I just reread a number of my recent posts. They range from elation over the discovery that I'm carrying our son to the depths of despair over the loss of precious life. What a roller coaster we've ridden lately. Today is going to be lighthearted, mostly.
But before I dive into some light, enjoyable memories from recent days, I want to say something directly to those who I know and love who may read this and are hurting, aching, walking through the valley of the shadow right now: I ache with you. Every. Day. I think of you. I pray for you. I pray for your family. I pray you'll have the strength just to take the next breath, to do the next thing. Because I know for you it is moment by moment right now. And I will continue to do so over the coming days and weeks and months. It's not much, but it's all I can do. If there is more I can do to support you, simply say the word and I will be there. However, I also must live the life that was dealt to me. These light musings that I am about to write are in no way meant to hurt, to hinder, to gloat, or in any way to assume that I am "more blessed" than you. No. Indeed, I am not. We are both creations dearly loved by the same God, and to honor Him we must both live today, whatever that looks like in either of our lives.
Lily-isms
Since Halloween, Lily has become more and more aware of the availability of candy in her world. Grandma's house has always held treasures such as Hello Kitty fruit snacks and Smartees, but now she's figured out that we have candy in our house too - I've just been hiding it. Monday during breakfast, Lily saw the package of Hello Kitty fruit snacks Grandma had left for her and began immediately to negotiate to get them. "Can I have the Hello Kitty fruit snacks?" she asked. "No. It's breakfast time. We can't have fruit snacks for breakfast," I replied. "Please, please, please, pleeeeeease?" she begged. (Seriously. Where does she learn this stuff?!?) "No," I said. "You can have them for a snack after your nap." Keep in mind that this is breakfast. At 8:30am. She gets up from her nap at about 3:30pm. I figured she'd forget. Later that day I heard her in her crib waking up from her nap. I went in to get her, and I was greeted with, "Hello Kitty fruit snacks?" She got what she wanted.
Today in the grocery store she was walking along beside the coat and we had to go down the candy aisle to get chocolate stars for making cookies. "I need a sucker, Mom," she said as she put her little hand on a bag of Tootsie Pops. "No, we can't get those. I'm sorry." "Please, please, please, pleeeeease?!?" she begs as a grocery store employee walks by trying to hide his snickering. *sigh* She didn't get the sucker.
Lately, Lily has become very VERY girly. She brings me the nail polish and asks to have her nails painted at least twice a week. At 2 years old, she picks the color she wants (always pink), sits still while I paint her nails, and then helps me blow on them until they're dry. Additionally, she has discovered the delight of a floofy skirt that spins well. I'd been waiting to break out her Christmas dress until after Thanksgiving, but she spotted it in her closet the Sunday before Thanksgiving. The sequins, fur trimmed sleeves, and floofy skirt were all too much. She begged to wear it. And I thought, why not? Here she is trying out a spin in it:
She was THRILLED to be wearing it!
And she struck a pose or two just to show it off. Lily is very shy in new situations, but in our home or in places she's used to she can be a real ham. :)
Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving was particularly hard for me to celebrate in my spirit this year. Just so much pain going on. And, yes, I know "in all things give thanks." I know. But seriously, sometimes when I hear that, I just want to tell people to take it and shove it. Christ was thankful, but he wept bitterly too. It's ok to weep and be sad and it doesn't mean that you're not thankful.Ok, now that I've got that out of the way, we did have a very nice Thanksgiving with family. I really didn't take many pictures of it at all, so I'll just have to write a bit about it so I remember all that happened. We started out at my mom's house on Thanksgiving Day for lunch. Despite not having a working oven (hers broke on Monday or Tuesday of that week and it still isn't fixed...) she served us all the traditional dishes - she only had me bake the pie. We had turkey (done in the roaster), stuffing (Stove Top - it's the only good kind anyway), green bean casserole (done in the crockpot and transferred to dish warmed in the roaster after the turkey came out and the french fried onion topping was finished with the creme brule blow torch), sweet potato casserole (sweet potatoes boiled and then cut into the casserole dish, topped with sweet sauce and marshmallows and then torched with the creme brule blow torch), mashed potatoes (kept warm in the 2nd crock pot), gravy, salad, fresh bread (made in the bread machine) pumpkin pie (which I baked the morning of), strawberry rhubarb pie (which my sister-in-law baked and brought), and chocolate pie. All this for the 7 of us and with no oven. Martha Stewart has nothing on my mom!!! It was a magnificent feast!
