I clean on Mondays, and before I went to bed on Sunday, I made a list of things that absolutely needed doing on Monday. I fall asleep so much faster if I make a list, and I accomplish so much more the next day when it stares back at me, daring me to cross it off victorious.

Usually I start cleaning day around 9 am and wrap it up around 1 pm. But yesterday? Oh, brother. I got a late start at 10:30 because I had the audacity to indulge in a blog post about my morning workout that turned my arms into cooked noodles (they’re swollen and sore as a cowboy’s behind today, thanks for asking). According to my regular clock, the cleaning should have been done around 2:30ish. But it wasn’t. In fact, at 2:30 I wasn’t even halfway done. I was, in case you were wondering, trying to force my vacuum to pick up pine needles.
That’s right. For Christmas, I got one of “them balsams” where all the needles fall off (“ain’t no needles comin’ off this here tree…”)

My poor vacuum. I bought it with a gift card we received as a wedding gift. We’ve been married for 7 and half years now, and I’m starting to see why the 7th year gets a bad rap. Everything. Falls. Apart.
My toaster (a wedding gift. classic.) has stopped popping the toast up 100%.
My vacuum has stopped working as well as it used to.
My tupperware, treated with kid gloves (and loads of bleach), is begging for mercy (“just send us to the landfill, mommy!”).
And so it goes…

We’re powering through, so don’t worry about us.
I powered through yesterday. When I vacuumed as much as my back would let me (still hurting from Bookcase Day), I paid my kids a buck each to scour the floor for  pine needles. I even gave each one a plastic bag. Special treatment, that.

I bleached yesterday. I bleached my trashcan, in and out. I bleached the dishes that came out of the fridge that I cleaned with baking soda and vinegar. I thought about my mom and how she had taught me to clean a fridge. I thought about how I was going to have to teach my daughter someday. Then I chimed in and sang, “Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man” at the top of my lungs. Then I cleaned the counters off, breaking a platter as I did so (yet another example of my elegant grace). I washed our bedding. I cleaned out the microwave. I SINGE-HANDEDLY hauled our dryer-than-dry balsam Christmas tree out of the house and into the back of our little truck. I moved the loveseat back into it’s spot the Christmas tree had stolen (my back hated me for it). Then I chimed in and sang along with Dolly Parton, “Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, JO-LEEENE!”
Have I mentioned that I tune into my Loretta Lynn Pandora station every Monday? Cleaning goes by so much quicker to cheatin’ songs.
As I polished and scrubbed and threatened to throw the children’s toys away, I also chanced to look in the mirror. The day was coming to a close, the sun was beginning to set, and I looked exactly like I did after the Fated Workout. So I made quick work of myself, throwing on a little make up and a wrinkled top (and about 8 ounces of perfume). The minute my husband walked through the door was the minute I finished Cleaning Day.
Cleaning Day turned right into dinner time (leftovers!) and dinner time turned right into Family Home Evening (in the which I terrified my children to the bone as I rehearsed the story of The Little Boy Who Cried Wolf -see if THEY lie anytime soon) and Family Home Evening turned right into bedtime.
For the kids.
Do you know what I did? I turned to my husband and said, “I’m going to put a heating pad on my back, crochet a hot pad, and watch Downton Abbey. I’ve been waiting all day -I’m so excited!”
My husband looked at me like I was crazy.
I rehearsed back to myself what I had said.
Sit.
Heating Pad.
Crochet.
Hot Pad.
Television Program.

Then I asked my husband to please call my Nancy -my new Old Lady Code Name. Last night, I Nancied it up hard core.

Over two years ago, I found a crochet pattern for a hot pad that I loved! I had just spent a few lost-forever minutes in the cooking aisle at Wal-Mart bemoaning the prices of hot pads when it suddenly struck me that I had the power to MAKE hot pads… what in the devil was I doing PRICING them? So I went home, found this great pattern and proceeded to make a million and give them out because MAN, aren’t they AWESOME?! I saved a practice one for myself and hated the very sight of it. It was creme, turquoise, and had pepto-pink backing.
You would cry too if it happened to you.
Finally, after two years of going without and hating what I had, I sat back and MADE one selfishly. For myself (if you’ve seen Thoroughly Modern Millie, please clap. I insert the “selfishly for myself” quote anywhere I can).

The best part was: Episode 1 of Season 2 of Downton Abbey was TWO HOURS long! I thought it was one! I was absolutely thrilled to the bone to sit and watch two blessed hours of one of my favorite television shows! It was the perfect end to a perfect day.
My sheer exhaustion was richly rewarded.
I can’t wait for Monday to roll ’round again.

Nancy Time.

After I birthed The Girl, my workouts were very habitual.  Almost every morning, I was in the living room doing my pilates.  I walked whenever I got the chance.  One day my husband remarked that I looked better than I ever had (dating days included), and once… I bent over and touched my toes.  THIS, if you understand the length of my legs, was something of a triumph for me.

After birthing The Boy, I wasn’t so dedicated.  I was tired, you know.  I was REALLY tired.

Then my body took a baby-making break, and I thought it was as good a chance as any to get in shape.

