrote.)

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“She did not have that downward pull that we have, but she still had choices, and she could have wrong ones or right ones. She could have insisted after the finding in the temple that Jesus explain what he meant. She could have said, ‘I am your Mother, and I have got to get this straight. I don’t understand what you are talking about.’ But she preferred, she chose, to accept what was to her not understandable, and to return to her humble home and to go about her duties and to ponder these things in her heart…She chose the will of God and she chose is freely—again, we say, unencumbered by the downward pull of concupiscence that we know so well, but still a woman quite capable of doing right or wrong, or doing good or better or best.

“It is very important that we do not allow our Lady to be distanced from us by her Immaculate Conception, but to be brought closer to us. She is the one to teach us poor sinners because she is called the Refuge of Sinners. Our Lord did not give her to St. John and say, ‘Now I am giving her to you, and she is the Mother of all the flawlessly holy ones.’ But he gave her to be the Mother of all persons, of all men and he knew what was in them, what is in each one of us, our weaknesses as well as our strengths.”

—Mother Mary Francis, PCC, Come Lord Jesus: Meditations on the Art of Waiting

Don't Forget About Advent

Botticelli, “The Annunciation”

Lately there’s been a whole cascade of encounters that have made me think that we need to talk more about Advent.

People saying Christmas ends on the 26th; people being burnt out on Christmas by Christmas Day; and housekeeping plans that tell you to take the tree and decorations down starting the 26th so you can have a “clean house” by January First are all a part of this.

We have forgotten about Advent.

Now, I’m guilty of wanting to play Christmas music in December. :) (This is because there is SO MUCH GOODNESS of it that it takes months to listen to fully!) I put my tree up after Thanksgiving. It’s true. My grandparents put their tree up on Christmas Eve. So I realize that it may not seem like I’m big into Advent.

But I love Advent. I love keeping the baby Jesus out of the crib until Christmas Eve. I love the readings of Advent, and the music of Advent. I love the delicious waiting, as Mother Mary Francis says. * (Link goes to my all time favorite Advent book!)

We need to re-adjust. We can decorate slowly. We can save the parties for the actual Christmas season, which begins Christmas Day and goes for at least twelve days! In the old church calendar, Christmas was a forty day season that ended on Candlemas! (February 2) Yes, you can keep your nativity up that long (and your tree if you’re like me and have a fake one that won’t catch fire!)

Are there things we can do during advent to prepare for Christmas? Of course. We celebrate the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. We light the candles on the Advent wreath. We leave shoes out for St. Nicholas. St. Lucy’s Day is a great day to celebrate the coming of the Light of the World and to make St. Lucia Buns!

But the solemnity, the season, of Christmas begins December 25. It’s not over December 26. It’s a season. It’s a big old period for joy.

And likewise, Advent is a season—in preparing for that joy. For making our houses “fair as you are able” (People Look East)

Leila has a wonderful post about this, and it’s a great idea to incorporate some of these into your Christmas. I’ve tried to do this as well—I love the cocoa party idea, for example. Even if you’re single like I am, you can still celebrate the 12 days! I used to love taking time off after Christmas not just for our family reunion but for unwinding around the house and reading all my Christmas books!

If you’d like to celebrate Advent this year, just a note: Advent doesn’t start December 1 and go through the 24th. (I see this a lot.) It properly starts four Sundays before Christmas—this year it starts November 27. It’s movable, just like Lent’s start date is movable. So the first Sunday of Advent is November 27, the second is December 4, the third is December 11, and the fourth is December 18. Yes, we have the longest Advent possible this year, because it’s four full weeks! Sometimes the “fourth week” is really just a few hours, since the fourth Sunday of Advent can also be Christmas Eve.

If you need candles for your wreath, you can check here and here.

Living the season liturgically gives us time to prepare, and time to enjoy. It’s not all crammed together in a stress ball of madness!

BONUS: Here’s my favorite version of Veni, Veni (O Come, O Come Emmanuel):

Blogmas Day 8: Happy New Year! (With one of my FAVORITE Christmas songs!)

Today’s a Marian feast day, hence Marian photo!

Welcome, 2022!

I hope that all of you have a New Year that is full of joy, happiness, blessings, and good books.

The USCC offers this prayer service to bring in a new year.

Today is also the Solemnity of Mary Mother of God., so we’re going to have some Marian Christmas music.

