Tag Archives: Christmas

The big chair and the tree

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Have you ever experienced a moment in your life where, in the middle of it, you’ve heard the voice in your head say, this is it, this is a memory now? 

I have several I go back to now and again, but the recent quietly falling snow has reminded me of this one—my husband and I sitting together, squished side by side in the big leather chair with the big leather ottoman that we had purchased second hand from our landlord the year before. We had only been married a couple years, and we moved that big piece of furniture into our very first house with the level of optimism and delusion you only really get when you’re in your early twenties. And we had it big enough to think that buying a repossessed house that needed to be completely gutted to be livable was a choice that was going to get us closer to the big dream. Little did we know that gutting a house, while trying and failing to start a family, would threaten to gut us too, like the big dream getting the best of us before we even really got started. 

But at night, after coming home from full-time, adult jobs to a house full of ripped up carpet, tools on the countertops and unusable spaces, we would tinker a bit on a project, maybe I would go for a walk with the dogs, we would feed ourselves and then we would sit on that big chair together under a blanket and it would all feel manageable somehow. 

It was in this timeframe in our lives I had my first and only Christmas tree meltdown. The winters we lived in that big, broken house were relentless. The snow never stopped falling and it would drift so high up against the south side of the house that our dog would climb the bank to sit on the roof of our garage and keep watch on the neighborhood. Over those two years, we lost six pregnancies while we worked to renovate about the same number of rooms on that godforsaken house. All this is to say, those rooms and the rooms in my mind didn’t seem well-kept enough to deserve a tree, and so I procrastinated the whole thing, though my husband insisted. We needed a tree. And so he took me down to the grocery store parking lot where they bring trees in from places that can grow trees and we picked one that was perfect and alive and full and we put it in the back of my husband’s pickup and we brought it to the not-done-yet house and we moved our big chair over a bit and we put that tree by the big picture window that faced the street and I put on the bulbs and lights I bought new from Walmart. And they were pretty enough. It was all pretty enough, and sweet and what you do on Christmas. 

And I hated it anyway. Like, I had a total disdain for this tree. I remember it clearly, the sight of it made me angry. It made me cry and it made me frustrated and I tried to blame it on the ornaments with no sentimental value or the fact that it was leaning a bit even though it wasn’t leaning at all. And I remember my husband being so patient with me, but I was not patient at all. I was irrational and at the time I didn’t know why. I just thought I was going crazy in this house with endless wallpaper to peel and sawdust to sweep and this tree, with it’s stupid glass bulbs and not one single baby-hand-print-ornament hanging on it, was just standing there in this mess, mocking me. 

But that night, despite my unreasonable attitude, my husband and I sat in that big chair, his right arm under my back, my head on his shoulder, and we watched the twinkle of the tree against the window while outside the big flakes were falling under the warmth of the street lights. Everything was quiet then, even the thoughts in my head. They stopped too to tell me, this is it. This is what matters, right here squished in this chair. Girl, this is what peace is. Remember it. 

Last weekend I watched our daughters pile out of my dad’s big tractor and plop their little snow-suited bodies in the piles of big snow that had fallen on the ranch the past few days. They rode along with him as he cleared a path for our pickup to drive out in the West pasture to find a Christmas tree to cut and decorate. The sun had just come out and the sky was as blue as it can look, making that fresh snow sparkle and our daughters just ran like wild animals across that pasture while we examined the spindly wild cedars in the hills.

The sight of them, with my dad and my husband and the laughing was closer to heaven than it was to that grocery store parking lot I stood in all those years ago.

The tree we picked? Way less beautiful by magazine standards. And it’s filled with candy canes now, and homemade ornaments and it will probably fall over at some point because these trees usually do. And the years will pass and I know I won’t remember that tree, but that day? It will be with me forever.

And, well, I guess I just wanted to tell you that. I wanted to tell you that in case you needed to hear it.

May your kitchen always be too small for all the people you love

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Baby me in my grandpa’s arms with my cousins in my grandparent’s kitchen

There’s a joke I always make on stage during my performances. It involves holidays in my grandma’s tiny house on the ranch and how, looking back, we managed to pack three families with young kids in a 600-square-foot house for Easter dinner or Christmas mornings and sleepovers.

It seems magical that the house never felt small to us cousins, at least not until we grew up and realized that small space packed with six extra adults and eight kids under the age of 12 probably explained why Grandma always kept the kitchen window cracked even in the middle of winter and forgot the Jell-O salad in the fridge.