We went from Mom's house to Chase's parents' house after Lily woke up from her nap. She couldn't wait for cousins Tyus, Ella and Zion to get to grandma's house to play with her! When everyone arrived, we sat down to a feast of a blessedly different sort: pork loin, baked beans, jello salads, rolls, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin and apple pies. Mmmm. Delish! A couple hours of playing, and the cousins headed for home. Lily was spending the night with her grandparents, so Chase and I took our time getting our things together.
Chase and his dad have a thing for ping-pong. There's a table in Chase's parents' basement, and when the two of them play, it's intense. Like play-so-hard-that-they-get-so-sweaty-that-they-need-showers-or-a-change-of-clothes intense. So at about 8 that night, the two of them played 4 games. By the time they were done it was 8:35 or so. Lily, Gayle and I had watched the competition, and we all sat a while to talk in the basement afterward.
Lily kept heading for the stairs. I told her not to go up them - if she went up them, I'd put her to bed. A couple of minutes later, she told me she wanted to go upstairs. I asked if she wanted to go to bed, and she nodded, so I shrugged my shoulders and carried her upstairs to where Gayle had the pack-n-play set up. Lily was already in her jammies, but her things were spread all over the room. As I gathered her shoes, clothes, and diapers to contain them in her bag, I looked up. Lily had thrown her pillow in the pack-n-play, she had thrown her blanket in, she was throwing her stuffed animal in, and then she got her pacifier and threw it in and looked up at me. I just had to laugh! Here I was not worried at all about her bed time (it was 30 mins later than she usually goes to bed), and she's practically putting herself to bed at age 2! How did I get a kid like this??? :) Suffice it to say, she went right to sleep when I finally listened to her and put her in bed...
The reason Lily stayed at her grandparents' house was because Chase and I had tickets to the game on Friday. Or... at least we thought we did. A coworker had given them to Chase, and he'd left them at his office. So Thursday night we drove from Chase's parents' house to his office where he ended up not finding the tickets. We shrugged our shoulders and figured they were at home, so we headed the 30 miles home. We searched the house, Chase's car, my car, EVERYWHERE and could NOT find the tickets when we got home. So Chase called a coworker who was with family near the office that night, and the coworker promised to go look for them. Fortunately, they were found in the very last file searched in the office. The coworker lives near us, and brought them by our house early on Friday morning, the morning of the game.
As we rushed out the door to get on the road, I saw the envelope labeled "Football tickets" laying on the kitchen table and grabbed it. As I got into the car, Chase saw it in my hand and said, "We don't need to bring that. I put the tickets in my wallet." "Oh," I said. "It feels like there's something in here." I reached in and pulled out one ticket. Chase had inadvertently only grabbed one ticket when he put "them" in his wallet! It was a miracle we made it to the game with tickets at all, but we did and had a great time despite the loss...
We ended the Thanksgiving celebrations on Saturday with my dad's side's big family get together. Each year we play bingo for gifts rather than getting stockings or other gifts. Everyone brings a few $1-$5 items for the bingo table, and Grandma gets stuff all year long. This year, I swear, the bingo gift "table" was bigger than ever! It took 4 8-foot tables to hold and display all of the shampoo, bags, candy, hats, gloves, kitchen items, kids toys, etc that made up the loot. There were only about 30 of the family members there, so we all came home with a huge haul!
In addition to celebrating Thanksgiving, we also celebrated Grandma and Grandpa's 60th wedding anniversary, which was this fall. Grandpa wore his suit that he wore 60 years ago, and Grandma still fit in her wedding dress (can you believe it!?!). The family sat around and they told stories of their dating, engagement, and early years of marriage. Grandpa was funny - he said he never really went steady with a girl, because he'd just watch for someone better to come along. When he found Grandma, he guessed he couldn't do any better! The stories of their dating mostly revolved around the times they were either dancing or "parking." We were all absolutely cracking up! Someone let the air out of all 4 of their tires once when they were in GI and they had to figure out how to get home. And their early married years were stories of kids in the pond, moving from one farm to another (they've lived on 3 different farms), and the like. It was really special to hear that stuff straight from them.