This song is one of my favorites! Give it a listen!

This is sadly not captioned, so the lyrics are here.

Blogmas day 7: Goals for 2021

Since it’s New Year’s Eve I thought it was a good time to slot the “new year’s goals” entry into the blogmas calendar.

I don’t make resolutions. I make goals. I discovered Lara Casey’s Powersheets in 2015 right after I’d left my job at the Senate, and they literally changed my life. I wouldn’t have written—or published!—my book without them!

(No I don’t get paid to say that, I just LOVE THEM)

So ever since then, I’ve used them to set goals for the year. The Powersheets break these goals down into monthly “tending lists”, which are broken down even further into Monthly Action Items, Weekly Action Items, and Daily Action Items.

I do the “prep work” in November and December, and I usually write out the tending list for the next month on the last Thursday of the month, which was yesterday.

So here are my goals for 2022! (I’m summarizing here. There are some things that I keep to myself, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. :) )

1) To be healthier by doing workouts I enjoy, and giving myself grace as I learn new things.

2) To have secure finances by tracking daily spending and fine-tuning my budget so that I can increase my savings.

3) To “re-create” my home to reflect my taste, personality, and needs.

(THIS is basically my aesthetic)

Yesterday I made my tending list for the month: (yes I blurred some things out :) )

Each goal has a color attached to it as you can see here. The hot pink is for spiritual growth—that’s a never-ending goal, so I don’t purposely “set that” as a goal each year.

Monthly Action Items

Create healthy snack list: This is harder than it sounds for me. As I’ve written before, one of the hardest things for me post transplant has been the food adjustment. Before transplant, I was never really hungry. You read that right. Never. I might like some things, but I didn’t crave food, or really get hungry.

Post-transplant….um, that changed. :) Which was GOOD! I grew an inch and a half! My body was so malnourished that it took everything I was throwing at it, and I physically filled out. But…I didn’t know how to really eat. And also I’m on prednisone forever, which messes up hunger cues. So before when I was never really hungry, now I’m never really not hungry. I could always eat something.

Throw diabetes on top of that, and it’s messy. So one of the things I want to do this month is create a healthy snack list and then stock my house according. A healthy snack, for my purposes, is one that combines protein+fat+carbs (Yes, people like me do need to have carbs. Fairly regularly, actually, or else the blood sugar plummets and that’s not good either.).

The January Cure is a thing Apartment Therapy does. It’s a 20 day house cleaning/organizing challenge.

Wellness challenge I am all signed up for!

February budget: I use EveryDollar (the free version) and I love it!

Retreat Day: I do this monthly. It’s a day when I turn off my electronics and read, work out, and look over my goals for the next month.

Confession: I’m working on going to confession once a month. So I write it down here so I don’t forget to do it!

Weekly Action Items

These are all health related:

Meal plan: I used to be good about this and then I slacked off. I generally plan for 4-5 days of meals so I have some flexibility if I just don’t feel like cooking and instead have PBJ, or my parents invite me over for dinner or a friend wants to go out!

Weigh: Every week. Yes.

Barre 2x/week: This isn’t barre like pure barre or barre 3. This is ballet barre, using YouTube videos. And no, I don’t mean an entire barre, which is about 45-50 minutes. Right now, my goal is 10-15 minutes of barre twice a week. This isn’t all the exercise I do in a week, but I want to make sure I do these, so that’s why they’re a weekly goal.

Daily Action Items/Habits:

BIAY: the Bible In A Year podcast. I started last May, so I want to make sure that I keep going! (Folks, this is amazing. I love doing it. (Here’s a post on what I’ve learned so far—I need to write another one of these!)

January Cure Items: This is the daily accountability for the January Cure Monthly item.

Budget check in: This used to be called “balancing your checkbook”. :) But this is where I reconcile my budget with my actual spending.

TA-DA! That’s my January tending list and my goals for 2022! How about you? What goals have you set?

CHRISTMAS MUSIC: “In The Bleak Midwinter” from Renee Fleming and Rufus Wainwright

Blogmas Day 6: Christmas Food

Our Christmas breakfast, for as long as I can remember, breakfast has been cinnamon rolls and sausage. I look forward to this meal all year. They’re just the Pillsbury type, and the sausage varies—now we use turkey sausage—so it’s simple, but it’s great, and I really appreciate that mom still makes it for me, now that my siblings are married and spend Christmas with their spouses (or, in Melanie’s case, she can’t get home for Christmas, because she’s going to have Maddie any minute now. :) ).

