Day 185 (December 24): An Easy Eve

 Darkest before the dawn you say? Let’s take a look.

A serene start to the day at the pond in our neighborhood park

On the morning of Tuesday, December 24th, the need to prepare for Christmas was, you might say, quite urgent. We decided to divide and conquer so that Elise could head off and do as much shopping as possible, hopefully achieving what we couldn’t on the 23rd. I decided I would take the kids to our local library for our school day. A library is always a reliable source of happiness and I figured it would let me lead all four kids through school without strife.

The local library branch is apparently closed for renovations and the pop-up library was wholly unsuitable for our needs. Luckily, we found a different library and Elise delivered us there on her way to shopping. This was better than we could ever have imagined. The Town of Cambridge’s library is modern, has excellent wifi (which is critical to some of our lessons), has a “social space” with ideal furniture for our classroom, has a great kids selection and has generous/patient librarians who gave us terrific support.

These girls love libraries!

In addition to completing our school, there were several highlights of our time at the library: best of all, we were able to open a visitor’s account and borrow some books. There were other kids, which means Ali and Cate made friends. There was air conditioning, which meant we did well on a very hot day. There was a playground just outside the library and, in Australian style, was covered by a huge swath of sailcloth that kept us all shaded from the midday sun. Better yet, there was a plaza of restaurants around the playground such that Lily ate sushi, Elise and I had gourmet burgers and the rest had a sandwich from Subway.

Meanwhile, Elise shopped at IKEA, spent fifteen minutes unable to find a parking space at a mall, and found somewhere to park at the grocery store next to the library. 

After a break at home, we headed to our neighborhood primary (re: elementary) school for a “Carols and Kids” Christmas Eve service. We were prepared for more religion than we usually experience around the holiday but we weren’t prepared for a sermon that likened Jesus to a superhero. It was adorable, really. The minister had a theme of origin stories that are so popular in movie franchises right now. At one point Henry turned to me and asked, “why was Jesus Christ so important?”

One of the things that seems funny to somebody from the northern hemisphere is the cognitive dissonance of celebrating Christmas in the summer. Not only were many parishioners in shorts and sandals but both of the minsters were, also! To top it off, the singing was followed by a BBQ, face painting and - wait for it - camel rides. Seriously. Can’t make this stuff up.

Elise dashed home to prepare our not-at-all traditional dinner of Swedish meatballs (remember the trip to IKEA?) while I entertained most of the kids at the playground near our house. We had an easy dinner, set out the cookies for Santa and got the kids off to bed with minimal fuss. I tried to remind the kids that the theme of Christmas to me is peace and it felt appropriate that we had enjoyed an entire day of peace: no yelling and few squabbles or skirmishes. It seemed miraculous that Elise had accomplished enough shopping to make the bottom of the tree look like the real deal. 

Remarkably, we were ready for Christmas.