When we see holiday movies (and I’ve watched a lot of them this season), we see the giant houses with the big wreaths and the grand staircases, a table stretched out for miles with matching settings and a picture-perfect fireplace standing regal as the backdrop of every kind of predictable storyline that all works out in the end.

Cousins on a couch

But weren’t most of us more like a “kid’s card table in the living room and two or three attached to the end of the kitchen table” sort of family?

And maybe we took out the matching dinnerware if we had it handed down or saved from a wedding, but only once a year and only enough for six or eight of us.

And raise your hand if you spent the afternoon with your cousins making up an elaborate group dance or play in order to hold your family hostage for a performance at the end of the night, with aunts and uncles and grandparents piled on the living room couch, your grandpa’s easy chair and the floor.

And did the tree look a little chaotic, donning handmade paper and pipe cleaner ornaments among the antique bulbs and garland and the star that was always a little worse for the wear but it’s tradition?

Did everyone always linger in the kitchen by the olive and pickle tray even if the house was big enough to send everyone to the basement or living room and out of the way?

And wasn’t it always a little hot, a little sleepy in that house even though it was also a little loud?

The cutest picture of little Edie opening a hair brush at Christmas

Each Christmas, we spend a weekend at my in-laws’ beautiful home in a neighboring town. If there ever was a woman made to host a holiday, it’s my mother-in-law, and if ever there was a house built for three Christmas trees and an extended family weekend together, it’s theirs.

In fact, they built it just for moments like these, from the ground up actually, all on their own after their kids were grown and they moved on to the next chapter of their lives, with a pretty staircase that leads to two bedrooms on the upper level and then another on the main floor for guests, a pool table in the basement that also works for family pingpong tournaments, a hot tub room, a sewing room, a couple cozy living rooms.

A little montage from Christmas at the in-laws, including modeling our jammies from the PJ exchange.

Still, I walked up the stairs and — you guessed it — everyone, all 15 of us plus the dog, were huddled together in the kitchen.

Isn’t that beautiful?

I think about my grandma in that tiny house and I wonder, if she would have been given the years she needed to watch her grandkids grow, would she have planned a larger home with a more accommodating layout?

She was a woman born to an immigrant family, one of 12 kids raised on this prairie. I imagine she was used to close quarters, but I also imagine she had a dream home in mind, as we all do.

In fact, we just finished up an addition on our own home in the name of hosting Christmas Eve pancake suppers and Easter dinners and branding day lunches. We added a wide-open living room and a dining room with enough space to extend the table. This is the first Christmas we’re hosting with the new layout and more room, but we’ve been living with it long enough to realize what we already knew: they will gather in the kitchen.

I hope you had a Merry Christmas and I hope you had to crack the kitchen window and I hope you forgot the Jell-O salad in the fridge and I hope you are lucky enough to have a kitchen too small for all the people you love.

How to survive the final push to Christmas: Fudge

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Greetings from the ranch, where I’m sitting next to the Christmas tree and am happy to report that it’s still standing despite blatant disregard for the no-cartwheels-in-the-living-room rule.

The elf is making a snow angel in a pile of flour on the kitchen table, and since you last heard from me, I’ve had to come clean about the whole situation, at least to my 9-year-old, who got pretty suspicious when the thing only moved once while we were in Vegas for four days and the grandparents were in charge.

Turns out I forgot to add “move elf for the love of Christmas” to the thanks-for-helping-us-out note.

We’re still standing, too, after those four days in Vegas, where I performed some music and we met up with my Texas family to watch my uncle rope in the World Team Roping Championship.

We were all there for the National Finals Rodeo takeover in Sin City, where thousands of ranch and rodeo families struggle to navigate taxi and Uber rides and try not to get lost or broke among the craps tables and slot machines. I lost $60, my sobriety and my dad at a bar in the Venetian all in a matter of 20 minutes.

In times like these, I would usually just look for the cowboy hat, but when the big rodeo comes to Vegas, everyone in the city is dressed like my dad. Turns out that tracking app we convinced him to put on his phone came in handy when he wandered off to put $20 in the slots only to lose all $20 and his bearings.

It only takes 20 minutes to be reminded that cowboys don’t do well in crowds.

