My Family's Holiday Values

The values I grew up with are so totally different than the ones I hold now. Growing up it was all about presents. I'm sure I knew about baby Jesus being born but I am equally sure I did not know what that represented to mankind.

I like to think that my husband and I put Christ back into Christmas for our children. We always made it a point to do for others at Christmas and include the children in this as well. Their classes at school would adopt a family and money would be collected and presents bought for this family. We would take "mittens" off the tree at church and replace them with real socks and mittens for children that needed them. We even spent Christmas Day at an shelter serving food to the homeless. And as always, Christmas Eve was spent at church. I still like that. Christmas Eve the family goes to church. I wish I could say the whole family but, unfortunately my son no longer believes and doesn't attend with us. He has new girl in his life who does believe. Maybe this year if we ask him, they will both attend. Certainly worth a try.

Sitting at work in the dark. The local power company had to take most of the city I work in off-grid while they repaired damages to a sub-station thanks to thieves. My particular building however, still has limited power because of an emergency power source to keep our main frame from crashing unexpectedly. Everyone is walking around in the semi-darkness chatting and laughing. With all that has been going on in my life lately (running 100 mph non-stop), it's making me wish that I could take my life "off grid" for awhile. Everyone slow down, spend time together, enjoying each others' company. That is what is suppose to happen at Christmas but we find more and more often, we're running from place to place and always behind schedule.

I haven't looked at my Jessica Sprague classwork in over a week and we are suppose to be on Day 3. I want to take time to look it over and get caught up. I need to go home now and make 10 locker decorations for my daughters cheer squad. We have locker decorating on Sunday evening before Meet the Team and we have a game tomorrow night, a wrestling meet Saturday afternoon, another basketball game Saturday night and my husband and I will be at bingo on Sunday afternoon. Doesn't leave a lot of time for creativity so I need to get cracking.

So behind...so, so behind

The past four days are a blur. I spent all of Friday either running to the hospital or running to someone elses' house from the hospital. The good news is - everyone is home, healthy and recuperating. The bad news at times, I had no idea what day or time it was. By the time I made my last ambulatory run (taking my mom home) and picking up her pain medication, it was 5:50 p.m. and I was suppose to be waiting in line at the movie theater with my sister to see New Moon in a city 30 minutes away from where I was. Wasn't happening. We were late getting to the theater but in time to not miss the movie. The movie for the most part was good. I'm not a big movie goer -- prefer watching from my comfy couch. But must admit, seeing Taylor and Robert 25' tall was an experience. Anyways - enjoyed the time with my sister and niece.

Saturday went by just as quickly. Wanted to finish my daughter's scrapbook for Sunday. Cait, my daughter, came to me around 5 p.m. and told me she wanted to make squash books for her three best friends (Andrew, Josh and Brandon) to give them at the football banquet. Okay - 3 scrapbooks--24 hours--not pictures or supplies ready. I can do that. Then, her boyfriend called and invited her to dinner with him and his mom. Love the kid but a little planning please! Cait didn't want to go by herself so she asked me to come along. Okay - who can turn down Olive Garden. Three hours later and a quick run through Target (to pickup our Shutterfly order) and Walmart to pick up goodie bag items for Phil and Jake and we were back home and scrapbooking. Cait worked so hard. She is by far not my craftiest child but she did a really good job and was so proud when she finished the last one up at 3:00 a.m.! Yes, we were going until 3 and fell into bed knowing we had a full day on Sunday.

Sunday flew by with bingo activities (a whole other story!). Before we knew it, it was football banquet time. All the mothers were gathered around sharing their scrapbooks they did for their children. It was so much fun. Speeches were a little long (but aren't they always), awards were quick and before we knew it, all the seniors were lined up to receive their scrapbooks. It was a little nostalgic, we were attending our last football banquet.

Monday came bright and early and even though I am off this week I still needed to go in to the office to get some things done. We have a candidate coming in next Monday and a slew of work to finish before he gets here. Needless to say, it was just a few short minutes ago that I even logged into Jessica Sprague to see what I have missed. Everyone has been so busy. The projects look great. I read all the notes from Jessica and stopped short of reading todays' class because I really want to get into all of the downloads she provided to us Friday and Saturday. So, that being said, I have a lot of work ahead of me.

Okay - so I haven't even read the assignment for today. Been so far behind. Had to take my mom to the hospital today for outpatient surgery. The surgeon was running 4 hours behind so instead of having surgery at 10:30 a.m. surgery finally took place at 2:30. Everything went well but she has to stay the night. That introduced a whole new set of complications because that meant my father was going to have to stay at home alone all night. NOT a good idea. I called my mom's brother to come and stay with him -- don't necessarily think that was the best option, but I am afraid to stay over and my husband can't because of work. I just tried to call my dad and see how things were but he has somehow recorded over the message on their answering machine and all you hear is him fumbling with the phone and cursing at my uncle. Oh boy - another thing to add to my list for tomorrow. Record a new message for my parents tomorrow. My uncle just called from the hospital, they can't find my mothers glasses or clothes she came in with. Oh boy. Better stop by their house tomorrow and pick up a change of clothes for her to come home in.