-Please forgive me for abruptly changing the mood of this post.  Rest assured, we’ll be playful again in a moment.-

I resolved to work harder, and then one year and two weeks ago a bomb of sorts got dropped on me.  I spent the entire month of January blessedly sick and was able to hole up in my house with all manner of legitimate excuses.

“No I can’t help, I’m sorry.  My daughter has a terrible cold, an ear infection, AND pink eye.”

“No, I won’t be at the party.  I’m sorry.  My son has a temperature of 103.”

I sometimes stared at my cell phone while it rang, and even though I really didn’t WANT to pick it up, I couldn’t. My voice was absolutely gone. Thus I was able to hide away from society without having to reveal my real need for doing so.
I often wondered if you could tell something was haywire with me. I tried not to let my off-ness come across in my blog posts, but I’m sure it did. My life is an open book -as much as I sometimes hate that. One morning, early in January, I decided I’d try to fold some laundry. My husband had been taking care of things as best he could, and he had been washing laundry without ever folding any of it. I thought to myself ‘Folding is simple. You can fold.’
So I got out of bed.
I walked down the hall.
I looked at the laundry.
I burst into tears, ran back to bed, and didn’t bother trying anything else that day.

It’s funny now, to think of myself that way. We all go through times like that in our life. I’m sure it won’t be the last time laundry looms and taunts me and makes me cry.
The best part of this story is: I got through it. I mean, sure, there’s still laundry on my couch, but I’m not crying about it. I’ve grown and changed, and even though it took me HALF OF AN ENTIRE YEAR to stop crying about it (yeah), I hit a point in November when I became extraordinarily GRATEFUL for it all. I’m still grateful for it, and now that it has been a year, I’m more and more grateful.
Isn’t that a great story?
Now.
Onto the bad part.

When a girl is more focused on keeping her sanity than her body, things start to… change. Did I care that I was eating crap for breakfast? Huh? No. I hardly noticed what I was eating at all, to be honest. Did I walk? Work out? No and no.
Out of genuine concern, my husband once breached the topic with some trepidation.
“It might help you feel better…”
I won’t tell you what my reply was, but I WILL tell you that he never brought the subject up again.

I used to work out to look good, but in the past year, I reached a point where I didn’t care anymore. Then I reached a point where I realized that I needed to work out -not for vanity’s sake, but for the sake of taking care of what the Lord has given me. I’ve been given a precious body, and I need to take proper care of it, rock hard abs or not.

So I started jogging. I hated every minute of it, but I loved how I felt when I was done.
Then I stopped jogging for two reasons
#1) I hated going alone -“paranoia, paranoia, everybody’s comin’ to get me.”
#2) Cows were put on my track.

My track, it should be said, was a dirt road behind my house that runs the length of my Dad’s farm. Now there’s some cows on it (and a few ADORABLE calves that I’m trying not to love on account of my impending feasting on one of them). And aside from my unfounded fears of being charged and killed by a heifer, running with cows just isn’t seemly.
Excuse me while I adjust my corset.

I found some excellent walking partners, and I went religiously walking… for a week. We tried to go more often, but both of them have babies, and when you spend the night up with a baby, you just don’t feel person enough to wake up at 5:30 and walk your thighs off. Then the holidays came.
Then my husband gave me a work out DVD for Christmas. In his defense, I had mentioned a time or two that I wanted it.
Now.
Remember.
Please, remember.
I haven’t worked out in ages. My Pilates DVDs have been gathering dust for an entire year, and I’ve been less-than-careful with my eating habits. Okay, it’s been a year of free-for-all, and my sugar addiction has been the ruler of the day. I weigh more than I ever have, and after registering on sparkpeople.com, I found that I needed to lose almost 20 pounds to be healthy.
I will also say that losing 20 pounds will put me back at what I weighed when I went to college.
So I’m a little suspicious that sparkpeople.com wants me to live the life of an 17 year old who ate Snickers and Dr. Pepper for lunch.
But I digress.

I cracked open my workout DVD this morning. It is Jillian Michael’s 30 day shred. I did the first work out.
That is to say: I pushed “play” on the first work out. I was grateful it was only 20 minutes long. My husband was in the shower and wouldn’t be able to witness my first attempt at working out in over a year.
I started off okay.
Jumping jacks? Okay, yeah. I can do that.
Arm weights? Okay, ow. Okay, OW!
Back to jumping jacks. Whew.
After 11 minutes, I was breathing heavily and wanting to really puke up everything I’d eaten before working out (which was 4 cookies, so judge me up one side and down the other starting… now).
My push ups went from full-on awesomeness to resting-on-my-knees patheticness in all of, oh, 2 minutes.
By the 15 minutes mark, I bent over, rested my hands on my knees and PANTED. I was nauseated, and I seemed to be seeing everything through some sort of soft lens which is exactly why I didn’t see my HUSBAND walk in at that exact moment.
“Whatcha doin?” He asked. I immediately shot up like a rocket and feigned jumping jacks.
“Oh, you know…” I breathed heavily, “Working out.”
“You okay?”
That’s all it took. I stepped backward onto the couch as Jillian Michaels professed that I should be feeling the burn and getting lower.
“I’m done! I’m through! I’ve had it!”
“Breathe through your nose,” he said, calmly.
Oh, men. What do we keep them for, if not bits for wisdom that make us want to punch them in the nards?