But man, a sea of cowboy hats among the bright lights and sparkle of Vegas has always been the most fabulous juxtaposition to me, and where they house all those horses was a mystery unlocked when my husband and dad were invited to walk among the 2,000+ stalls filled with some of the country’s best equine professionals below the cling and clank of the casino, restaurants and hotel.

What a time to be alive! And what a far cry from the whipped frozen plains at the ranch, our horses haired up and tucked cozy among the oak groves.

We’re home among those frozen buttes now, and whatever time we borrowed from sleep in Vegas, we will be making up for in this final push to Christmas (she whispers as she frantically types to submit this before bedtime and on deadline). Just today, my husband and I made record time finishing the last of the Christmas shopping and errands in time to dress and fluff up Rosie for her Christmas program.

Now all I have left is another grocery store run because I forgot a few things, another shopping trip because I forgot a few gifts, all the wrapping, all the baking, a trip to the elementary school to sing carols with 500 kids, and a Christmas party or two to top it off before we can all kick back and enjoy the holiday.

But first, per tradition, the fudge!

Below I share the recipe, just like I do every year, a small gesture of thanks for following along and for sharing some stories of your own. I have so much gratitude for the opportunity to reflect with you here week after week.

May you find all the joy there is to find this holiday season standing tall and strong against all odds, like our Christmas tree and all the cowboys in Vegas.

Mom’s Famous Fudge

  • 1 12-oz package of semi-sweet chocolate chips
  • 1 12-oz package milk chocolate chips
  • 3 teaspoons vanilla
  • 4 1/2 cups of sugar
  • 1 pound of butter
  • 1 12-oz can evaporated milk

OK, onward.

Butter an 8-by-12 baking dish.
Bring sugar and evaporated milk to a boil, stirring constantly. Continue to stir and boil for 7 minutes.
Remove pot from heat and stir chocolate chips, vanilla and butter.
Stir until smooth and pour into the buttered baking dish.
Refrigerate until set.

Muster up your incredible strength to cut the fudge into squares and serve it on cute little platters or in festive tins for your friends.

Become the favorite.

Toppled tree

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Last week, our Christmas tree fell over.

I’m writing about it not because I’m surprised, but rather, because I’m absolutely not surprised. And I wonder if there’s something wrong with me.

It started with our annual Christmas tree hunt with the family last Saturday. We had a window of about 45 minutes to complete our 2,000-acre hunt for the perfect holiday centerpiece between the time my husband got home and when the prairie would be pitch black, but I was determined. This was the only weekend I had open to make the house magical before the holiday and, because I was on a strict timeline, the side-by-side was dead and we had to wait another 15 minutes to jump it while our girls threw snowballs at each other’s faces.

Never fear though, I thought I saw a nice little cedar back in August just a quarter of a mile or so in the home pasture that would work nicely in the new addition in the house. And so, we followed the trail and our instincts to scope the northern slopes of the clay hills where the cedars seem to grow. After all these years of hunting for trees, I vowed to finally learn our lesson about scale — like, they always look smaller under a big prairie sky and about 10 times larger when you bring them inside to thaw out and take up the entire living room.

Turns out this year, once all was said and done, we overcompensated (undercompensated?).

Simply put, in our attempt to not overdo it, we picked a tree that looked sad and bare-boned and far from holiday material when we stood it up against the window and let the light reveal its flaws. Honestly, I didn’t care that much. It’s a wild tree after all, what can we really expect from it? I figured adding a few lights and ornaments would fill the gaps. I was prepared to call it good.

My husband was not on the same page, however. And while I made 10,000 trips to the basement to retrieve our ornaments and decorations, my husband again took to the frozen hills with his saw and returned with a plan to perform cosmetic surgery on our scraggly tree. And when I say this, I mean he whipped out his nail gun and hauled in an armful of cedar boughs and proceeded to nail them to the trunk of our little tree. Essentially, he did what he’s best at and remodeled the thing.

But because the tree was only 10 feet tall and not 25 feet tall like usual, he opted out of nailing the whole thing to the wall and we all got on with decorating what turned out, in the end, to be a pretty decent tree.

Now I’ve mentioned before that we found ourselves in an Elf on the Shelf predicament last month when my 7-year-old found the felt toy lying limp in my bedroom drawer stuffed among mismatched socks and extra phone chargers; understandably, she had some pretty serious questions that needed answers.

