These Are A Few Of My Favorite Things!

Favorite religious Christmas song: Silent Night, song makes me tear up every time.

Favorite non-religious Christmas Song: Christmas Song sung by Nat King Cole....chestnuts roasting on an open fire...jack frost nipping at your nose.........

Least favorite Christmas song: Christmas shoes...Hate! Hate! That song, Christmas music should not be depressing and that song is well....depressing! I call it the Jesus shoes song and I change the radio station when it comes on.

Favorite holiday treat: Magic cookie bars...that yummy layer of graham crackers, butter, sweetened condensed milk, chocolate chips and coconut all baked together into yummy yummness! Seriously I don't make them the rest of the year because it just would not be good for my health.

Least Favorite treat: I am sorry folks but fudge..just plain ol' chocolate fudge. I am my dad's daughter when it comes to fudge, I do not enjoy it at all. I would say any kind of divinity candy is a close second...blech, divinity!

Favorite holiday movie: This is hard My top three are Christmas Story, Christmas Vacation, and Elf. I watch these movies repeatedly through the holidays and never get tired of them.

Least Favorite Holiday movie: Okay so I feel like I can say this because I know a lot of people don't enjoy the Christmas Story as much as I do but I am not a huge fan of Its a Wonderful Life. I love Jimmy Stewart but I have seen the movie a couple times and I am fine with not seeing again. Its a personal thing, the show kinda annoys me. I want humor, and that show does not provide me with that comic relief.....

Favorite childhood present from Santa: Cabbage Patch doll. Edna Christabella was her name and she had red hair. I loved that doll! She went everywhere with me. She smelled like baby powder, and her hair was in pig tails, and I still have her in box packed away for safe keeping....like the movie Toy Story, she was my Woody doll.

Favorite Christmas story/book: The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. I love reading that book, I love Dr. Seuss. It would not be a Christmas without mention of the Grinch.

I also love eggnog, shopping for stockings, Temple Square Christmas lights, and I love Christmas Eve night, when the kids have gone to bed, there is a certain peace in the house, a peace that represents Christmas....the peace of Christmas, what a wonderful thing.

Do You See What I See?

Don't you remember that pure anticipation of Santa coming to visit? From Thanksgiving till December 25th Santa is all that plagued your mind when you were child. You believe with all your soul that this man knows everything about you and though he didn't always bring you what you wanted you seemed to get over it and look forward to the next year.

I know that when it comes to this time of year you want to make sure that your child understands the true meaning of Christmas. It is a time to celebrate our Savior's birth and to take the time to remember what a gracious gift we were given, and his birth is forever proof of the love that God has for us.

I know people think we get lost amongst the presents and the commercialized bustle but I don't necessarily believe that is all true....

I see children waiting for a man that loves all children, a man who is gentle and caring, a man who sees and hears all things, a man who gives....does this man not have the same qualities that our Savior has?

I see a time of year that we all stop and take the time to be with our family and friends. We want to spend time with those that are important to us. We come together and carry on traditions and make new traditions.... What could be more important to our Savior but to see the unity of families?

I see a time of year that most of us take the time to remember our neighbors and those who may be less fortunate than us. We want others to have what we have and give as best as we can. It also this time of year you see miracles and the true goodness of our fellow man....Don't you think the Savior feels these miracles?

I see the eye's of my four year old when she sees Santa and the quiet excitement of my twins and it warms my heart. It is such and innocent and pure love the kind of love that represents everything that our Savior is.

That is what I see at Christmas; I see love, family, tradition, joy, and giving. When I am up to my elbows in gift wrap, candy canes, baking goods, and crowded stores I will never forget the true meaning of Christmas.

It's a Wonderful Life...Sometimes!

Do you remember the scene in, Its a Wonderful Life, when George comes home after learning 8,000 dollars in cash has been lost and he will have to replace it. The house is chaos; one kid is sick, one kid is playing christmas songs on the piano, and kids are running everywhere; then George looses it, and yells at everyone, and storms out the door. Well I am not jumping off a bridge like George, but sometimes as a parent you just want to yell, you want to unleash, and storm out the door like George Bailey.

This time of year brings out a demon inside of children;"The Holy Crap, It is Almost Christmas So I Must Be Obnoxious Demon". It manifests itself into uncontrollable hyperness, constant wrestling, and well I will just say it, it turns children into full on s@#theads! This Christmas demon turns us parents into a sneering christmas ogre's who plead for Christmas day to come as fast as it can so the demon can be finally exorcised from our childrens' body.

