I went to a wedding today. It was beautiful. I loved seeing the glow on the faces of the bride and the groom. They were so happy. The wedding also seemed remarkably stress free. …but I suspect that was merely from the comfortable vantage point of being a guest rather than an organizer. All we had to do was show up at the event and talk to our friends who were also there. It was a lovely break from my house and my stresses.

The other day Howard was talking to me and venting some frustration. I realized that I wasn’t sure what my role in the conversation needed to be. Sometimes the correct response is just to be a listening ear while the rant runs its course. Sometimes my job is to be actively engaged in helping calm or problem solve. Sometimes the needed response is for me to stand up and say something unpleasant but necessary. I’m better at figuring it out than I used to be, but I still get it wrong sometimes. The reverse is also true. I have varying needs for the roles that Howard plays and I frequently fail to communicate which role I need from him. Ah the joys of spousal cross communication. Fortunately Howard and I usually catch it and correct it quickly, so things don’t fester. Both of us have taken turns saying “This was the response I needed from you and didn’t get.”

Sometimes all I need in the world is to be snuggled on a couch surrounded by my kids while watching an entertaining movie. If that is followed by a huggle-snuggle gigglefest, so much the better.

And last but not least, a conversation with Patch.

Patch: We must be rich.
Me: What makes you say that?
Patch: Because we’ve got a suitcase full of money.
I suppose to a five year old my little cash box from which I pay out allowances and chore earnings does look like extreme wealth.

I am rich, not suitcases of money rich, but intangible invaluable rich. Life is good.

Over the last few days I’ve been taking my old paper scrap/photo books and scanning each page into the computer. The plan is that I’ll use InDesign to put these into a pdf file and then use Lulu.com to print it out in a book. Then the kids will have access to these family memories in a form that they are allowed to carry around and spill jam upon. The life-in-review has been interesting.

Among the realizations are the fact that I’m still wearing many of the same clothes that I wore 5-7 years ago, only they don’t look as good on me anymore. I’ve gained weight and the clothes have gotten older. Wardrobe replacement needs some attention over the next year. I was also surprised by how many of the kids’ clothing outfits I remembered fondly. I would look at the clothing in the photo and remember not just the event pictured, but a whole raft of associations. This is why photos and objects can be valuable. They help us remember things we didn’t know were significant until they were gone. Speaking of things gone, the biggest of these is the set of children I used to have. They’ve all shifted and changed so much. The things that were of central importance, no longer interest at all. And yet somehow they are still themselves. But it makes me a little sad to look at them now and know that all too soon these people will be gone too as we move forward to the next new thing.

Speaking of new things, starting next Sunday I’ll be teaching a primary class full of 4 year olds. It will be quite a shift from teaching 10 year olds. I’ll be doing far more crowd control and far less lesson presentation. But it pleases me that the children of several of my good friends will be in my class. I hope I can make church a happy place for those kids so that they are always glad to come. If I can just manage that, I’ll consider it a job well done.

One more week of kids at home all day. I love my kids, but I have a really hard time keeping anything resembling a regular schedule without school as an external structure. I’m trying to focus on making the holidays a good experience for everyone. I want the kids to remember it happily, but it will be a relief to return to a routine. Now if only the kids also respond positively to the return of routine when it arrives next week.

I found a noted quotation from Gleek in my planner. “I like being barefoot because it is more pranceling and barefootly.”

My lily is blooming. This makes me happy. I had to buy it from the store. All the lily bulbs I planted in pots have completely failed to sprout. One hyacinth has sprouted, but I don’t thing it will flower. I do have a couple of narcissus that will flower, but those were bulbs shipped and ready for planting. At least now I know not to waste effort trying to force my own bulbs. I’ll just have to depend on buying commercially prepared plants for my winter garden if I’m going to have blooms in January and February. The winter blues haven’t been as bad this year because I’m under less stress, but I still need my flower therapy as a preventative measure.

The next few days are going to be full of cleaning because we’re having company over on New Years’ Eve. I’ve made lists. The lists are long. I hope I can get it all done.

I had an interesting conversation with a friend today. He mentioned that as a kid he hated the question “what do you want to be when you grow up?” It seemed impossible to him that anyone could plan that far ahead. Even as an adult he says he has a hard time talking about plans farther out than a year or two. I’m a little different. I’ve always wanted to have a destination in mind even if I knew it would take a long time to get there.

