The best way to spread Christmas cheer...

We are still trucking along on our countdown to the birth of Christ. This was a week loaded with crafts and music, movies, lights, and goodies.

December 8:

The symphony orchestra here put on a family-friendly Christmas concert. So we went. We tapped our feet and bobbed our heads as they played. We sang along to the sing-along bits. We might have even sung along (although much more quietly) to the not-so-sing-along bits. Because it's how we roll. We like singing. And songs.

December 9:

This was our bad day. The boys misbehaved. I misbehaved right back. It was ugly. In between the ugliness, we cut about 100 paper snowflakes to liven up the classroom. Later we made snowman luminaries and decorated our patio. Before bed we enjoyed hot cocoa and marshmallows. Even the bad days can be redeemed.

December 10:

We made "stained glass" Christmas trees for the sliding glass doors. Then we met Daddy for dinner and went out together to choose this year's new ornaments. At first the kids were disappointed because I didn't go to everyone's favorite big box store. They might have been eyeing some Star Wars ornaments there a few days prior. And I might have avoided it to force them to think outside the galaxy far far away. In the end, they were thrilled with what they found. N picked a golden-sequined nutcracker, W picked a panda, and L picked a kitty. So them. I love it.

December 11:

This one always tops my list of best days. We snuggled up for a movie marathon and slumber party under the tree with a few of our favorites: Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas. This year Elf graduated from a Mommy/Daddy movie to one for the whole family, and the laughter was loud and contagious. Okay, so it didn't end up being much of a slumber party. All the men in this house are night owls, so there was no chance of any of them falling asleep during the movies (although the same cannot be said for me). The grown up boy and 2/3 of the littles immediately decided their beds sounded way more comfortable than the sleeping bags on the floor. They abandoned me and Thing 2. At some point in the night, we each retired to our rooms also. We are lame, and I wouldn't change a thing.

December 12:

The kids and I headed to the Aviation Museum to see the miniature train, grab a candy cane from Santa, do some airplane crafts, and practice our skills in the flight simulators. It's so pretty there, and it's not crowded, so we get plenty of personal attention from everyone. It was lovely and low key. The perfect end to the day was a Christmas gathering of our friends from church.

December 13:

The light rain all day kept the crowds away from the Christmas lights at the botanical gardens. No complaints from us! It was beautiful. And what's a little damp and chill when you can just pop into a pavilion for cocoa and popcorn?

December 14:

Cookie Day! Another favorite. We made our list of favorite treats to bake and eat and give away. From there to the grocery store for all the ingredients. And an afternoon of baking and decorating and sampling with my little helpers. Deliciously fun.

Bah Humbug

I love sharing our holiday traditions with you all during this time of year.

We craft, we sing, we see lights, and we learn about Jesus. We take really cute pictures and post them to this blog or to Facebook. If I did Instagram and Twitter, I'm sure there would be sweet and funny things posted there, too. I'm too much of a curmudgeon to learn new(er) social media, however, so we are limited to just the two.

When I share, I'm not trying to brag or make us look like some sort of perfect example of what to do during the holidays. I'm just trying to share our fun.

But to be completely transparent, we have lots of not-so-fun moments. Things get pretty messy some days.

www.jillheupel.com

So I'm going to throw a little bit of honesty out there about our day today and how I almost...very nearly...actually let my plans and expectations (and the boys' failure to live up to them) steal my Christmas joy.

I had a couple of fun crafts planned, a little patio decorating, and the whole day was to be capped off with some hot chocolate and marshmallows.

What the advent activity for today should have read is, "do whatever the f**k you want, because that's what you are going to do anyway, you selfish little imps." I'm still considering using that in a day or two just to offset another set of expectations.

I should have known that things were not going to go at all according to my vision when I had put the entire advent calendar into the trash can before lunch and informed the boys that, if they were just too big to get excited about these sorts of things, I didn't need to waste my time planning them.

It was one of the highlights of my parenting career, let me tell you.

There were many tears, several apologies, and assurances that they did, in fact, care deeply about the advent activities. Even the ones they had complained about ended up being some of their favorites, they insisted. They promised to be good if only I would remove the calendar from the rubbish bin and give them another chance.

