Because I wandered aimlessly from chore to chore yesterday, the tree takedown took the entire day. I removed the ornaments and wandered off to load the dishwasher. I pulled the light strings down and sat down to fold a few baskets of laundry. I separated the tree sections and went to organize the kitchen pantry. […]
Last year, it was clear that Evan was wise to the Santa game, but he didn’t say anything too obvious. Maybe he was hedging his bets just in case. All of his older siblings reached an age where they went from believing to playing along without any acknowledgement of the change. This year, Evan is […]
This afternoon, the children and their friends put the ornaments on the tree. I waited until they were finished and focused on other activities. Then, I started to spread some of the ornament clusters out to fill the giant gaps of emptiness on the tree. My children are used to me fidgeting with the ornaments. […]
Our family doesn’t do giant birthday parties or multiple events (nuclear family party, extended family party, friend party, school party, party-party) for the same birthday, but we do a small bit of decor to recognize the day. Once, we put ribbon curtains in the bedroom doorways. Another year, we put helium balloons all over each […]
If you forget that the only gift wrap you replaced after the Christmas flood of 2013 was Christmas paper, then you will find yourself hoping for a dimly lit birthday party room to hide the bizarrely wrapped birthday gift. Not unrelated: Kraft paper wrap with red and yellow ribbon looks like a cheeseburger. Get to […]
Three days before Christmas, our basement flooded. Since the gifts were sorted into plastic bags instead of wrapped, no gifts were lost in the flood. Our bedroom furniture is probably ruined, but that’s okay since all we really need in our room is a mattress that floats during flood season. Two days before Christmas, I […]
I know that my role in this family is to make holidays happen. Not because they are holidays, but to create traditions for framing memories and celebrations to avoid getting lost in the mundane. I honestly don’t enjoy Thanksgiving. It’s a meal as a family. We eat meals as a family every day. Some of […]
The evening before Halloween, Doug attempted to stop a fight between one neighbor’s cat and another neighbor’s dog. It ended tragically for both animals. Tommy and I cried ourselves to sleep. I couldn’t bring myself to tell the two youngest children who didn’t witness the horror. Halloween morning, I awoke with a migraine. The kind […]