Mostly because it reminds me how much my kid loves his cats...
My new Christmas print. So pretty!
Sammy set up his cars. To sell.
Black cherry creams and oranges. I MAY have been living off them for the past week!
Sammy gave his little friend Madeline a card. He received this back. "From Madeline To Samuel. Thank you for the card. Now I will give you this card." Hee!
I have a song for every memory locked in my brain. It's just how I'm wired. Sometimes the song makes complete sense. Others...not so much.
My grandma was a no nonsense woman. I have a lot of memories concerning her: her love of Dallas (the show) and Harlequins (the book). She loved 'sandwich spread' and if I was with her when she ran out, we would go buy more at Piggly Wiggly. The first time I ever heard the phrase "hang him by the short hairs" (which took me a LONG time to understand) was from the lips of my grandma. We would get to spend the night with her most Friday nights, with our animal pillows that zipped and turned into a bag for pjs and toothbrushes and our fun sleeping bags. When we got there, she would make frito pie for dinner and biscuits and gravy (not as well as my mom, but her biscuits were from a CAN...something we never got at home!) the next morning. We would spend hours picking raspberries from her bushes and playing with the box of monogrammed pens with erasers she had (of which I always tried to smuggle some home...my love and hoarding of pens started young!). I now have the quilt that she had on her guest bed - patchwork and full of memories. But the strongest memory is having a little radio in her back bedroom and being introduce to Word Up by Cameo. I don't remember the particulars of why or the getting away with it, because my grandma was a lot of things, but a fan of 80s funk she was not, but every time I think of staying overnight with my grandma and that quilt in her back room, I think of this song.
And in case you were wondering? Yes. I do know every word from memory. Because my brain clearly has nothing better to do...'No romance, no romance, no romance for me...'
Christmas time in our home is slow. It's always been mostly slow, but for the past two years it's been more deliberately slow. Most presents are purchased before Thanksgiving. We've abandoned Christmas cards in favor of blog or facebook or email mass greetings, if anything. Decorating is simple. Our focus is on the slow and what we love: being together. Everything we do focuses on relaxing and being together. And when I hear tales of stress and worry, I'm grateful for that. I've found that this ties into our search for meaning and experiences over things nicely.
This Christmas, Isaac and I are doing things a little differently. We save all year for Christmas and then usually split the money for presents for one another. I had a tough time coming up with anything I wanted, this year. Same with Isaac. So we pooled our money, a small amount excepted, for something we both wanted and would have purchased anyway. It seemed the smarter, more streamlined thing to do. It wasn't a "thing", but it would be something we always used. I think we are both very happy with the choice made and it seemed especially sweet this year with the word simplicity hanging over all we do.
After that choice, I kept my mind focused on traditions old and new. Things didn't seem to fit with my new outlook. We always go look at lights Christmas Eve, but it's getting more and more tough to a) find a good place to go and b) WANT to go out in the cold. So now we are faced with a Christmas devoid of most tradition. We've stripped back so fully that we are faced with a nearly open canvas of holidays to build on. First...YIKES! Second...EEEEEE! I feel pregnant with possibilities. Dinner out on Christmas Eve? Ice cream? Hot chocolate? Nothing except staying home playing games? Go with the flow every year? We've decided to head to Salt Lake the week of Christmas this year and go to Bruges and do a little window shopping. Maybe that will stick. Maybe heading to Park City, as well. Next year (or the next...) I think we'd like to do NYC at Christmas. It's so up in the air. So...expectant of possibility. This is the time I've been so excited with my word. We've shed stuff to the point of possibility without worrying about expectations. That is true Christmas magic.
...since I've properly freaked out over my kid, right? How about today? Good for you?
I just signed the papers to keep Sammy at his charter school for next year. I paused MIGHTILY when I wrote "1st grade" down. First grade?! How on earth did that happen? I can't believe that this school year is half over. He seems so much bigger every week, lately. His vocabulary is crazy. His experiences? Crazy. He's completely grown up the past five months and is weathering life so much better than I could have ever expected. We seem to have taught him to roll with the punches fairly well and he's such an even little kid. We've only had the one incident with that girl making him cry which is more than I could have ever hoped for! I love that I still get to walk him to his classroom (even if he sprints off before I have a chance to say bye) and pick him up at his door. I'm starting to freak out that the time for that is probably growing shorter, though it seems his school is a little more lax in that area than some.
On the flip side, I've also been worried about him lately. I fear he may be too clingy for some of his friends. He seems to come home at least once a week with tales of friends telling him he can't play with them and I fear my history is repeating. Everyone seems to love him, but he flits from group to group until he decides he doesn't want to play with them or they decide they don't want him. Is this typical 5 year old behavior or should I really be worried that my son is a social pariah like his mom was in school? I had such hopes over a couple of little boys in the class, but they seem glommed together and Sammy is having a little tougher time breaking in. I'm sure part of that is my reluctance over play dates and raising a kid that is a little less boy and a little more 35 year old. I just don't know how much to intervene, yet. Or at all. Or what to say, if anything. He went marching off to school with a letter he wrote (another sign he's mine! Oh, with the embarrassing letters!) to one little boy "so that he will like me again". Sigh. I already acknowledge I'm the hovering mom (which I'm fine with!), but I do try to strike a balance between appropriate and crazy hovering, you know? The line, lately, though, is blurring. So very blurrily...
I have not had 'time' to sit down and blog about my intended topics. Ok. That's not entirely true. I have the time, but my attention seems to be diverted every time I begin; by next year's New York trip, nervousness over next year's word (I'm hyperventilating already!), wrapping up all manner of year end things, personal life hiccups that are exhausting me, etc. So, instead, you get rambling. For now. Sorry.
I've been helping my sister set up her new etsy shop, which should be live by the new year. I finished her business cards yesterday and they turned out really cute, if I do say so myself. Now I need to work on pictures and words for both her shop and her husband's.
We signed up for a hulu plus trial and I can't figure out if it's worth it or not. I'm leaning toward no, but certainly that can't be right, right? I'm hopeful we can get caught up on Justified before the new season starts and then just be able to stream it. *fingers crossed* That is, if I can figure it out...
I'm old.
I'm also grouchy.
We had a member of our church congregation pass away last week. He was a funny guy. Very sexist as only someone that old can be, but always lovely to talk to. We'd often run into him at the farmer's market during the summer and he was always funny and kind. I've never known someone who loved their wife as much as he and I'm happy thinking they are finally reunited after 10 years. And, well, that puts us only a handful of people away from being the oldest people in the congregation. I wish I were kidding.
My neck therapy seems to be working. On my neck. It's making my shoulder and pit super sore, though, that I'm beginning to be a bit annoyed that I've traded one thing for another. Isaac believes it'll go away with a little time and exercise, but I'm impatient.
Sigh...I'm not in the lightest of moods lately. I need to shed about 10 tons of worry and concern. And learn how to relax. I just DO NOT know how to do that. Shouldn't there be some class upon graduating to adulthood that covers relaxing? Because I clearly need it. And the one to learn to be jolly...