I’ve long believed that the key to succeeding is to work with your natural inclinations rather than against them. So after the conversation was over I wondered how a short-term project person could work on a long term goal. I think the key is to zig zag. If you want to be a writer then make sure that the majority of your short term projects involve some form of writing. So you spend a couple of years keeping a blog. Then you work on a novel. Then you take a job writing technical manuals. Each short term project teaches you things about writing that can be taken to the next project. Even that job at a fast food place can teach things about human nature which could later be applied to writing. The zig zag path appears random and goal less. Sometimes even to the person who is traveling it. The zig zag person may take longer to arrive at a measurable success than the straight approach, but the zig zag can still arrive somewhere that they want to be.

I’m not a zig zag person. I tend to head straight for my goals, but I have many goals I’m pursuing simultaneously. I can only push one forward at a time, but I’ve gotten very deft at switching tracks very quickly. It still takes me longer to arrive where I want to be than it would be if I were more focused, but it is the method that feels natural to me.

Last week Kiki babysat the other three kids and it did not go well. A major reason it did not go well is because Kiki started romping with the kids. Then everyone was wound up and disinclined to be cooperative about going to bed. In the post sadness debriefing I talked to Kiki about why winding the kids up right before bed isn’t the best idea. I believe my exact words were “The problem with roughhousing is that it goes: Fun Fun Fun Fun Fun Fun Fun SAD.”

A similar problem can be noted with holiday celebrations. The first three weeks of December are packed with endless places to go and things to do. Everyone rushes about and anticipation builds for the big event. But then very suddenly the big event is over. Often in the wake of the celebration there is a feeling of emptiness or depression. When the kids are roughhousing I’ve learned to tell when Fun is just about to turn to SAD. If I take quick action, I can prevent the sadness from occurring so that everyone walks away remembering only the fun. Similarly, I’ve learned some steps to take to prevent the post holiday sadness. It doesn’t always work completely. It particularly does not work if I forget to do the steps, but many of these ideas have helped me in the past.

Pace the pre-holiday festivities. The key to this one is to slow down in advance of the holiday so that you don’t arrive exhausted. It seems like every organization in existence needs to have its own holiday event. I skip many of them, only attending where I will truly enjoy the event or where my absence would hurt someone else. I also strive to keep the kids’ schedules as normal as possible. I don’t want them arriving at the holiday exhausted either because exhausted kids throw tantrums and tantrums cause stress for everyone.

Eat healthy. Treat food is everywhere, but our bodies and minds perform poorly without good nutrition. We are particularly careful about this on Christmas morning. We require the kids to all eat a breakfast that has protein in it. This year we failed to require a healthy lunch and as a result there was some afternoon crankiness. The healthy dinner went fairly untouched because the kids had eaten their weight in cereal, but at least it was there.

Savor the holiday. After the pre-holiday rush, it is tempting to rush through the holiday traditions as well. The kids certainly want to. They want to tear open all the packages as fast as possible. Howard and I consider it our duty to drag our feet as much as possible on Christmas morning. We make the kids wait until 7 am to wake us up. We require them to clean up, get dressed, and have breakfast between the Christmas morning surprises and the present opening. Then we require them to take turns so that everyone can see every present opened. Slowing things down allows us all to enjoy the day more. Once the last present is opened, the festivities are done. Howard knows a family that hides all the presents so that the kids spend all day finding their gifts. It is a fascinating idea for extending the holiday. We may try it some year.

Plan events for after the holiday. One of my favorite Christmases had several small gift exchange events on several different days after Christmas. I loved this because when the last present was opened on Christmas day there was still a small thing to look forward to. The big presents all came on Christmas, but the small exchanges later still felt wonderful. And by spreading the gifts out, each gift was appreciated more. Another simple post holiday thing I do is to buy myself a lily plant. It blooms into January and so I have something lovely to look forward to.

Don’t overload. The first bite of your favorite dessert is heavenly, but as you keep eating each bite is less and less special. Eventually you don’t even want dessert anymore. The time to stop eating is when you’re still enjoying the dessert. Figuring out what that point is for gifts can be tricky. It can be especially tricky when there are many loving adults who want to delight the children. But everyone will be happier with the holiday if the kids are not overloaded. Overload prevention can be accomplished simply by spacing out the gift giving onto different days.