When it came time for cool down, Jillian asked me to sit down and try to spread my legs out in front of me as FAR as I good. She was shooting for me to get that at a 180 degree angle. I got a good 30 degree, with a great deal of effort.
“Reach all the way and touch your toes if you can, if not just grab your calf.” I made it to my knee.
That was an hour and a half ago, and my arms JUST stopped shaking.

My son watched the entire video from the couch, and when it was over he asked me WHY I watched a movie like that.
“I have to keep my body in shape,” I replied weakly, mostly because I didn’t really BELIEVE what I was saying.
“In shave?” He cocked his head, “I don’t hafta keep my body in shave.”

Ah, boys. What do we keep them for if not to make us laugh when we want to cry and puke?

We’re been married for well over 7 years. Well, 7 years and 4 months. 4 months counts as “well over” today, okay? For the first time since September 4, 2004… I got an itch.
A house itch.

I’ve scratched many-an-itch before… the marriage itch, the child itch, the watch-an-entire-television-series-in-a-week itch. The list goes on. I’ve always somehow escaped the house itch. What’s brought it on now?
Maybe pinterest and all of it’s amazing ideas.
Maybe my age and my children and the yearning in my female soul to JUST BE SETTLED.
Maybe it’s the New Year.
Maybe it was you. Maybe it was me, but it sure [feels] right.

(If you’re now singing country songs about Memphis out loud or in your head, I’m to blame, and not the least bit sorry.)

I decided to DO something about my itch. You know what’s wrong with the world today? Too many itches and not enough doings about them. Well, I wasn’t about to fall into the laziness trap, no SIRREE! I’ll tell you what I did:
I sat in my PJs on my couch opened my computer and drew up some haphazard house plans for an entire hour. Now THAT’S what I call hard work! Progress!
Also: my house was disaster. By the time I finished putting up the walls, each bedroom was much bigger than my house I’m writing from now. I put bunk beds in one room and they looked like toys in dwarf’s doll house.
But, like a crick in my back on Bookcase Making Day, it didn’t stop me. I put a range top in the kitchen AND one in the garage (for canning).

I was able to customize my house and add my fancies. Do you have house fancies? I’ve had mine for ages and ages.
Also: 5 years more than constitutes “ages and ages.” Okay?

For starters: a window over my kitchen sink that faces the west.

(image from countryliving.com)

I LOVE having a window next to the sink. I do not have a dishwarsher, nor have I ever -excepting that one year in college and even then I preferred warshing by hand on account of my feeling like a human could out-perform a contraption. Thomas Edison, you MUST forgive me.
Sunsets are something I enjoy beyond anything. The best way to enjoy a sunset is sitting on a back patio in a wooden porch swing with a pooch at your feet, cocoa or lemonade in hand (depending on the season). Seeing as I have:
no back patio
no wooden swing
no pooch

I compensate. I swap the dishes out for the patio, swing, and pooch and… viola! The dishes get done once a day and I get to enjoy the absolute beauty of the sunset. Will I ever trade this for anything? Not on your life.
“Give me [sunsets through the window over my apron front kitchen sink] or give me death!” ~Patrick Henry

My kids prefer it that way as well. When mom’s doing dishes, singing along to her Nat King Cole Pandora station, and losing herself in the splendor of nature, she sure as Playskool isn’t minding the children’s manners. Chaos? Commence.

Enough about my Window/Kitchen Sink Platform.

Let’s move on.

There must be a library. There’s also sartin rules ’bout it.
Namely:
#1) No computer shall sully the hallowed ground of the library at any time.
#2) The library shall be a refuge inside of a refuge (home being the latter).
#3) There will be bean bags.
#4) There will be art.
#5) Until the girl or boy bats their eyes sufficiently, there will be no kindles.
Add a rolling ladder to this image:

My heart is singing. Can you hear it?

Next to the library, we will have a craft/office room. Or an office/craft room, depending on the day and the order of the day.
The library and office won’t be very LARGE, you understand. I’ll probably split one room into two, and the office/craft room is negotiable. The library is not.
I know you can’t see it, but my foot is DOWN.

We’ll have a storage room for our food and seasonal decor.
We’ll have a laundry room where I’ll attach a string to the wall and use clothespins to hang odd socks under vinyl lettering that reads “Matchmaker, Matchmaker…” or maybe “Make me a Match” or maybe both depending on how whimsical I’m feeling when I mount it.

I’d prefer wood flooring. My husband has a thing or two to say about that, but since this itch is going to take YEARS to scratch, I’ve got awhile to wear him down.
He’s also trying to wear me down on the whole “when we get a dog it will come in the house” thing, but I will not budge.
“But babe, I’ll clean up all the hair and stuff.”
“Like fun you will.”
It’s not that I don’t have in any faith in him. It’s just that, well, he’s not here 15 minutes before visiting teachers come to sit on my couch and I don’t want them leaving with more hair than they came with.
I’m a simple girl, really.