I usually make two Barefoot Contessa recipes for Christmas: The raspberry crumble bars (you can use any flavor of jam!) and the hermit bars (spicy gingerbread). I don’t make the icing for the hermit bars, because I think they taste great enough on their own. I’ve also made Giada’s citrus biscotti in the past. Mom is also a huge fan of snickerdoodles, so she would make those sometimes too.

Our dinner has varied greatly through the years, to the point that there really isn't anything we have every year, with the exception of Schwann’s peppermint stick ice cream! And if there is a party during the season, I will make THE GUINNESS CAKE.

I almost always get a cookbook for Christmas now—and have ever since I moved out after college, although my first cookbook (that wasn’t an American Girl historical cookbook!) was Betty Crocker’s Quick and Easy, which I still have, and used when I lived in an apartment, briefly, my senior year of college. This year I got Half Baked Harvest Super Simple, so I will be marking the recipes that I want to make, and then making them over the next week and a half or so.

Do you have Christmas/holiday food traditions?

Christmas music: If we’re talking about food, then we probably need a carol with food in it :)

Let’s have “The Christmas Song” sung by Nat King Cole, huh? :)

Blogmas Day 5: Christmas As A Kid

I’m not sure whose Christmas tree this is. :)

You can read all the blogmas posts here!

As a kid (I mean up until about the age of 9, I think), we spent Christmas in Pittsburgh. That meant that my brother and I got our Santa gifts early, which made us very happy and made our classmates very jealous. At the time, there weren’t as many grandkids as there are now, so my brother and I were pretty spoiled with presents by our grandparents, aunts, and uncles.

We would arrive in Pittsburgh on Christmas Eve and stay at one grandparents’ or the others that day, and then spend the next day with the others. I seem to remember that we usually spent Christmas Eve with Dad’s family—his two sisters, their husband, kids, and my grandmother (my grandfather died when my dad was 20). Being southern Italians, they did the Feast of the Seven Fishes for a long time—I don’t think they it when I was old enough to actually partake, or they did, and the kids just didn’t get the food. Gifts were after dinner in the living room. Bryan (my brother) and I were (and still are, but with the addition of Melanie!) the youngest grandchildren on this side of the family, so we got most of the gifts (I think?). I do remember adults opening things as well, but being a kid I didn’t really pay attention!

at the Heilmann Christmas party. L-R: Diane [Patty’s mom!], Jeff, me, and Julie holding my screaming brother.

The Heilmann Christmas was multi-parted. My great-grandmother lived in a nearby apartment building and we would have a Christmas party there in the building’s “party room”, which you see above. This was also the location for a lot of my early birthday parties. (Remember, not a lot of grand kids on this side, lots of people who wanted to spoil small children.)

I don’t remember sequence, exactly, but we would open gifts at Grandma and Pa’s (mom’s parents), and then at some point there was the party at Nana’s, which wasn’t far away. Diane and her family (my Aunt Sue, Uncle John—mom’s brother—and her sister, Megan) lived in St. Louis and it was always a lot of fun to see her, since we’re only six months apart in age. Julie (seen above at the right) is the oldest grandchild, I’m second, and Di is third. (Also, the first child in every family on my mom’s side was a girl, too!) We spent a lot of time playing Barbies. (Well, Di and I. I don’t think Julie was into Barbies.)

I loved the way we spent Christmas. It evolved, of course, as we got older, but it was really magical when I was little, especially getting to spend so much time with my relatives.

Gifts I remember getting? A Sesame Street sleeping bag and a banjo (also Sesame Street), and the My Little Pony Pink Perfume Palace! (I loved that thing so much I took it to Walt Disney World when I was seven. It was my carry-on. I’m not kidding.)

Christmas Music: TWOFER!

1) O Come, All Ye Faithful, from the Dominican Friars of the Province of St. Joseph!

For some reason, I remember singing this at my grandparents’ church. I don’t know if it actually happens, but I have a very strong memory of it (I was wearing a white dress with navy blue anchors on it). So, I’m sharing this one today!

2) I should’ve posted this yesterday since it was the feast of the Holy Innocents—Loreena Mckennit singing the Coventry Carol.

