Merry Christmas!

 Christmas has come and gone along with its traditions and new adventures.  One of the traditions of the season is sending Christmas cards.  Did you ever wonder why we send Christmas cards?  Apparently, it dates back to 1843 in Victorian England.  Sir Henry Cole, a civil servant, found himself overwhelmed by the volume of holiday letters he was expected to answer.  The new "penny post" system made mail cheap and popular, thus everyone was writing to everyone else.  To save time, Cole commissioned an artist to design a ready-made holiday greeting card - the first commercially produced Christmas card.  Affordable postage made sending cards accessible to regular people and industrial printing advances made colorful cards cheap to produce.  While physical cards have diminished over the years and have been replaced by digital technology, cards still remain popular - especially photo cards.  

The Fagella household has sent holiday photocards since Anna was born.  This year was a new conundrum:  there were no family pictures of everyone together.  After receiving cards from others of smiling families with travels to exotic places, Theresa decided to take use AI to solve and issue and produce a family photo based on existing separate photos with a few enhancements.  This turned into a fun family project and a conversation piece that generated some calls.  This has the possibility of keeping the family young for the next few years.

The big holiday adventure was a quick trip to Ohio to celebrate Christmas with the Kohlers.  This was the first time in several years the entire family has been together for Christmas dinner (or most of the family as we were missing Aunt Courtney).    This involved flying out Christmas Day to make it in time for dinner and flying back the next day.  We enjoyed a delicious dinner courtesy of Grandma, gifts, and games.  Grandma out did herself on gifts and found an old doll at the historical society auction similar to Theresa's "Betsy Wetsy" doll.  Grandma sold this doll at a garage sale years ago - a painful childhood memory for Theresa.  This doll was advanced at the time as you could put water in a doll bottle to give to her and she would wet her diaper (why having little girls get excited about changing diapers was fun is another conversation).  Grandpa reminded Theresa that if you gave the doll Mountain Dew, well you know the result.  In an attempt to right a past wrong, Grandma found the doll and proceeded to make the red velvet dress and bonnet just like the original.  Betsy Wetsy made the trip back to Virginia (ironically, she did not get stopped by TSA) and is settling into her new home.  She was not given mountain dew yet.  Grandma also managed to find a giant Kit Kat bar for Anna in honor of her favorite candy.  That also did not get stopped by TSA.  It was one big sleepover at Grandma and Grandpa's house with everyone piling in where they could find a space with Aidyn and Anna sleeping by the Christmas tree (there were no reports of Santa sightings).  Thank you to Grandma and Grandpa for a nice Christmas!

In other holiday happenings:

  • Holiday decorating, which means there are always some battles with at least one strand of lights, debate about placement, and pledges to do something different next year.  Everything is looking festive!


  • Theresa made a trip to Ohio the weekend of December 12.  The main reason was to take Grandma and Grandpa to see the holiday show for Straight No Chaser at the Embassy Theater in Fort Wayne, Indiana (side note - great show).  The main event for the weekend ended up with baking LOTS of Christmas cookies.  Thankfully Grandma recruited her neighbors, Verginia and Pam, to help frost them.
  • Christmas cookie baking at home.  Despite not having a work party to take items to this year, Theresa found other places to gift her wide assortment of holiday cookies (including Anna taking some to work).  Anna's decorating talents were put to good use with the gingerbread people (she took inspiration from the recent Vogue magazine photo of Presidential officials).
  • Anna and Theresa attended the annual Chilli and Carols party hosted by friends from St. Mark.  Anna reunited with some of her St. Mark choir friends for a festive night of singing and lots of laughs.  Both Anna and Theresa were hoarse when they got home.
  • Christmas Eve service at 8 PM proceeded by a seafood dinner of muscles and shrimp.  This is the first time we did not go to the 4 PM mass as Anna was working.  A little variety is good.
  • Lighting of the luminaries on Christmas Eve, a neighborhood tradition.  The weather was great, and the streets were aglow.

Merry Christmas!

This year's Lego kit - complete
Pam, Grandma & Verginia decorating
Anna & Aidyn




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