So this Christmas, like never before, it is imperative that I restore the magic that is hanging on by the tiny threads of that dang elf’s hat that I now cannot find anywhere. Anyway, I needed to tread carefully and creatively this holiday season, so I retrieved that hatless elf out of its new hiding place that evening and put it on one of the transplant limbs of the Christmas tree with a note wishing the girls a happy hello in handwriting I tried my best to not look like mine.

Now it’s here I must pause to ask, why do we do this to ourselves? It’s all fun and games when the kids are little and oblivious. But thanks to my recent magic misstep and a couple unfortunate situations with the tooth fairy earlier this year, this Christmas season has me under constant surveillance and major pressure to keep the magic alive and real because, well, skepticism has entered the house and she’s a lurker.

Anyway, all seemed to be going well in our freshly decorated Christmas house until the girls started flipping cartwheels on Monday evening, shaking the stability of that retrofitted tree and sending it toppling over right next to Rosie sitting pretty and shell-shocked on the rug, swearing up and down it wasn’t her foot that caught it in her most flip.

And then: “Oh no, Ella! Ella was on the tree! Is she dead?!” (Ella is the name of our elf, if I haven’t mentioned that yet.)

I ran to the living room and, after I made sure that both kids were cleared of the tree, called my husband from the garage to help pull that cedar up and assess the damage. And there was that elf, still smiling and hatless, surrounded by broken bulb glass and Chad’s now legless and one-armed He-Man ornament, his sword arm launched all the way across the room.

Yes, there were some casualties for sure — He-Man was one — but Skeletor was seemingly unscathed, and so was the elf. I suppose that’s why she’s made of felt. But now she was in the way, which was a problem because, well, you can’t touch the elf or she will lose her magic and THE LAST THING I NEED IS LESS MAGIC AROUND HERE, OK?

“Get the kitchen tongs!” I hollered to my oldest. “Grab her with those and put her somewhere safe. We’ve got to redecorate this thing. And no more cartwheels in the living room until after Christmas!”

No more cartwheels in the living room until after Christmas? What kind of sentence is that?

If you need me, I’ll be Googling Elf on the Shelf ideas, but not while my daughters are lurking, because they can read now. Learned that lesson the hard way …

After Christmas Poem

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Happy New Year! It’s the kids’ first day back at school after Christmas break and I’m already behind and this is why…

Two days after Christmas

We’re two days after Christmas and all through the house
Wrapping and boxes are scattered about
And slime kits and Barbies and polymer clay
Card games and dollies and Lego all day

Except when they’re science experimenting
On the table we’ve stretched out with all of its leaves
To accommodate Christmas Eve pancakes and bacon
To kick-off ten days of school vacation

Spent inside the walls of the home that we built
And outside on sleds racing down the slick hills
Or snuggled up under the blankets we found
For moments like this when we’re home safe and sound

And I’ve been interrupted writing these lines
About ten thousand eight hundred seventy times
To open a toy or be asked to explain
Directions on how to play this new board game  

But don’t ask me to check in their rooms, please take pity
I know what I’ll find and it won’t be pretty
Because I’ve left them alone to be young and create
The magic of childhood Christmastime break

So maybe they’ll clean up or maybe they’ll play
Princesses under the fort that they made
And leave it up as a place to sleep for the night
The rules, I’ve decided, don’t have to be tight

Because there’s plenty of time for them to be grown
Now is the time for their dreams to be sown
And it might drive me mad, they might make me crazy
All the glitter and mayhem flying off my sweet babies

But time, it’s a flash when the children are young
Just when I’ve got it, that phase, it is done
Goodbye to the dollies, goodbye to the slime
Goodbye to the Lego will happen in time

I tell myself this as I step on a crayon
And scrape paint off the kitchen table again
And argue my case for brushing their teeth
And rubbing their backs to lull them to sleep

Soon enough they’ll be choosing their own Christmas trees
And packing up car trunks to come home to me
Oh that is the cusp of my every ambition
That my kids, once they’re grown, will hold tight to tradition

And remember the presents? Ok, that’s just fine
But mostly I hope they remember the time
We all spent together being fully ourselves
No store in the world holds that on its shelves

Yes, two days after Christmas, the calendar says
But holds nothing of how we should spend these sweet days
So we’ll take it slow, take a break, take our time
If you need us we’re probably making more slime…

The Magic of Christmas

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Greetings from under the giant Christmas tree where Rosie and the Elf on the Shelf are laying because both got the three-day flu for Rosie’s sixth birthday and I’m feeling the impeding sense of doom that comes with knowing I’m probably next.