I have one child practicing Jingle Bells on the piano while the other one is blowing into a recorder that is whistling a high pitch tune. The youngest is running circles around them while singing a non-coherent Christmas melody at her normal loud volume. They stop this brain piercing activity long enough to yell at each other because they feel the other is playing some note wrong. Then they begin making up their own songs, such as my favorite, "I'm gonna put my butt on you", sung to a slight blues melody and of course the grand finale is someone putting their butt on someone which leads to minutes of uncontrollable laughing.

I use the "Santa" threat; you know the one, you are getting nothing from Santa if you keep this up. They just look at me with disinterest and figure it is mom just being her usual ogre self and that "Santa" guy should put me on the naughty list for my George Bailey tirades.

Here is what I think, I don't think that every time a bell rings an angel gets its wing...... I think every time a bell rings..... another parent has lost their mind...That is where the song, "I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day" comes from..all parents have lost their mind by Christmas day. Now if you please excuse me I think I hear a ringing in my ears.......

"I Have Flies In My Tummy"

Every year after Christmas I go to Barnes and Noble and sift through their discounted children's christmas books. I usually buy one or two of them and put them away for the next year. At this point I have a pretty good stack of them, and I only pull them out at Christmas. When I begin to pull out christmas decorations that is the first thing the kids go looking for, and all through the holidays they sit and read these books.

Our bedtime routine with Makenzie goes as follows; give everyone a hug goodnight and tell them you love them; go potty, brush your teeth, and of course get that drink of water; find her beloved blankie, then she is tucked in bed and I always read her bedtime story. She is particularly excited now for bedtime stories because there is christmas books to read and they all involve that wonderful "Santa Dude".

The other night as we finished up, Twas the Night Before Christmas, she whispered in my ear, "I am so excited for Christmas, my tummy has flies in it". Let me interpret four year old language, she means, she has butterflies in her stomach.

Right there at that moment I wanted to take all that childhood excitement that was oozing out of her and bottle it. I wanted to forever remember her words, her emotions, her pure childhood happiness. Though it was just a brief moment of my day it was a brief moment that I wish I could replay and watch anytime I wanted.

The kids all are growing up so quick. The twins are changing into teenagers before my eye's and I see Makenzie growing just as fast...some days I just want it to slow down a little bit so I can forever remember all those brief little moments...............

Oh Tannenbaum

Merry "soon" to be Christmas. Yup, it is right around the corner and I still have 90% of my Christmas shopping to do, but my tree and decorations are done, so that should count for something.This is a picture from last year and it is decorated the same this year with a few different decorations added to the mix. I want to discuss my OCD tendencies that I have with my Christmas tree and whom I blame these OCD tendencies for.

I blame my father for this one, I said it, my father, not my OCD riddled mother. My father has a philosophy about putting christmas lights on a tree, you should squint, and if there is a lot of blank spots, meaning without light, then you do not have enough lights on your tree. So 6 hours later 1,000 plus strings of lights and vast amounts of squinting I finally have enough lights on my tree. Finding a tree growing up was one of the few times my father shopped around, we had to touch the tree, shake the tree, look for fullness and density, and once all these criteria were met did we finally purchase a tree. Then he commenced to pulling out a huge box of lights that took hours of untangling and wrapping meticulously around the tree until perfection was met. The one difference is we had real tree's growing up but I don't have a green thumb and somehow cannot keep a tree alive so I use a fake tree to keep my sanity. I shopped and shopped until I found the right fake tree. It is big, dense and bushy and not pre-lit because pre-lit tree's do not fill my OCD light quota. I am kinda a light Nazi, I want only light perfection on my tree.

The ornament arrangement does not necessarily come from my father but because he is creative an artistic he believes there has to be a certain art and logic to the tree and I do follow in his footsteps on that one. I stick with three colors, red, white, silver and they are arranged just such on the tree, In certain pattern and randomness that makes it look cohesive. I know, we have discussed this before, I need therapy. Our tree growing up had homemade ornaments that were made from previous Christmas Eve parties (our Christmas eve parties were a tradition that involved food, music, pinatas , family, friends and a lot of booze) so because of the "booze" a lot of interesting ornaments were made. Our tree was always beautiful and everyone always looked for their ornament that they contributed the year before, if they remembered because of the "booze" that they made an ornament.

My OCD flaw is on display in my front window. All of my neurotic tendencies glowing hues of white and red for the world to see. Yes, I blame my father, but when people slow down in their car to look in my front window, and when people stop me in our small town and say, your tree is beautiful, I smile and think to myself...... thank you dad.

