Quiet Christmas Eve

Its been a very ordinary Christmas Eve. I went to return some library books in the morning and then did some last minute grocery shopping. The time at home was filled with easy cooking and cleaning as we'll be having some people over for lunch tomorrow. Aaron and Adrian had a relatively calm and restful time at home and even the presence of presents under the Christmas tree didn't seem to get them excited.

In the evening, we went for an early Christmas mass that was packed with a million children. This is one of the only times in the year that I dress them in shirts instead of t-shirts and look how grumpy Aaron is about it.  We'll have to work on this in 2013.

For the first time, we had some children sitting behind us that were even more restless than Adrian. I didn't gloat but I did feel a teeny bit happy when I heard the mother use Aaron and Adrian as the examples of 'good' children. It was a mass for families with children so the homily was very short. And yet, I seem to have forgotten most of it already - oops!

The one message that I have retained is that God will not be found in calm or peacefulness but instead, God will be present in noise, stress and disorderliness. Those weren't the precise words that the priest used but that was the general message and he was definitely speaking to his audience.  The immediate thought I had was "YES! Good one to use on my parents". We all live in the same house but while I have accepted that my daily life is going to filled with often annoying levels of noise, I can see that it sometimes drives my parents into hiding. They are understanding about it and, I'm sure they'll be good sports too when I tease them with this.

Aaron and Adrian are in bed and I'm about to put out Santa's gifts for them - identical notebooks with pens. I've stuck with the semi boring presents from Santa from the start and saved all the cool presents for Richard and I to give them.