My husband just walked in from hauling hay in the balmy 50+ degree December weather and I know I’m supposed to feel grateful, especially this time of year, but I am also feeling a bit overwhelmed. I told him, after spending my entire morning moving between promoting a new music release, meeting a deadline and trying to decide if I should take my daughter to the doctor, that my creative energy is running low.

And I’m feeling like I’m falling a foot or two short at about everything I’m working at right now. And he said, “Well, why don’t you write about that?”

So then, because I was in an honest mood, I confessed that two nights ago I might have wrecked the spirit of Christmas for our oldest when she caught me scrolling through “Elf on the Shelf Ideas for Parents” on my Pinterest feed.

“Mom,” she piped up timidly, surprising me in the quiet. “Does the elf move itself or is it the parents?”

Oh no…oh no…oh no.

“What do you think?” I asked softly.

“Well, I saw what you were looking at on your phone. Now I think it’s the parents.”

Oh no again.

In my defense I thought the child was already asleep while I scrolled and snuggled in the dark of her room. And also I forget that she can read now. She is eight but I forget that sometimes too. Because it all goes so fast and in my mind she’s still three and pudgy and twirling in that oversized quilted blue dress she wouldn’t take off for a year.

Eight? Is that an age where a kid might stop believing? She has been skeptical of this Christmas magic Santa thing since she could express it. She’s a practical kid and the details of a man who delivers presents to every child in the world in a flying sleigh pulled by an animal that doesn’t even fly in real life just doesn’t line up with the things she’s come to know about how the world works. And so that’s why we told her that to believe is part of the magic.

And so that’s what I told her the night I got caught planning that felt elf’s next move. I told her I think she could still choose to believe. And then I added something stupid trying to explain the Pinterest feed, like the pictures were of other families’ elves that moms share for fun. And the kid, bless her, I think she just pretended to buy it.

Now that I think of it, it was the same way I pretended to buy it was I was about her age, old enough to know better, but aware of what it meant to choose reality over magic. To me it seemed too close to the fire of adulthood, and I was still young enough to know I wasn’t ready for that yet.

So that night I tiptoed out of Edie’s room and moved the elf to the windowsill, wrapped her in a little washcloth and propped her up against a bottle of cough syrup in solidarity with the youngest member of the family who hadn’t lifted her head off the couch for 24 hours.

On the long list of things to worry about, the idea that my oldest daughter might become wise and ruin the magic for our youngest didn’t occur to me until it was time to locate that sickly little elf in the morning. But Edie woke up surprised and happy to see the elf and Rosie was still sick and I had a deadline and appointments to reschedule so I could stay home and care for her, and my husband had a calf to find and hay to haul and Edie had a computer test she was worried about and it was just another day in reality, the way the days come at all of us regardless of the season, the traditions or the size of your Christmas tree. Except on Christmas especially, it’s nice to have a little magic help us along. Hopefully that magic is currently working as a disinfectant…

Stay healthy out there!

Listen to the new single “Whiskey in the Winter. New full length album out everywhere January 11!

Oh, Christmas Tree

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Thanksgiving weekend we completed the great Christmas Tree hunt tradition at the ranch. Nature melted the snow away but held on to its cold and wind and so we thought we better get out in the hills before we needed to borrow the neighbor’s snowmobile. So we bundled up the troops and headed out to a spot in the home pasture where we spotted a cedar we thought might work on one of our rides this fall.

It didn’t take long to find it again out there stretching toward the sky among the scrub brush and thistle, the bottom three feet of its trunk rubbed bare by the deer.

Now I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, a potential Christmas tree out in the wild is not the same size as a potential Christmas tree in the house. My daughters, standing under the boughs of the 12-foot tree standing in its natural habitat declared the tree “tiny” before helping running up a tall butte after their cousins and sliding down on their butts.

I’ve been in this same situation for years now, so I knew to save my argument about it being too big to fit in the door. And I didn’t say a thing about how it will take up our entire living room. And not a word was spoken about how we need to work on getting the house addition done just to display this tree. It’s not worth it and it doesn’t matter to my husband anyway. If he thinks the tree will fit the tree will fit.