My door fancies:
A dutch door in the kitchen. This fancy was brought on during the Christmas season on 2010 when I watched the classic “Christmas in Connecticut” and the farmhouse the movie was filmed in had a dutch door in the kitchen through which a cow came to visit.

image from hookedonhouses.net

You should actually just go read the entire post written HERE. You get to see the set from the movie and get the movie highlights. I’ve got a movie crush on the soldier. He’s divine. Better yet: let’s schedule a movie showing date and we can all fall in love with the soldier together.
Back to dutch doors (quit changing the subject):

image from willowdecor.blogspot.com
And then there’s French doors for the master bath:

I love the tile, and I’d go nutsy over checkerboard tile in the kitchen. Nutsy!  Of course if it clashed with my dutch door, I’d limit the tile to my master bath.

Please don’t mistake my fancies for snobbery.  It’s easy to have high expectations for a hypothetical house -especially when that hypothetical house is easily 20 acres big.

And from this moment on, I’m going to be squirreling away cash to scratch my house itch. Apron front sinks don’t grow on trees, you know.
Neither do houses, but I’m all about priorities here.

For YEARS, we’ve been trying to get a bookcase. We’re not one of those awesome people who can log onto craigslist and find what we need around here. Aside from living an hour away from any craiglist listed city, we just don’t have “it.” You know what I mean? I go a’yard sailing, but I can’t ever find anything I need. I come home with a heap of treasures, but never any solid bunk beds or dressers… nothing we really need. Someone people are blessed with an almost supernatural skill to go to a yard sale or goodwill or what-have-you and come home with the absolute COOLEST loot. I’m related to about 50 people like this, so I’m curious as to how the gene missed me. I don’t wonder too much about it, though, because I’m too busy striving to best it. I don’t care if I can’t find awesome stuff, I’m going to spend hours looking anyway! I recently came across a Thomas Jefferson quote that I had scrawled in a notebook from college.
“I find the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.”
Ah, you see? The answer to my problem lies in the wisdom of one of our Great Founding Fathers. And yes, Mr. Jefferson, you can count on me to Dumpster Dive.
That’s what you meant, right?

Anyway, for Christmas my husband took pity on my unrelenting search for a large bookcase and BOUGHT me one. I knew exactly what it was the minute he finished wrapping it and put it under the tree. I mean really: a box taller than I am? Thin? Heavy? Bookcase!
I unwrapped it and left it sitting in the living room until yesterday on account of a few things: sickness, dirty house, time constraints…
Well.
Yesterday, I threw caution and laundry to the wind. Instead of washing laundry all day, I set to cleaning out a corner in my room to set my bookcase up in. It was no small feat -the corner having become the catch-all corner for boxes of paper that had accumulated throughout our married life. My husband needs these kinds of papers close and hand for his job, and so… there they were. They were right within reach and driving me about as bonkers as his promises to “take care of it.” I don’t happen to live with a husband who makes the phrase, “If you want something done… do it yourself” a mantra (praises!) but I do happen to live with a busy husband who comes home exhausted. I also happen to live with a husband who got a PlayStation3 for Christmas… and when it comes to dealing with boxes of papers or playing video games, well, the boxes lose out.
Yesterday, I dug in.
In each box, I’m so sorry to say, I found thank-you notes that had been written and undelivered. Some were from my BRIDAL SHOWER, for crying out loud (and I almost did). At great length, I reached the end of my piles.
After an afternoon of shredding, filing, trashing, laughing, and sighing, I grappled with my bookcase. In the course of completely ignoring the warning on the box that says something like “have someone help you move this blah blah blah” and dragging it -on my own -from the living room to my bedroom, I did something not-so-good to my lower back.
My lower back already has great cause for suffering, Baby #2 making it thus, and no sympathetic host am I.
Was that going to stop me? Ha.
I am, after all, ridiculous.

I pulled out the drill, a hammer, the instructions, and my can-do attitude.

Allow me to detour: this isn’t our first 5-shelf bookcase. I once bought one for 20% off at Wal-Mart. It was the display and it matched my entertainment center in the living room perfectly. I had saved up to buy the matching bookcase, and I loved it… primarily because it didn’t scream “WAL-MART” like the many contraptions I’d purchased as a college student did.
I had purchased the last one -the display (as I said). I waited a long time for the purchase to go through. I don’t remember WHY it took so long. I just remember the mass amounts of spit-up that accumulated on my shoulder from my daughter. That smell is hard to forget.
I watched as they paged two young men to come and load it onto a cart.
I watched as two young men came and loaded it.
I watched as the two young men made it clear that they had, above anything else, swagger.
I watched as they swagged their way out the door so hard that my newly-purchased-long-awaited-for-more-precious-than-gold-and-worth-all-the-spit-up-on-the-shoulder-a-person-can-humanly-stand bookcase… toppled over and fell to the pavement with a crash.
Wood splintered everywhere and my shoulders fell so far they rivaled The Berlin Wall.