In the spirit of grace and mercy (and because I actually wanted to do some of the things we had coming up), I restored the calendar to its rightful place on the shelf.

It didn't take long, however, for things to go south again.

I entered the classroom and asked them to get ready for our first craft. This was met with cries of, "not yet!" from one little man while the other two flat-out ignored me. I asked them directly to clear off the table so we could get started. Nobody stirred. I left the room and closed the door behind me. Within minutes there was the sound of wild play. It wasn't until 45 minutes later that anyone even realized I had left them and we had not done our craft.

They wanted to know if the room was "clean enough." Truthfully, it looked worse than it had before, and I had had enough.

I told them that, if they didn't care about me, my time, and my plans, then I didn't care about theirs. I didn't care if the room was clean. I didn't care if they were finally ready to sit down with me. I didn't care if they didn't get to do today's advent activity or any other advent activity the rest of the month. I was on a roll.

I told them that they didn't care about the abundant awesomeness that I had planned for them, that I really wanted to give them. They didn't care that there were marshmallows and hot chocolate just waiting for them. They didn't care that I had really wanted to take them to the pool today. They didn't care about any of that because they were too wrapped up in their own little "right now" to see. They couldn't get past the fact that they were having a little bit of fun and understand that what they were missing out on was actually much better! They were too selfish and single minded to see past their temporal pleasures into the abundant blessings which awaited them!

Hmm.

Somehow that took a theological turn.

I am sure glad God doesn't rain down lectures on my head the way I do on my children.

Or, maybe He does. He just uses my own mouth to hammer it into my brain.

Anyway, I digress.

Well, my 3 sons had 3 very different reactions.

My praise whore set to work immediately cleaning with an intensity I've never seen before. Then he admitted the ways he had been disrespectful and inconsiderate and asked if we could please do what I had planned.

My sensitive soul wept bitterly and then quietly cried out to me that he was so sad that we weren't going to do the activity because doing things together as a family was the very best thing about every day. He was so sorry he hadn't acted that way.

My resolute spirit sat in stoic silence. He had nothing to say to me. He was unwilling to admit he had been wrong in any way. Until...I began doing a craft with his brothers and he was not able to participate. Only then was there contrition.

We finished up our holiday activities after a very exhausting and emotional afternoon. The only thing we missed out on was a few hours at the pool, which had been traded for time outs and extra chores.

Everyone even got to have hot chocolate with marshmallows before bed.

Only one mug had a shot of rum in it, though.

Let the countdown begin!

It's that time of year again, and we are SO. EXCITED.

We like to take the days leading up to Christmas as a time to prepare our hearts to worship Jesus and thank God for the greatest gift He has given us, His Son. We also like to sing at the top of our lungs and have more than a little bit of fun along the way.

Here's how we spent the first week of Advent this year.

December 1:

We hauled boxes out of the garage and decked our halls. We don't have any balls of holly, but we do have stories to tell for each and every ornament on our tree. Around here we don't have the energy or patience for magazine-perfect trees. We each get a new ornament every year, and on decorating day, we remember where we were and why we picked what we did. And no decorating day would be complete without mugs of steaming hot cocoa!

December 2:

A trip to the library to pick out some new-to-us Christmas books began our evening of reading holiday books together, singing carols around the piano, playing "mystery carol" pictionary, and "hide-and-sing" (a musical version of hot and cold). This day was so simple, but has been one of my favorites so far!

December 3:

We found a local pet shop that had an "angel tree" for adoptable rescue animals. Since we aren't really in the market for a pet (well, one of isn't, anyway), we wanted to find a way to help out some sweet creatures. Each of the boys picked one adorable fur baby from the tree and bought several items from its wish list. Then we loved on some rescue animals for several hours. I was strictly warned not to "get any ideas." It was (is) hard not to!

December 4:

The nature center here had a lovely Christmas party filled with crafts, carolers, snacks, stories, and games! Not to mention the displays and critters that are always there. Daddy got to come along with us, which is always a treat, and we had a delightful evening!

December 5:

It's Gingerbread Day! This year we baked and decorated Ninjabread cookies and decorated a house. What house doesn't need ninjas protecting it?