And so, with the help of my dad and the tarp straps that my husband always magically seems to have in every nook and cranny of every vehicle and every pocket of every jacket he’s ever owned, we strapped the world’s-most-perfect-Christmas-Tree on to the back (and top) of our ATV and puttered on home to the house where we nearly pulled the front door off its hinges dragging it into the entryway to thaw out.

But, alas, the hinges stayed put and the neighborhood (a.k.a my parents and my little sister’s family) filed in a few minutes later to get in on the spectacle of getting that thing through the house, propped up in the tree stand and screwed to the wall without any of us, tree included, losing any limbs.

And yes, you heard it right, after all these years as adults who cut wild Christmas trees from the wild prairies, and one year where the tree nearly took out my oldest daughter while she spun innocently in her Elsa dress in the living room, we have learned to skip past the hazard and just screw the tree to the wall right away. 

Is it weird that our giant Christmas tree ritual has become a spectator sport for the rest of my family, complete with bloody marys and snacks? I don’t know what’s normal anymore.

At any rate, the tree is up and it smells beautiful, the way a cedar tree should and not like wild cat pee like that one unfortunate year we only speak of when we have the tree thawed out inside and can guarantee it hasn’t happened again. These types of issues don’t occur with the plastic tree sane people take out of storage year after year says my mother over her first sip of bloody mary. Since her kids have been out of the house for years, she’s been basking in the Martha Stewart Magazine tree that she’s always wanted. Tinsel, coyote pee and abandoned bird nest not welcome.

Also, kittens. Kittens are not welcome, which is a problem because we happen to have one and that was stupid timing and also another good reason to put a few more screws in the boards connected the tree trunk to the wall.

Anyway, Merry Christmas. I hope your traditions are bringing you as much joy as they are hassle. If you need me I’ll be looking for that dang elf…

Snowed in

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Happy winter! It’s official now, on December 22nd. I’m writing this in the middle of another no-school, all the roads are closed, the wind is whipping 40 MPH snow day.

And I wrote the column during the last snow day. December has had it’s way with us. So Chad and I had plenty of time between tractor thawing and snow blowing to sit down and visit a bit about windchill and frozen equipment, digging out and and staying home, Christmas traditions and finding gratitude where you can. Even Edie pops in for a snow day report. Then stick around to hear both she and little sister Rosie sing their favorite Christmas song this year. 

Merry Christmas. Thank you for following along this year and sharing your stories with us. Sending you love, gratitude for the year behind us and hope for the year ahead.

Listen to the podcast here or on Spotify or Apple Podcasts

The magic season

Oh wow it’s magical around here. Two young kids waking up each morning smack dab in the middle of the Christmas season to see what shenanigans the little felt elf got into this time will make it that way. So will 4 to 8 inches of heavy snow and a promise of at least 40 mph gusts to make it nice and blinding, just like the North Pole.

Yes, we’re smack dab in the middle of the Christmas countdown. As I write this almost every road in the state is closed and so we’re in a good ‘ol fashioned snow day, except with laptops and virtual learning. And depending on your experience with Google classroom, the whole magic of the snow day experience can go either way.

And so can waking up at 3 am realizing that you forgot to move that enchanting felt elf. In which case you can either embrace that you are the magic or you can use your favorite cuss words as you squinty slipper shuffle down the steps to move the elf from the bathroom perch to the fridge between the ketchup and the soy sauce, wrapped up in an old dish towel for dramatic effect.

I’d say the magic is in remembering to move it at all. Bonus for a clever idea.

It’s worth it in the morning though. My kids are in that special spot of childhood where they still believe, and finding their elf in a toilet paper hammock is about as thrilling as it gets. Although the concept of Jesus and Santa both watching you gets a bit confusing for the five-year-old, especially when the felt elf becomes a part of the felt nativity scene. (Hey, I’m running out of ideas here.)

But it’s not just the Christmas season and the elf-drawing-faces-on-our-bananas- with-a-Sharpie that’s bringing this magic, it’s the kids themselves. They just have it beaming out of their curious eyes, skipping with them to meet their friends at school and almost knocking the Christmas tree over with each of the thousands of cartwheels they’re throwing in the living room.