I didn’t pay for it, not monetarily. But my hopes and dreams paid dearly. You think I’m being dramatic, but if you savor books like I do… you understand. The ending result of the little mishap was that my precious books, my limited library, was boxed up and put in storage.

There was NO ROOM in the Inn.

I’ve spent the last 4 years looking for one and saving for one. They’re $100 and it seems that whenever we have $100 to get a solid one that will last… something else comes up.
The car needs a couple tires.
The computer gets a virus.
The children need food.
*sigh*

So my bookcase was a Christmas miracle indeed. I spent 4 hours “playing” with it yesterday, and I didn’t bother telling my husband I had his drill. When he called home to let me know he was coming home from work, he asked what I was doing.
“Putting my bookcase together,” I replied.
“WHAT? I was going to help with that…” I couldn’t tell if he sincerely wanted to HELP or if he was worried I’d mess my present up beyond repair. Or both. If true, his fear of my messing up is completely validated, by the way.
“I GOT this. I want to do it by myself.”

I’ve learned in my marriage to do these things on my own. They frustrate the living snot out of my husband -not that he isn’t mechanically minded or capable… he just hates how the instructions can be so vague or in another language entirely.
Then there’s me.
Instructions? Optional.
Which is why I messed up a few times, and which is ALSO why there’s some highly visible screws on a few of the shelves.
But guess what? It took me over four hours but:

I wasted no time in getting my books on the shelves, and was devastated to find that a bunch of our books suffered water-damage from a slight flood in our storage unit last year. We didn’t realize the storage unit had flooded until a few weeks later.
A few books had to be tossed out entirely.
A few are warped.
Most of them are right as rain, ironically.

From where I sit on my bed, I can see them all now. My precious little library of knowledge, from Calvin and Hobbes to Dickens to Dr. Laura… oh how I’ve missed you.

Mommy promises to never trust men with swagger again, okay?

I have to start this post by saying: I lost the only script to the Nativity MINUTES before the Nativity was supposed to begin. I would have made copies, see, but my printer is out of black ink, and I don’t know where else to get copies within a 10 mile radius of here… I figured we really only needed one anyway, and I kept track of that thing like you wouldn’t believe! Until yesterday, apparently.

Thank goodness Bishop had a copy in his office. I felt bad being so undependable -it’s not like me to do things like that. But the show went on despite me. We were able to procure a microphone and speaker, thanks to my loyal music teacher from days gone by, Mr. Hutchens. I got a quick costume together for my daughter which she LOVED… until she got to the park and it was cold.

Did I mention that while she was at the cold park, her mother was busy herding Shepherds and making sure the boy wasn’t ridding the manger of hay?
“Mom, I’m cold,” she said, looking up at me from under the puffy hood of her big pink coat and clutching her shiny duct tape star in her hands.
“I know, baby. Everyone is,” I said, while putting a halo on an angel.
“MOM, I’m SO COLD!” She said, this time she had someone’s (who knows who?) blanket wrapped around her legs.
“I know, baby. Everyone is,” I said, helping Joseph with his head wrap.
“MOMMMMM, I needa go potty!” She said, looking up at me… tears sitting in the corner of her eyes.
“I’m sorry, baby. I can’t help you right now… you’re going to have to wait.”
That. Did. It.

Other mothers were mothering my children, and I felt guilty about that. The only person who felt worse about it was my daughter. The next time I saw her, she was bawling her eyes out and in the end, she refused to participate in the Nativity.
So, like a good mother, I gave her star away to someone who actually wanted it.
She was NOT happy with me.
I was okay with that.

The Nativity went on, and my daughter sat in one of our red camping chairs, still completely wrapped up in someone else’s blanket. She had also acquired my mother’s white sweatshirt, and she wore that on top of everything else. Was my daughter colder than anyone there? I don’t think so. Was she upset that I was stressed? Yeah, I think that was more or less it.
But.
The show went on despite our little dramas.

My niece was an angel, and isn’t she beautiful?
The eldest of the angels was my cousin, Jill. I love being a part of a program that lets me bump shoulders with my cousins, nieces, AND children.

Two of the wisemen are my cousins…

The one with the crown isn’t, but we love him just as much. And here’s my cousin Seth… the puffiest and warmest and cutest Shepherd of them all.

The Shepherds around a fire, waiting for the angel to beckon them come…

I realized this morning when I was editing this picture that both Mary and Joseph are my piano students. I tried not to pick favorites, and I honestly didn’t realize BOTH of them were my students until just now. In truth, I didn’t pick them out alone. The Primary Presidency all picked out the different parts, and we gave every child the chance to be in the Nativity somehow.

Mary rode on a real donkey -props to her!
Unfortunately, I can’t find my camera -we went out of town this weekend, and I know it’s SOMEWHERE but I don’t know exactly where. I used pictures taken from my cell phone. I wish they were better, but they don’t do the program justice.
Hopefully I’ll have some better ones soon. The kids did a great job -whether they were narrating, herding, giggling, climbing the stall walls… they were cute.
One of our narrators -my cousin, Leigh -proudly read us all about “Castor Agustus” and it just made me smile.

