The Seattle Duchette: Christmas in Seattle

I have to say that Christmas this year was one of the best for our young little family. Early in the year, we made the decision to forgo holiday travel to the midwest for a number of reasons. It was a tough choice to make, but I can see it was the right one. While I missed hanging out with our families and participating in various holiday traditions, I truly enjoyed spending Christmas at "home" this year.

A couple days prior to Christmas, I posted on Facebook that it felt strange to still be in Seattle by choice. My friend Anne posted a comment that totally helped reshape my perspective. She pointed out that while Chicago may be home for B and me, Seattle is home for our little family. I had never thought of it that way before, and this newfound perspective had an incredibly positive impact on how I came to view our choice to stay put this year. And now that I reflect further upon it, I realize that both our boys have had the joy of spending their very first Christmas in their own home. 2010 by choice and 2008 thanks to the crazy snow that delayed our travel back to Chicago.

One of my favorite candid moments - Daddy & Daughter

The other thing that made Christmas so great this year was spending it with my sister Tara and her family. It has been several years since we've been with them for Christmas, and it has been a few years since they've been able to celebrate Christmas with any family at all due to geographical challenges. I just love being able to spend so much time with them and making up some of that lost time from over the last few years! Between having the Beckers here at the house with us and utilizing Skype to talk to the rest of the family, the impact of being physically separated was significantly lessened.

I've made a list of some of the things I enjoyed about staying put this year:

Air Travel: I did NOT miss the travel hassle one bit! That is such a time suck and huge source of stress. It was a welcome relief to not have to worry about it.
It was a lot of fun to watch our tree get more and more stuffed with presents as Christmas day got closer and closer.
We received packages nearly every day this month. It was a lot of fun keeping track of the packages and adding the gifts under the tree!
I loved being on our own schedule this year. It was fun planning meals, baking desserts and rolling out of bed in our own home.
Our Christmas Eve church service was beautiful. I wasn't sure what to expect from a UU service, and I was very pleasantly surprised! We sang lots of hymns and carols, enjoyed the choir, had readings from the Gospel and a thought provoking message from the minister. One of my favorite parts was the candle lighting and how we got to stand in one huge circle around the sanctuary while singing Silent Night in German and English. Caiden was very well behaved and Ezra didn't make a peep during the whole service. He just watched all the action going on around him.
Even with all the hustle and bustle of keeping things running, I was so relaxed this year. I don't think I'd fully realized how stressed out travel in years past had made me.
We crossed another parental milestone in staying up into the wee hours on Christmas Eve to assemble Caiden's kitchen gift set from Santa while watching A Christmas Story on TBS.
It was great not having to try and figure out what gifts to open up where and then stressing over how to pack them up to get them pack home.

So what did we do with our time here? Well B had Thursday thru Sunday off and that alone was a nice break. :) Tara and family arrived Thursday afternoon and we enjoyed some chicken stir fry for dinner. On Christmas Eve, Tara and I spent lots of time in the kitchen working on fudge and the Magic Christmas Cake. I made a roast chicken for dinner that night with rice stuffing and corn for side dishes. Lucky for us, the boys' nap schedules lined up well and we were able to take them to church with us for the Christmas Eve service. Tara joined us for church which made the evening extra special! After church we enjoyed the cake and sent the wee ones to bed. Next it was time to watch a showing of A Christmas Story while working on Caiden's little kitchen. A little after midnight we all crawled into bed to wait for Santa to make his visit. :)

Christmas morning came quick and we enjoyed a good couple of hours worth of present opening. Caiden had an absolute blast opening all of his gifts and we had to routinely distract him into opening the next thing because he would often want to immediately play with or read whatever it was that he opened. Some of his favorite gifts included his gardening set (complete with lawnmower, leaf blower, edger and chainsaw), a Waste Management garbage truck, mini-garbage cans to go with said truck, Mr. Potato Head, his kitchen, and garbage truck books. Ezra wasn't quite sure what to make of all the action and only managed to stay awake for about half of the present opening session. He does love all of his new toys and tethers and clothes tho! Santa spoiled me pretty good and got me lots of great new kitchen gear among other fun toys. Who would have ever guessed I would love getting stuff for the kitchen so much?! And B got lots more camping gear and stuff for emergency preparedness. I'd say Santa was wonderful to all of us this year!

Brian figuring out he is opening the Farscape boxed DVD set

Lisa getting ready to open her next gift

Caiden practicing safety by wearing his goggles and gloves while gardening

After we made a big mess of the living room, we moved over to the dining table to feast on waffles and cheesy egg casserole. The food disappeared fast, so I guess that meant we were all good and hungry! Shortly after that, we started making all our Skype calls to the family. It was so much fun talking to everyone and hearing all about how their Christmas day was going.

Finally, we reconvened at the table to enjoy Christmas dinner. We dined on a London Broil crock pot dish, mashed potatoes, salad and crescent rolls. For dessert we had cheese balls and graham crackers that Tara made. Everything was super yummy, and I think we were all pretty stuffed! We finally finished out the evening watching Christian's new copy of Despicable Me. "WHAAAAAAT?!" ;)

All in all, it was a very very Merry Christmas. I hope you had just as fine a Christmas as we did!! (And you can view the rest of the photo madness here.)