Blogmas Day 4: Books of Christmas!

OK it is time for THE BOOK HAUL.

I always get a lot of books for Christmas—either as gifts or because of gift cards to book stores. :) I have actually ordered some more books that haven’t arrived yet, so those will probably show up in next week’s Yarn Along! If I’ve read it already there will be notes. If not, just the title and a link.

(All book links are affiliate links!)

The Ballerinas, Rachel Kapelke-Dale. A former soloist with the Paris Opera Ballet returns to set (choreograph) a new ballet on its dancers. She wants to use two of her former friends in the ballet—especially Lindsay, who she hurt years ago and now wants to make it up to her. The suspense is in what our narrator actually did, as well as the machinations of the other characters who swirl around her, including a former boyfriend and the ghost of her mother, who was a former etoile (star, the highest level a dancer can achieve at the Paris Opera Ballet). There’s definitely a tinge of Black Swan to this one, but I found it incredibly propulsive and couldn’t put it down on Christmas Day.

Cloud Cuckoo Land, Anthony Doerr

Drums of Autumn 25th Anniversary Edition, Diana Gabaldon. The fourth installment in her Outlander series, this one takes the Frasers (Claire, Jamie, and Ian) to America to settle. It also involves Brianna, Jamie and Claire’s daughter, whom Claire left behind in the 1960s. If you haven’t read it, I don’t want to spoil it! This was the basis for season four of the TV show.

Outlander Knitting: I’ve looked through this, not enough to really digest any of the patterns, but there’s a variety of things here, from accessories to home items to some garments. Now that I can do stranded color work (more on that next week!) there are projects in this book that I can do, now which is very exciting.

Half Baked Harvest Super Simple: I fell in love with Tieghan’s first book Half Baked Harvest, which I picked up in Houston during my summer trip, so naturally I asked for her second book for Christmas! There are lots of good things in here so I’m looking forward to going through it with my post-it notes and marking recipes I want to try. (All my cookbooks have tons of post-it notes in them, marking recipes I want to try. I use a lot of post-it notes!)

Now for (some of) the Amazon books!

The Ballerina Mindset, Megan Fairchild. As you know if you’ve read here for any length of time, I love ballet. So reading Megan’s book as definitely something I wanted to do! She’s a principal dancer at New York City Ballet, has acted on Broadway, is earning her MBA, and has three kids. Whew! I’m really excited to dive into this one.

The Island, Victoria Hislop. I saw this book on The Duchess of Cornwall’s (Camilla, Prince Charles’ Wife) Reading Room feed. If you’ve not heard of it, the feed showcases books that the Duchess loves with there being several books a season”. It’s a great way for me to expand my literary horizons! The Island was featured in season 4, so I put it on my Amazon wish list. It involves Greece, leprosy, WWII, and family ties—sounds pretty good!

Christmas fact: Today is the Feast of the Holy Innocents (it’s also the wedding anniversary for two of my friends!)

Christmas Music: Linda Eder with the Broadway Gospel Choir , “Do You Hear What I Hear?”

(Fun fact: This was one of the “traditionals'“ in my high school choir. We had two of them, and one of them was this one, which we called “Do you hear what I know” because, let’s be honest, it’s hard to remember the order here, people!)

Blogmas Day 3: Knitted Christmas Gifts!

These aren’t really surprises, but I do want to talk about the two things I knitted for Christmas gifts this year.

The first was a blanket for my niece, Madeleine.

I’ve given some notes about this before, I think, but I want to talk about it more in-depth.

I worked with my sister to select the colors—I gave her a choice of yarns, and she chose the yarn and the colors for the blanket. This yarn is Rowan Baby Cashsoft Merino , in colors teal, rosy, snowflake, and lavender. These go with the aesthetics of Maddie’s nursery, but they’re also colors that can grow with her, because I don’t like to make just “baby blankets” that have typical baby colors. My siblings and I adored our baby blankets, so I wanted something that would be good for a little girl, tween, or teenage (or even adult!) Madeleine.

This yarn is also great because Maddie lives in the Rocky Mountains, where temperature changes can be fast and brutal! The wool, acrylic, and cashmere blend will provide warmth and softness. (I would not have used this for Patty’s blanket, because she lives in Texas where it is HOT.)