I love “my” kids.

Yesterday wasn’t the best of days overall. I hate to say that because, really, it had some GREAT stuff in it. I got to spend a huge chunk of the day hanging out with my brother, Steve. I also got to end the day with our annual Family sing-a-long in the which we all laughed our brains out and sang a little too.

But somewhere in the cracks: I didn’t cook anything. I was too busy working on Christmas presents (crocheted hats and homemade pajama pants). The kids were starving, and thank goodness for goody plates! That’s right! We ALL ate sugar… all day. Because I was so occupied with stitchery, I insisted that the kids watch movies pretty much all day.
I realize there’s nothing too terribly wrong with what I did, especially since it’s the holidays. It isn’t like I feed my kids junk food and let them sit on their hind ends every living day.
But no one feels good after a full day of sugar and couch sitting.

They were cranky.
I felt like a terrible mom.

And so it goes, every year. Now I’m not going to make myself a promise that next year will be different. I’m not even going to get up on a soap box and tell you THIS ISN’T WHAT CHRISTMAS SHOULD BE ABOUT.
Because, guess what?
It is!

Christmas is about eating goody plates given to us by loving friends and neighbors. Christmas is about being mindful enough of our friends and neighbors to send them a little something if we can -whether it’s a card or a plate of snacks… or just a phone call! Is it easy? No. Will it test you? Probably. Will you have to go out of your way and OUT of your comfy zone to do it? Well, yeah! But that’s sort of the point, isn’t it? It’s easy to give when we have the money to do it. But what about when we don’t? Are we somehow EXEMPT from giving? Absolutely not! Giving, it may surprise you, has very little to do with money and very much to do with personality.
Give a smile.
Give a hug.
Give a hoot, for crying out loud.

Don’t fill my ears with thoughts of a Santa-less Christmas… Santa is the very spirit of giving! Santa is the man who lets us SPOIL our children! He’s the medium that makes it okay. Is it okay for ME to buy my children real birds and guitars and fishing poles all at once? I’d hardly recommend it. Spoiling a child just isn’t my idea of good parenting. But Santa? He’s a grandpa figure, and grandpas -as we know -have full spoiling reign. And thank GOODNESS because there’s a huge part of me that constantly has to FIGHT the urge to spoil my children absolutely rotten. I love them to death. I want to give them what they want.
BUT BUT BUT.
There has to be a line, you know. Luckily, Santa gets to cross that line once a year. What’s more: he’s absolutely magic, which fictional characters can sometimes be. There’s nothing wrong with Santa at our house. He’s a right jolly old elf.

Of course we keep Christ at the center of Christmas. Of course we teach our children WHY we have Christmas and of course we teach them WHY we give. I keep a Nativity out for the kids to use, and I pull out our Nativity hand puppets every year.
Santa and Christ rather compliment one another around here. It gets hairy, sure. And sometimes we spend a day eating junk and watching Christmas movies and by the end of the day we FEEL like we did just that…

But is it worth it? OF COURSE it is. Of course it is! If Christmas came with ease, I might be worried. Christmas should have some extent of hard work attached to it… when we’re in the spirit of giving we SHOULD apply ourselves. This doesn’t mean we need to be grudging about the idea. It can be loads of fun, really.
Yesterday just wasn’t.
And that’s okay too.

Because, like I said: it is worth it. To prove my point, I’m going to share with you a picture you’ve probably seen before. It is the girl on Christmas morning 2010. She’s wearing new PJ’s and getting ready to open her first Christmas present.
Oh the MAGIC that seeps from this picture…

Thank you, Lord, for my children.
Thank you, Santa, for teaching my children about the joy of giving.
Thank you, children, for watching movies and eating cookies all day -you really make me feel a little sorry for other parents because they don’t have you.
No offence, other parents, I’m sure your kids are grand and dandy too.

My Dad’s Christmas present came in the mail yesterday.
(Mom, don’t let Dad read this post!)

If I haven’t already paraded it in your face, read on so I can parade it in your face. I’m so excited over this gift -it’s something I’ve wanted to get him for a long time. This year, I finally took the time (and it took some TIME) to make it for him.
Ready??

I realize that cover is painfully simple, but you wouldn’t BELIEVE how long it took for me to get it looking like that. I’m not very computer literate.
We open up to find my picture. Vanity, ho!

There’s a table of contents, complete with a skankily-clad cowgirl bangin’ on a triangle.
Boy, does THAT sound bad…

Thanks to mistake on my part, the Table of Contents is exactly one page off. I left a blank page in the middle of one of the poems. I could SWEAR I didn’t, but obviously I did.
The book is rife with cowgirls. I even found a festive one! Doesn’t she make your soul feel merry and bright?

I added some carefully selected clip art throughout the book…
And I even customized some of the cowgirls, using them to display the poem titles.

Isn’t she sweet? I mean, she’s really brazen and all, but I don’t mind my Dad seeing a bit o’ thigh. But there are some things a daughter can NOT allow… namely: too much breast, even if it is of the illustrated variety.