The lineup of performances and celebration helps too. Last week my girls ran a regular rock star schedule and I happily (and with a supply of Motrin and coffee) played the role of their tour bus driver, stylist, caterer, and personal assistant. We had a first grade Christmas program on Tuesday, a pre-school Christmas Caroling experience on Friday morning and a dress rehearsal for a cheer performance on Friday afternoon. They gave it their all in their cheer recital Saturday afternoon and then we hosted Rosie’s five-year-old swimming birthday party on Saturday night. Then we wrapped it all up with my personal favorite, the Church nativity play on Sunday morning. The girls dressed as angels and they both had lines that we’ve been practicing all month. And we got to dress in our best and watch as Edie the Angel inched all the wise men and poor little Joseph out of the way so she could do the actions to the song front and center like she was born to do.

Man, wasn’t it just yesterday that she was baby Jesus who had a blowout mid-manger scene?

Maybe we all secretly wished for this snow day to slow it down for a minute so that we might sit on our cozy chair, our kids still in their jammies and watch a Christmas movie while procrastinating trying to figure out how to log-in to their Chrome books.

I’m rambling a little I know. I sat down this morning with the idea that I would write down a few lessons I’ve learned from this season of the year and of this middle-aged-mid-parenting life. But all I want to do is write down these little things I don’t want to fade from my memory: my daughters’ red tights and sparkly holiday shoes. Their morning bed head and crumpled Christmas PJs. The mess of graham cracker gingerbread houses and h alf-drunk holiday cups of hot chocolate taking over my kitchen table and singing Edie’s favorite Christmas song at the top of our lungs on the car ride to school. And even that silly elf that wakes me up and reminds me that these are the days. These are the exhausting, adorable, hilarious, snuggle-clad, sugar cookie filled days, frosted in sketchy weather with holiday sprinkles on top.

In case you forgot to remember. In case you’ve never forgotten.

Anyway, I got a little off task here, but here’s one lesson I really wanted to pass along: Tie the tree to the wall. Fishing string works great. Do it even if no one’s doing cartwheels in your living room. Trust me.

And whatever phase you’re in this Christmas, may you do your best to find peace where you are, even if it’s 3 am and you’re barely awake dressing a felt elf in Barbie clothes…

We’re all our own Christmas DJs

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We’re all our own Christmas DJs
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This morning I played the DJ for two little girls sitting in car seats in the back of my SUV covered in a nice layer of dust and then ice and then snow and another sprinkle of dirt.

As the sun rose slowly over the horizon, turning the sky from navy to blue to gold to pink, my girls sang along to the Christmas version of our life’s playlist. Their little snowboots keeping time with the beat and their heads bobbing as they watched the electrical poles, black cows and pumping units zoom past on the other side of frosty windows.

“Play ‘Jingle Bells’ next!”

“O Christmas Tree!”

“Now ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer!’” I obliged each request, the world of music, every song we can think of, now at our fingertips these days. All you have to do is call it out. And I sang along too, running and rerunning my holiday and end-of-year to-do list through my head to the tune of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.”

It was only four more days until Christmas! We knew because the elf in the taco shell in the messy pantry told us. A few weeks ago, that elf was more cleverly placed — in a Barbie boat floating in the kitchen sink, on the Christmas tree, dangling from the wreath, then the chandelier, then holding baby Jesus in the nativity scene. By now, it seems she’s running out of ideas…

We’re right smack in the middle of the season of tradition, and some of those traditions sent me to the grocery store 37 times a week and I still forgot the key ingredient to the fudge recipe. So I called over to Mom’s because she’s the official Queen of Christmas. She is stocked and ready and has had the Trans-Siberian Orchestra and the Kathy Mattea Christmas albums on repeat while she decks her halls for our family gathering on Christmas morning. So of course she had three cans of evaporated milk. And no, she didn’t need me to replace them. She just has extra.

That’s how you do the holidays in the middle of nowhere. You buy extra. One day I’ll learn.

But contrary to popular belief, Christmas comes even if you don’t get your fudge made, cut, packaged and distributed to every person who has ever crossed your path. And if that elf never moves from that shelf, or even shows up at all, it’s fine. Really.