Over the years many of these steps have become as instinctive to Howard and I as listening to the roughhousing and knowing when to step in. I’m sure there are many other things that can help. I’d love to hear suggestions.

Tis the day after Christmas and all through the house everyone’s happy. I suppose I could continue the rhyme, but that sounds like a lot of work. I’m disinclined to work today. So instead of rhyme, I’ll offer a few Christmas highlights.

This was the year of Nintendo shirts and Indiana Jones Lego sets. All four of my kids acquired multiple video game themed shirts from various different sources. This made all of them happy. They’ll continue to enjoy the clothes throughout the next year or more. The three younger kids all received Lego sets. It made for a very quiet Christmas afternoon since they each spent several hours assembling the sets. Hopefully they will continue to have fun playing with the sets over the next several days. Most importantly, Patch acquired the Motorcycle chase set he has coveted for months.

I loved watching the kids give gifts to each other. Each person has a pile of things that they are giving to others and there is much laughing and joking as the kids try to be the first to give everything away. This year it worked really well. The kids were excited to give because I’d involved them in the gift selection process. They worked to earn these gifts and were delighted to give them. Involving the kids more in gift selection was the right thing to do, even though it gave me less control over what things came into the house. In past years I’ve spent considerable energy to make sure that the holiday gift giving was optimized for the best use of financial resources. This year I let go. I left the choices of gifts up to the individual givers and somehow balance was achieved just as well.

Howard managed to surprise me with a new Dell mini laptop. I knew he was buying it, but he tricked me into thinking it would not arrive until after the holiday was over. I’m typing this entry from the new machine. It looks like it will be a very useful aid to writing. And it is small. About the size of a hardback book.

The perfect gift is the one you didn’t know existed, but once you open it, you realize you always wanted it. One of those gifts arrived for Howard today. It is amazing, but it is his story to tell. He blogged about it. With pictures.

It was a good holiday. We capped it off with Howard reading How The Grinch Stole Christmas by candlelight. It was a good ending to the day.

Talking about Christmas on the internet is hard for me because I do not desire to offend anyone. I know that for some people any discussion of God, Christ, or religion is painful. I know for a fact that many of my readers and online friends have belief systems that differ from my own and I try to make sure that my blog is as friendly a place as I can make it. Sometimes this desire leads me to self edit. I change the shape of the things I want to say to make them as generally acceptable as possible. Sometimes that is a good change, because it forces me to look at my thoughts from other angles which opens up new ideas. Other times it means that entire posts don’t get written at all because I don’t want to offend someone else or open up for comment a subject that is sacred to me.

But then I remember how happy I was to receive the Eid al Fatr card at the end of the fast of Ramadan wishing me “Eid Mubarak.” I was delighted that someone with a different religious tradition than mine would reach out to me and ask me to share in the joy of their holy day. That card still hangs on my wall amid the Christmas Cards. If I ever receive Hannukah, Kwanzaa, or Solstice cards they will all receive a similar place of honor in my home. I love being invited to participate in the celebration, even if the celebration in question is one outside my personal belief system.

This experience makes me re-evaluate my expression of my holiday beliefs. Is my effort to not offed really depriving people of the chance to participate in a celebration I enjoy? Because I do believe in Christmas. I believe in, Baby Jesus, manger, angels, the whole thing. My Christmas celebrations try to center around love, acceptance, and giving. I also believe in the later stories of Jesus, crucifixion, resurrection, and salvation. Sometimes my logical brain argues with me about these beliefs. Sometimes I ponder and analyze and even doubt, but whenever I search my soul and ask myself if I truly believe these things, the answer is yes. This faith has given me strength in the dark times of my life, it has given me courage to do the things I know I must, it gives me hope that everything which is not right in this world will eventually be made right. I do believe, and because I believe Christmas is truly a holy day for me. I love it. I love sharing it with my children and watching them grow to love it as well. I know how I feel about my holy day, which is why I am so honored when others open themselves up to share their holy days with me. Because I expect they feel the same way about their beliefs as I do about mine.

And so I hope that all of you will take it in the spirit I intend when I say:

In this season of giving I am grateful for the gift of attention and caring that you have given me. Merry Christmas to you all.