What better place to put a poem title than RIGHT across a chest? Perfect.
Here’s a friendly one on the back cover waving ay-dee-ose.

And look… look at the binding:

Golly, kids… I am just SO happy with it! Despite the many times I read over every line, I still found quite a few errors. But that’s okay. I’m not sending this to a printing press, I’m sending this to Dear Ol’ Dad.
Even if he doesn’t ever use it… even if he shelves it… I’m so bloomin’ happy with it that I couldn’t care less. I’ve wanted to see this gift idea come to life for years, and now here it is! My only regret is that there’s no new material in it. He’s read all 4 of the poems I put in it.
And yeah. Four poems do not exactly make a book… unless you make it yourself. Ha!
I bested the system.

Now. I’m dying to wrap it and give it to him.
The kids are too.

But first, I have to tell you story (isn’t that my JOB?). We’ve been trying to potty train the boy despite the fact that he isn’t ready. Before you go on judging me, let me just say: he’s 3 and 3 months. It isn’t that I want to save the whole whopping $14 a month I spend on cheap diapers. It’s just that I’m SICK of CRAP. Baby crap is one thing. But kid crap?
I’m done with it.
My poor boy has even gone so far as to say, “I don’t want to be big, Mom!” Well, I don’t want him to be big, either. But life is such… people grow up and somewhere along that road, they start taking care of themselves. But my son doesn’t want to. He’s scared stiff to let his crap take the plunge (literally, people). Luckily, my son is also a big fan of instant rewards. I told him that if he would poop in the potty, he could unwrap a present from under the tree.
THAT did it. He let loose of 5 days’ worth of digested goods, and was rewarded with one present from under the tree… a stuffed Angry Bird. Because I can’t go on letting him unwrap his gifts, I made a new deal with him: if you go #2, you get ipod touch time. It’s working like a charm, and the best part? He has a buddy to take to the bathroom with him now. The boy has always been a sort of snob when it comes to baby things. He refused baby food as an infant and only ate the REAL DEAL (pasta, roast… my pediatrician wasn’t my biggest fan, but in my defense, the boy was HUNGRY). When he fed himself, he refused baby utensils. He never cared for baby TOYS, and he spent his time playing with remotes, cell phones (threw mine in the toilet where it got JAMMED in the “canal” and vibrated like mad until we set it free -a story that deserves it’s own blog post), and tennis balls.
Naturally, he shuns the entire idea of a toddler potty.
You might say they’re “for the birds” but only if you have an eye-rolling sense of humor like I do.

Anyway, this is all going back to my main point: Dad’s present. I showed it to the kids and said, “Let’s go home and wrap it up so we can give it to him!”
“Yeah!” The girl cried out in glee.
“And we could tell him he hasta POOP da POTTY so he can open it and it will be SOOOOO FUUNNNNNYYYYY!” The boy cried out, equally as gleeful.

So.
What of it?
Should we make it a tradition? Want to open your gift, babe? Sorry, babe… not until you’ve dropped a poopy in the potty!
Or is my son just thinking we’re playing a sort of joke on HIM.
“Hey, Danny… let’s tell Trent he has to poop before he can open a gift and it will be SOOOO FUNNNNYYYY! Har, har, har!”
Well whatever the reason, it worked! My son is no longer walking in quick circles around our living room with his butt cheeks clenched together chanting, “I don’t needa poop, I don’t needa poop, I don’t needa poop…”

Now, WHAT to DO with that extra $14 a month?

Growing up, we had very special traditions attached to our Christmas tree. It was always real, and it was always got it on Mike’s birthday.
Mike was born on December 13th, and every year for his birthday, Mom and Dad would take him to a Christmas Tree lot, and he would pick out OUR tree. Generally by the 13th of December, you had to really look through the trees to find a good one, and Mike was just the man for the job. To this day, he remains a man of impeccable taste -always seeing the details in everything. It’s a kind of gift he has, and we all love him for it. That gift is what makes him good at anything he puts his mind to: cabinetry, furniture refinishing, photography, model car building, wood working, home repairs, mechanics… you name it, he’s great at it. I even had him thread a sewing machine a few times for me in high school.

Mike always found the best tree in the lot, and we couldn’t wait to decorate it. Mom would pull out her big red box with white snowflakes printed on it, and we would all wait in an impatient line as she pulled decorations out of it -one by one.
My mom’s trees were the homemade kind -construction paper and clay ornaments dot the tree along with wooden hand-painted reindeer and a plastic singing snowman that just about drove my mother to insanity.
With each ornament we pulled out, we would all start in with “remember when…” and by the time the tree was done, we would put our leftover exuberant energy into sheer admiration.
With Mom’s homemade gingerbread house in one corner of the room, light glowing from its windows, and our real tree close by… our living room was the absolute epitome of Christmas. It smelled JUST like Christmas should -no need for scented plug-ins or Gold Canyon Candles.
At night, we’d lie under our tree and look up at the multi-colored lights… and we’d dream of Christmas morning -the MAGIC of Christmas morning.

You’d think I’d never want for anything more.
But I am a GIRL after all.