After a challenging year where day to day I didn’t know if I would feel bad or worse, I decided, this Christmas, I’m trying really hard to be here for whatever it is. If making the fudge brings me joy, I make the fudge. If I drop the whole pan on the kitchen floor and don’t have the energy to start another batch, well, that’s that. It’s good enough. If I don’t have the energy for it, I’m going to sit it out. If I do, well, then bring it on. Bring it all on. Let’s not forget that we’re our own Christmas DJs here…

Because these are indeed the days. I have a 6-year-old and a 4-year-old in the house and that’s pretty much all the magic I need. And I want to be here, fully present for all its layers — sprinkles on top of dust on top of scattered toys and excited squeals and all of the ways my girls mispronounce the lyrics in every verse of the “Twelve Days of Christmas” at the top of their sweet little lungs as time ticks on with the rhythm of those electrical poles whizzing by on the other side of their frosty windows…

Correction: In my Dec. 4 column, I shared a recipe for my mom’s fudge. The evaporated milk ingredient should have been a 12-ounce can, not an 8-ounce can. I sincerely apologize for all the kitchen cussing this error may have caused. I owe you all a batch. I’ll get to it. Until then, merry merry Christmas from the ranch!

On Charity and showing our kids they are loved

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Charity and showing our children they are loved
Forum Communications

The other day, Edie declared she was going to give one of her dolls to charity.

“Who’s Charity?” Rosie asked, confused as to why anyone would think to give a doll away, even if you have another just like it in your room. According to a 4-year-old, you can never have too many.

“Charity is for kids who don’t have toys. Rosie, there are some kids who don’t have toys!” Edie explained to her little sister who didn’t seem convinced of the plan.

And she put the doll in a leftover Happy Birthday gift bag and vowed to look through her things to find more toys to add to it.

Charity. I tried to explain the concept to them last year, when they were freshly 3 and 5. I took them through the house on a deep clean, going through toy boxes and drawers, under beds and in the basement, pulling out misplaced blocks and tiny jewelry and naked dolls with tangled hair and making piles for trash and piles for giveaway.

Which, of course, resulted in my two girls rediscovering stuffed animals and games they hadn’t snuggled or played with in a year and falling back in love. And so I had to resort to the covert operation of sneaking things into boxes and out to the car while they were asleep or at school.

They have too much stuff and I hate it. What a very privileged thing to say.

“Eat your supper please, don’t you know there are kids who don’t have enough to eat?!” Which is a very mom thing to say. And sadly, true. I only wish making my kids eat the last few bites of broccoli was going to change anything for the kids who need and deserve so much more in this life.

To raise my children with a grasp of gratitude and compassion is something that keeps me up at night. How lucky are we that this can be one of my main concerns? Because we have the means to keep our children clothed and fed and, additionally, celebrating birthday parties with friends, decorated in their favorite colors, serving their favorite foods. Which makes it hard for their little brains to get a grasp on a perspective. Isn’t every kid’s life like this?

And so I took an ornament off the giving tree last night after Edie’s kindergarten Christmas concert. She stood up there on that stage in a fresh new outfit, black tights and new red, sparkly shoes that we had to get in a size larger because she’s stretching and growing out and into so many things these days. Shoes are just one of them.

On our way home, Edie asked me what the ornament said.

“Girl. Age 6. Special requests: gloves, winter gear,” I replied. “We’re going to have to go shopping. Will you girls help me? I figured you would know just what she might like.”

Edie wanted to know what her name was. Rosie wanted to know how we were going to get her the toys if we didn’t know where she lived. How will she know it was from us?

How do you explain that it doesn’t matter? We don’t need credit. We don’t need to know her. We just want her to have a good Christmas. How do you explain what real need is to two small children who have everything they could want?

How do we give them what they need, but also make them understand what it means to work for it? How do we give them a charmed childhood and keep them grateful? How do we make them feel special, but keep them humble?

My daughters are coming to the age where they are becoming aware of the world around them, of the kids who have more and those who have less. How do we teach them to treat each with kindness and respect? How do we teach them to only compare in the way in which it makes them feel grateful, generous and compassionate?

When my little sister was a kid, she was out doing chores with Dad and asked him, “Are we poor?” My dad was taken aback a bit, wondering where this question was coming from. Turns out she noticed that we didn’t have a four-wheeler or a new pickup, a boat or bigger house like some of her friends.

“Would all of that make you happier?” he asked her. She thought probably no, but she was aware. And she was wondering.

If only we knew for certain that every child in this community was held safe and armed with what they needed to stand up against the tough elements of weather and life. If I could give the gift of reassurance and wrap it up in that box with the hat and gloves and Barbie doll, I would do it. If I could make my kids understand that in the long run, they won’t remember how many gifts were under the tree, but for a child who has none, well, that’s something that sticks with them.

And we can’t do so much about any of it, but we can do something. And so we did something.