So as you can see, I am a little burnt out right now. Too tired to think. I did manage to purchase a scrapbook for my daughter tonight. A project I have spent the last 5 months on will be wrapping up soon. My daughter is a varsity cheerleader and our football awards is Sunday evening. All seniors (my daughter included) will be called to the floor and their parents will go down and give them a scrapbook of their "year". Because she is a cheerleader, I actually included not just senior year but all four years of high school. It ended up being 57 pages. I will continue it through basketball season to include her entire senior year. Our boys team is suppose to do fairly well this season, so I may be looking at another 8-10 pages. We'll have to see how things pan out. I'm really quite pleased with it thus far. I have one page to complete before Sunday night and it is actually a page that will contain a shutterfly photo book i did for Senior Week. I knew that to cover all the events of senior week it would take another 7-8 pages so I made a cute little 6x8 book that included all the events and a few special messages for her. It's really quite darling, I just need to create a page to include the book....hmmmm. Need to think on this. Well, until tomorrow.

The Prompts

Okay - got my next assignment today - 31 days of prompts. Printed them out nice and big - now I have to decide how I am going to display them so that they will be a constant in my life. Briefly glanced through the cards, don't want to spend too much time on them or I will psych myself out of working on the project. Some of the questions frighten me a little. I don't come from a family that had a lot of holiday traditions. Most of my childhood holidays (July 4th, Thanksgiving, Christmas) were spent trying to avoid my alcoholic father. I was well into my 20's when we (my mother, sisters and I) finally told him enough was enough. We did not want another holiday ruined by alcohol. So, much to our delight, my father did abstain from alcohol for a several years {holidays only}). So when I look back I don't have warm fuzzy scenes of the family gathering around the tree, attending church, having a nice holiday dinner. Christmas Eve's were loud, angry and chaotic. Christmas Days were hushed (hung over), tense and draining.

That's probably why when my husband and I started our own family, traditions were very important to me. I know that when my children look back on their childhood christmas' they will remember going out to cut down the Christmas tree (maybe not fondly :) ), me baking christmas cookies, receiving their special christmas bulb on the 12th day before Christmas and receiving their Christmas pajamas from Kris Kringle on Christmas Eve morning.

We have started so many traditions with them - maybe that's what I will focus on the most.

• Putting up the Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving
• A manger scene and christmas tree in every room of the house
• Decorating for 2 days
• 12 Days of Christmas with Kris Kringle
• Buying everyone a special ornament to receive on Cait's birthday
• Buying of the Christmas p.j.'s
• Hanging the mistletoe in the door
• Hiding the "pickle" in the tree

We have so many traditions now, I really have to sit and think about all of them.

Assignment #1

What are your holiday values? Those things we treasure most, and the hopes we have for ourselves and our families during the holiday season?

Family, together time, traditions, creating memories.

I would like for us to be together more this season. We've experienced some difficult times in our family and have come to realize that we are not always going to be able to have everyone together. I am sad to think that Jordan cannot be with us this holiday season. It makes me sad to think that I too could have a holiday without a child being there. They are all getting older and it seems that it won't be long before they will have other commitments and responsibilities that will take them away. I joke that it won't be long before it will be just Matt and I but, reality is, it won't. We had so many years of rushing around to one event or another, driving to games, practices, performances, shopping, decorating, baking, entertaining that to realize within the next two years - all of our children will be on their own (or away at school). Wow - I will actually clean the house and it will stay that way for longer than 10 minutes. I look in their bedrooms and realize that within the next two years, they are simply going to be empty shells of what they use to be. In another four years, they will become guest rooms for when someone comes to visit. That reminds me, I need to take pictures now to show that they were lived in.

I want to strengthen the girls desire for tradition and holidays with family. I don't want them to get to the place where they think it's easier not going home and just calling instead. I want to always be surrounded by my family, my children, their children (when its' time). :) I want memories of the kids sitting around playing games, having fun, laughing and enjoying each others' company. I remember growing up with cousins and playing with them and having fun but after my grandmother died - that was it. No more gatherings. Is that what is going to happen for my children?

Wow - I want a lot. I believe in order to achieve any of this - I have to start. I have to commit - I need list things that can achieve these goals. I have to stop being lazy and commit to being present and involved. What are things I can do to realize my goals:

Commit to attending church with Caitlin each week. Can we both commit to attending St. Francis with Matt? Can I overcome my displeasure with Fr. Bob to attend church? How can I adjust my attitude so that this will change?

We need to carve out a time for "family dinners" again. Maybe Sunday is not the day for us. Why not a week night? Can we all commit to making it to dinner one day a week? I need to talk to the family about this.

A New Frontier

Okay...I thought I was pretty sassy setting up a shutterfly account ( ncvarsitysquad.shutterfly.com ) for all the cheerleaders to download picture to but now...I have my own blog. Not that I plan on shouting it from the rooftops or anything. I actually created this because I am doing an on-line class with Jessica Sprague jessicasprague.com and in this class, I need to journal or blog. And, since I tend to lose things or misplace them, I didn't think a paper journal was the way to go and with a blog, if I am at home or work, I will have access to it.

So it's now official - I blog.