The pattern I used is my favorite Sully, but I made some alterations to it. I don’t do the picked up border because picking up stitches is fiddly and I don’t really like it. But to prevent curling, I did a 4 stitch garter stitch border on both sides of the blanket. It still curls a bit, but it’s not as bad, and I like the bit of whimsy it adds to what is essentially a stockinette stitch blanket (with pearl stitch detailing in the color change rows).

I didn’t block it, because I like how it looked off the needles and I didn’t want to mess it up with blocking. Sometimes in blocking things like a blanket or a shawl, the blocking can be….weird. It can be stretched too much, it canasta be “off”. Now, I know that’s partially my fault! :) But I didn’t want her blanket stretched out. I liked the effect as it is, which you can see above.

I mailed it wrapped in plastic wrap and I also included a care card, so my sister Melanie knew how to wash it, if needed. (I always include a little care card with knitted gifts.)

The second gift is a simple scarf for my friend, Amilia.

This yarn is a super, super soft alpaca silk blend. It is very pretty—much prettier in person!

However, I have a hard time knitting with it because it is so slippery!

So I decided that I would use it for a very simple pattern—make a long, garter stitch scarf that gives Amilia styling options and allows her to just love a useful accessory in a beautiful yarn.

I called this pattern “Ripples” and it’s super basic. It’s just 25 stitches cast onto size 9 needles, and then I knit in garter stitch until it was the length I wanted it. Easy-peasy.

Christmas fact: Today is the feast of St. John, apostle and evangelist!

Christmas music: From Linda Eder and the Broadway Gospel Choir singing “Silent Night”.

Blogmas Day 2: How I Spent Christmas

Christmas Eve chez moi

Christmas Eve started with Mass, where I read the first reading (and loved doing it, it’s so good), and then we had dinner at my brother and sister-in-law’s house, followed by presents and the traditional Christmas Eve viewing of A Christmas Story.

The Emma Bridgewater pottery my brother and SIL got me—I collect it! And how awesome is the personalized cocoa mug?!

Afterwards my parents dropped me off at my apartment, where I spent Christmas Eve working on some knitting projects for me and watching Muppet Christmas Carol, which is truly a classic. I also re-read some of my favorite Christmas novels.

Christmas Day

My dad picked me up and we had breakfast before opening our gifts.

We always have sausage and cinnamon rolls for breakfast, and it’s my favorite breakfast of the year!

One of the 12 Days of Christmas plates from my mom’s set.

After that we opened presents! I got one very special present that deserves its own post, so stay on the lookout for that!

Christmas booooooooks! :) (And I got Amazon gift cards, which also lead to—more Christmas books!) I will talk all about the books later during Blogmas!

We had an easy lunch, followed by a game of Harry Potter Scrabble where we used all the tiles. I am proud of our accomplishment! My mom is amazing at word games, so she won, as I expected. (I am not very good at word games, which surprises people, because they think that being a writer I’d be good at word games. I’m not, really. I tend to think of bigger words that don’t fit on the board!)

We had dinner and then I went home to spend the rest of the day.

Christmas fact: Today is the feast of St. Stephen, the first martyr!

MUSIC: Two today!

Mannheim—this time it’s O Holy Night.

Loreena McKennit’s awesome version of “Good King Wenceslas”, which takes place today, “On the feast of Stephen”. It will make you want to dance!

Blogmas Day 1: Merry Christmas

Just popping in to say Merry Christmas to all of you and your families! I hope you have a wonderful day. :)

One of my Christmas traditions is not listening to this song until Christmas Eve on the way to Mass. I don’t know why. Growing up, my parents had all the Mannheim Steamroller Christmas tapes and we would listen to them going to Mass, so maybe that’s why. But this always makes me think of that drive, down a street that was lit by the milk-gallon lanterns that people put out and seeing all the lights aglow in all the yards. So I hope you enjoy it!

BLOGMAS!

I know a lot of video bloggers do “vlogmas”, which is videos beginning Dec. 1 and going through Christmas (or thereabouts). I decided I’m going to do “blogmas” BUT through the 12 days of Christmas! Wheee!

I’ve never done this but I have done daily blogging challenges before so this isn’t a new thing over here—but it is something I haven’t done in awhile.

Not sure exactly what the content will be, but I’m sure it will consist of books, family, knitting, movies, and recipes, so that sounds like a good start!