Truth be told, I’d go just about MAD waiting for December 13th to come around. I mean, ALL OF MY FRIENDS had their fake trees up and they were all decorated like the trees in the magazine -matching ornaments all around!
When I got married, I vowed to get a fake tree to put up the DAY after Thanksgiving. And how I wanted a fake tree with plain white lights and matching ornaments! About 5 years into our marriage, we finally had enough money one year to grant my heart’s desire.
Boy, you should have seen just how FAST I could get a Christmas tree up. I was all glee over the pre-litness of my tree, and I donned it’s branches with red and gold ball ornaments and bows. It. Was. Glorious.

But.
I am a girl.

I sometimes forget that my husband cares about these kind of things. Some husbands don’t, you know. Mine is the special sort that takes a great interest in The Things at Home. This year, he bravely came to me and timidly asked if we might… maybe… sorta… getaREALtree?
He told me of his Christmases of yesteryear, of the scent of his real Christmas trees and how he loved the multi-colored lights.
Bollocks, I thought. I guess this Christmas I wouldn’t be indulgent. This meant no tree up the day after Thanksgiving. This meant multi-colored lights.

Three days ago, I frantically called around for a babysitter and -through a direct answer to a pleading and urgent prayer -was able to secure one (who wants to spend 8 hours shopping with a 4 year old and a potty training 3 year old?). Saturday morning, my husband and I spent the day Christmas shopping together. The last thing on our list?

We stopped in at a nursery and found their Christmas trees to be the BEST we’d ever seen. For just $30, we found the most beautiful real Christmas tree I’ve ever seen. The man who helped us load it onto the car had only moved to the pines 3 weeks earlier -just before the big snowstorm a few weeks ago. Having moved from New Orleans, it was the first time he’d ever experienced snow, and what a way to experience it! Tons and tons and TONS of it.
The kids had no idea we were coming home with a tree, and they were thrilled. Because we didn’t have anywhere to cut it, we plopped it down on the dining room table.
My husband set to sawing off an inch at the bottom so it would take in water.

My son stepped up when Daddy’s arm needed a break:

Unbeknownst to us, we had purchased multi-colored twinkling lights for the tree.
They’re LED.
They are bright.
And twinklee.
Does anyone know how to stop twinkling lights from twinkling? They’re about to drive us all bonkers!

After getting the tree (mostly) straight and propping it up with my parents old tree stand (they’ve graduated to a fake tree. “Dang thing looks like it was made outta green pipe cleaners”), we set to decorating it.
The kids were literally hopping all around -like festive overgrown jumping beans. Their energy was positively bursting out of their bodies.
“Settle down,” I instructed, as I pulled out a big red tub (no snowflakes). One by one, I pulled out ornaments.
By now, my toddlers had made good use of the matching red and gold ornaments. Some were long broken and thrown away, some were lost, some were scratched and worn.
But as we’d lost ornaments, we’d also gained ornaments, hand made by my preschool girl. We’d bought a few along the way as well.
And what would you know?
Years after vowing to myself I’d do it my own way, I found myself sitting on the couch, handing ornaments one-by-one to waiting (hopping) children and saying, “Remember when all we could afford was this on our first Christmas together?”

I handed the ornament, now very worn and slowly fading, to my husband who put it on our real tree, complete with multi-colored lights.
What’s more: I loved it. I felt suddenly like a little kid again, and my entire house SMELLED like it was supposed to at Christmas time.
“Remember this?”

“We just had to get her something, and that was all we could afford. And of course we couldn’t leave the boy out when his turn came along:”
We pulled out ornaments that had been gifted to us by friends, far and near. We laughed at the boy who found a favorite spot on the tree and stuck to it:

I dug through the ornaments as fast as I could without being careless to find my favorite ornament of all time… the very first ornament we’d purchased as a married couple.
It’s a plastic ship (made to look like a glass ship, of course). We bought it on a ship (imagine that!) on our honeymoon. We took an entire day of our honeymoon and toured 4 historic ships in a harbor. It ended up being our favorite day, and we’ll never forget it… especially because one of those ships just happened to be the ship used for the film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (one of my all time favorite movies AND the movie my then-fiance had just bought for me for my birthday. He also threw in the Soundtrack to the movie, a pair of red shoes, a pink blanket, and the movie Hidalgo -the movie we saw on our first date. All of this added up to him being the BEST BOYFRIEND EVER).
I look forward to our ship ornament every year.

You were right, Mom. All these years, you had the right idea.

It bothered me that I couldn’t set my tree up RIGHT after Thanksgiving, but after a day or so, I got over it.
And you know what? It didn’t make much of a difference to me that we didn’t get a tree up until the 10th.

Next year will technically be “my” year. I can put up a fake pre-lit tree the day after Thanksgiving if I want.
But I don’t know if I want to now.

But someone please. Come and help our star.
“That STAR is crooked!”

I took our camera with us on our shopping day, fully intending to get a million pictures of the husband and I, but the only picture I got of us on Saturday is the one my son took after the tree was up and decorated.
My teeth look horrifying.

The boy isn’t much of a photographer, but he tried hard. What he IS… is a clown. He does that job without even trying.