P.S. I do let my children decorate a downstairs tree, it is all theirs, they can decorate it any way they want and I promise I do not "Tree Nazi" them...but maybe just maybe one of them is watching and learning from me and they will carry on the OCD tree.....

Thank You

A day of gluttony, family, football, and the countdown to Christmas. We do Thanksgiving at my in-laws and like most families we always have enough to feed the neighborhood. I enjoy turkey and all the trimmings, and though I am plenty full, I always make me a turkey sandwich later that night. The days that follow Thanksgiving are a blur of garland, christmas lights, and ornaments, and the task of making sure all are accounted for on the christmas list. Before the tinsel and jingle bells, and finals at school over take my life, I want to take a minute on the week of this Thanksgiving holiday and say what I am grateful for:

My husband, after almost 17 years of marriage it still never ceases to amaze me how much I can love someone so much.

My kids, they teach me everyday how to be a better person. Their unconditional love, amazing beauty, and innocence prove that I am truly blessed.

For my family; my mother, whom I wish I had half her strength, wisdom, and faith. My father, for his humor, stories, and love. My sister, for her inner and outer beauty that always leaves me in awe.

My in-laws and family; I feel funny calling them in-laws because I feel like they have always been part of my life and they have always been my family. I tease Adrian that if he ever decided to leave me I get his family in the divorce...I think that is completely fair :)......

My small town that I live in. This town is a rare community that takes care of those that live in it. The people that live here are incredible and I am glad that I have gotten to know so many of them over the years.

My education, I have been out of school for close to 20 years, and to have the opportunity to go back to school has been a treasure. I will graduate next year so I can move on to nursing school and I look forward to the adventure.

This country, Though it has faults and things that are broken, to me is the most amazing country on this continent. I am proud to be an American and for the fundamental ideas that this country was built upon.

My faith, It comforts me at my worst times and uplifts me at my best of times. My faith shows me where I came from, why I am here, and where I am going and I am forever thankful for the blessings that I have been given.


So many things to be grateful and thankful for......may all of you have a Happy Thanksgiving!

I Will Be With You Till We Meet Again

I went to a funeral yesterday. She was a neighbor of ours and though I did not know her really well or as long as most of those in our town, I did know her well enough that I felt I needed to go and pay my respects. She was always kind to me and for awhile we shared the church duty of providing food for relief society events. She had a great smile and her laugh made me laugh and she had a sweetness about her that reminded of my dear Aunt Wanda. As a listened to her friends and family share stories of her I was reminded of funerals I had been to, and how each has a certain impact on your life.

I remember my grandpa Howell's funeral, I was in 4th grade and it was my first experience with death that I could remember. It seemed like one day he was fine and the next day he was sick and than no longer with us. As a kid it was hard to process how someone could go so quickly but as an adult you are thankful that he did not suffer for a long period. He was a significant part of our life growing up and his dying made me process grief. It was a learning curve that we all experience in our life.

My grandmother Beck's death was not like my grandpa Howell's. Viv had been sick for a long time and when she passed away it was a relief that she was no longer in pain. As a family we have a lot of Viv stories, some good and some not so good. Coming from my point of view and my experience as Viv's granddaughter, she was always kind to me and I knew she loved me very much. She was a woman that could be cruel with those around her but for some reason she had a bond to me, and never once was she cruel to me, and all she ever gave me was unconditional love. I wish she could have been that way with others around her but I am thankful and grateful that I got to experience that side of her. At her funeral I remember touching her hand and saying quietly under my breath, " I hope you find the peace that I don't think you had here; thank you for your love."...I hope she has found peace.

My dear sweet Auntie Wanda. A woman that made you happy just being in her presence. Her death was also a sudden one. I dreaded going to the viewing because I did not know how I was going to deal with her no longer being here. When I saw her, all that anxiety went away, she was a unique soul that was so full of life, and her soul had moved on to a much better place. It was her body in the casket but everything that was Wanda, that unique soul, was no longer there so it was as though I was looking at a stranger. When I came back sometime later and visited where she had lived for all the years I had known her, that is where I felt her soul, that is where I heard her laugh and felt that precious presence of hers.

There has been other deaths and funerals along the way and they all have some kind of impact in some way. Yesterday I took the time to remember a sweet woman's life, there was laughter and tears and a peace felt throughout the room. Yesterday I remembered all of those who have passed on in my life and I am grateful for the time I did have with them. Like the church hymn says and I believe to be true ; I will be with you till meet again.