December 6:

Happy St. Nicholas Day! We learned about the true St. Nicholas and participated in his spirit of giving by filling shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child. You can, too! The boys are always very generous in theory. They do get a little look of panic on their faces when they realize they are giving some of their own money, but manage to get over it pretty quickly. Then we made some adorable Santa ornaments with paint and duct tape. The highlight of the evening for me was a mini recital of "Jolly Old Saint Nicholas" by the twins.

December 7:

We took another trip to the nature center and learned about the different ways that animals cope with winter: migration, adaptation, and hibernation. Back home, we used pinecones and felt to create our own winter creatures: an owl, a mouse, a penguin, a cardinal, a squirrel, a snowshoe hare, and a fox. They are adorable just sitting on the shelf, but the boys love to play with them, too!

Public Speaking...sort of

So my boys have been working on memorizing a poem to perform in front of an audience. This was our first attempt at this kind of memorization and public speaking, and they have been pretty nervous about it.

A few weeks back, they each picked a poem (or 2) to practice. We kind of have a thing for Shel Silverstein, so they all gravitated toward his books. They've got good taste. And very mature. Although I haven't quite sold them on the merits of Walt Whitman...yet.

Well, I told them they were going to have to stand up in front of an audience and recite.

And then I said it would happen "soon."

About a week later, they started to doubt that I was going to follow through on this one little bit of the lesson. Likely with good reason, seeing as how I had no real plan for finding said audience. Obviously this has not been my finest homeschool teacher moment. I'm sure there will be worse ones to come, though, so I'm not sweating it.

In order to salvage the lesson and not chalk it up as a complete mommy fail, I am counting the world wide web as the audience.

And so, without further ado, I present to you our poems:

Mr. N, reciting Shel Silverstein's "Hippopotamus Sandwich"

Mr. W, with both "Snap" and "Skating" (he liked the shorter ones, so had to pick 2)

Mr. L, performing "The Worst," also by Shel Silverstien

What he whispers at the end is "who is standing right behind you." He got a bit caught up in the drama of it all, I think.

Our main goal was NOT to sound like this:

It was actually much more difficult than you would imagine.

Haunted.

Mary : Does everyone who dies become a ghost?  

Archibald: They’re only a ghost if someone alive is still holding onto them.

(The Secret Garden, musical)

My Octobers are haunted.

October has been my favorite month for as long as I can remember. There are still deliciously sunny days that let you know that you have just left summer behind, and they are so much sweeter knowing they won't last. The nights are crisp with autumn's chill, just right for sitting around a fire. Everything seems to smell and taste of apples, cinnamon, and pumpkin. And those colors?

Perfection.

And as if that weren't enough to make me love this month so much, it all ends with one giant costume party. I'm like a little child when it comes to playing dress up. Seriously. I think one day a week should be designated to dressing in costume. It never gets old.

Perhaps my favorite thing about October, though, is that  October made me a mommy. I love celebrating my little men, and the fact that their birthday falls squarely in the best month of the year is the icing on the cake.

Even though I'm already in love, October woos me again year after year. *swoon*

But my Octobers are haunted.

Two years ago we were balancing the amazing weather, food, beauty, birthdays, candy, and costumes with watching my mother die. I'm not going to lie. There were some pretty rough days. On the whole, though, we managed to create some wonderful memories, and no celebrations were interrupted or overshadowed by funeral arrangements.

In fact, we had arrived back home after the Halloween parade, had changed into pjs, and had the kids all tucked in bed for the night before the phone rang with the news that she had gone.

"Well," I thought, "she gave me October. Thanks for that gift, Mom."

I didn't realize it then, but she also took October.

Every leaf.

Every cool breeze.

Every sip of warm cider.

Every costumed child.

She's there. Haunting my Octobers. Casting a little shadow of sorrow and memory over every glorious day. Sometimes it makes me cry. Sometimes I get mad at her. Sometimes it makes me smile, albeit often through tears. And sometimes I am grateful for the painful memories, for they make the good ones so much sweeter.

Sometimes I think she might just have planned it that way. She is forever engraved upon my favorite time of year.

I miss you, Mom, you crazy old witch. I expect you to keep on haunting my Octobers for many more years.