From the moment the alarm rang this morning and I dragged myself out of bed, I’ve felt the march of time toward Christmas night. Being a grown up, that march chanted to me about Things Yet To Do So We Can Be Ready. Thus the day of Christmas Eve becomes hecticly full of cleaning and food preparation. I moved from one task to the next while hearing the echo of marching time in the back of my head. Must move faster to get it all done. The kids had a much different experience. For them, the time between Now and Christmas Morning moves slowly, one dragging footstep after another. They’ve been counting those slow footsteps since before Thanksgiving.

But fast or slow, somehow we all arrive in the evening. Prepared or not, the time is here. Time to visit with relatives. Time to laugh. Time to look at each other. Time to light the candles. Time to read the Christmas story. Time to set aside thoughts of anything outside this little bubble of experience that is our Christmas Eve celebration. And then it is done. The kids are in bed, trying frantically to sleep as fast as they can, so morning can arrive. Soon I will fill the stockings and lay out the surprises for Christmas morning. Then I too will sleep.

And while we sleep, time will march on with measured steps, carrying us further away from the birth that is the source of Christmas celebration and into a future that I hope will be made better and brighter by people who care about each other. May we all allow Christmas to make our hearts grow a few sizes, so that we are forever after more able to love and less prone to hurt.

There is a calendar on the wall next to my desk. For the past few years the calendar has been supplied as a freebie from the company who sells me shipping supplies. There is a selection to choose from and I’ve been in the habit of choosing the garden or landscape calendars. Last winter I noticed a problem with these calendars. The winter months feature pictures of snow. If I want snow in January, all I have to do is look out the window. What I really want in January is sunlit flowers. I want pictures that cheer me up and remind me that spring will be back, not pictures that remind me it is cold and gray outside. I had a similar difficulty with the warmer months. I don’t want pictures of lilacs when lilacs are in bloom. I’m really longing for lilacs a month or two earlier than that. In May lilacs are everywhere, but in March a picture of lilacs is like a preview of good things to come. I realized that I was going to need to make my own calendar. Fortunately my friend Janci takes the most beautiful flower pictures I’ve ever seen and she was willing to share some of them with me. You can see her photos over at photophish.

In the dark months of the year, I crave sunlight and bright colors. So I picked the most sundrenched photos I could find, like this one Janci took of a yellow iris.

For me a big part of spring is watching the succession of blooming flowers. Crocus first, then hyacinths, forsythia, daffodils, tulips, spring iris, flowering trees, and by May the lilacs and roses have begun. I’ve planned my calendar so the flowers appear a month or two before they will actually bloom. I’m hoping this will help me convince my psyche that spring is coming just a little bit early and we can pull out of that winter mood-slump. By the summer months, flowers are everywhere and so I don’t need them on my wall. What I do need is calm cool images to help combat the heat of the summer. Janci has some of those too.

Fall needs flowers again, but I don’t mind if they feel fallish. My psyche is still buoyed up by all those sunlit flowers over the summer.

By December the weather is back to being cold and I need sunlit flowers again. I’ve put my 2009 calendar together. I think it will really help. Even if it doesn’t, I’ll still have a calendar full of Janci’s beautiful pictures and those always make me happy.

Coming home from an evening out to find four upset children is not ideal. Link was crying because Kiki had yelled at him. Gleek was crying because she had a sore on her chin, and also Kiki had yelled at her. Kiki was crying because she felt guilty about being a bad babysitter and yelling at the kids. Patch was not crying, but he was obviously unsettled about everyone else crying.

Howard and I gathered all the children and let them all talk. Kiki apologized profusely. Link and Gleek gave her hugs. Patch gave hugs to everyone in turn. We fed them all hot chocolate on the general theory that chocolate is comforting. During most of the 30 minutes it took to settle down, the kids were more concerned about helping each other feel better than about airing their grievances. Tears and hugs were plentiful. I love that my kids love each other. Then with tears dry and cups empty, we settled them all into bed.

Kiki stayed up at little bit longer to talk with me about how things went wrong and what she intends to do differently next time. She told me I don’t owe her any money for this babysitting gig because she doesn’t feel like she earned it. Next time will be better. So Howard and I got a dinner out without paying for babysitting, and the kids all got a lesson in getting along, and I got to snuggle all my kids when I got home, and they all got a chance to see how much they love each other.

Perhaps it wasn’t ideal, but it was still pretty darn good.