Setting up the Christmas Tree
With Thanksgiving safely behind us, it was time to dive into my very favorite holiday of the year. Say what you will about commercialization, shopping, and rushing, but Christmas to me is about celebrating the Christ child. Even in the midst of great hurt, pain, suffering, and loss, I find it easy, even more sweet, to celebrate Jesus' birth. Because without His coming, eternal life would forever elude us. Many say that Easter is the greater holiday, and it is absolutely necessary and reason to celebrate, but I've always found Christmas to be the holiday I hold dearest. Without Christmas there could be no Easter. You're entitled to your own opinion, and I respect that. But Christmas is my favorite.
So on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, we put up our Christmas tree:
It probably doesn't look like anything special to you, and that's ok. It's my family's tree, and it's special and beautiful because it's the way we celebrate together. I got the tree at the Thrift Store in town for $15 last year. It was pre-lit, but the lights didn't work, and I spent a day trying to fix them before caving and just cutting all the lights out of the tree. That, in itself, was a 2-man, 4-hour, up-till-2am process, but it left us with this perfectly shaped, perfectly full tree that I love. Hundreds of lights go on first, then two colors of garland, a lighted star on top, and tons of ornaments that tell the story of our lives.
I don't know how you decorate your tree, but ours is mostly ornaments bought at a store that represent something from our lives. My grandmother gave me an ornament each year, starting the year I was born, and ending sometime when I was in college. My mother gave us ornaments at different times, and I gave Chase some throughout our early dating and married years. I've gotten Lily some ornaments, of course, and when we travel, Chase and I buy ornaments to remember all the places we've gone.
So when we decorate our tree, we take a walk down memory lane. I got the tree up, lights on, garland strung, and star situated while Lily napped. Then when she got up, we began hanging ornaments. This was the first ornament out of the box:
Lily gasped when she first saw the tree after her nap, "Ah! A Christmas tree!" And then when she picked up this Hello Kitty ornament, it was nearly too much for her. She couldn't stop talking about how much she liked this silly little tin ornament. I would hand Chase and ornament to put on the tree, and he'd ask Lily, "Where should I put this one?" She'd reply, "Next to Hello Kitty!" Now, days later, she likes to point to the ornament and say, "This one is my fwavorwite!"
Speaking of handing Chase ornaments to put on the tree... Most of our ornaments are individually boxed, like Hallmark ornaments, and I keep the boxes for each one so that from year to year they're safely stored away in their original packaging. It takes a lot of careful effort to get them all out, so this year, I unwrapped them and Chase hung them. We all have our own theories about decorating trees. I put the ones I love, the ones that mean a lot to me, the cute ones, in front. The heavy ones have to go on sturdy branches, the breakable ones toward the top, etc...
Chase has a different decorating scheme. He groups things. He put all the angel ornaments together in one spot on the tree for the "angel choir." He put the Looney Tunes characters together on another part of the tree, he saved "prime real estate" at the front of the tree until the very end just in case there was better ornaments coming. Our neighbors through our window have a FANTASTIC view of a lot of ornaments I would have put front and center, but he was decorating this year... Also, he put all the dog ornaments in the "dog pound" on the far side of the tree from Hello Kitty. Wouldn't want her to be scared. But don't worry, the dogs aren't being punished too harshly. They have the perfect view of cable TV from their position in the pound. Of course that also means that the people on the TV shows we watch have a better view of many of our ornaments than we do, but who am I to judge... (Behold, the dog pound:)
(And the angel choir:)
The prime real estate that Chase saved? Well, this was one of the ornaments that got it:
How, exactly, is an RV festive? It's not. But it's Chase's favorite ornament, so it gets front and center.
Christmas is special. It's not special because of food or decorations or programs or songs or presents. But those are all ways we celebrate special things. It is the birth of the Christ Child that makes Christmas special, and in our culture we use food, decor, programs, songs, and presents to celebrate. So I will celebrate. I will celebrate because my God sent His Perfect Son to step down from the glory of Heaven. The streets there are made of gold there - do you get that? The most precious metal we have here on Earth is used as cement there. Imagine what the trees, mansions, the life there must be like! Christ gave that up. To be born in a stable. To enter the world just like each of us does, through the pained labor of his mother. To walk on dirt. To live in comparative utter poverty and filth. For you. For me. Such sacrifice. Such selflessness. Such a Savior. Such a reason to celebrate.
Merry Christmas.
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