Awesome things about the Christmas season

First of all, I feel the need to say that I am writing this post in a kicking and screaming sort of way. I've been feeling especially scroog-y and bah humbug-ish since before Thanksgiving. In an effort to not let my attitude rub off onto my kids, I truly made an effort pretty much every day to spread Christmas cheer to those around me, even though I wasn't feeling it myself in even a tiny amount. I really credit my mission of finding something each day to find joy in for getting me through the past month. Each time I wanted to go curl up somewhere and pull a blanket over my head, I would remind myself to "dance in the rain."

Now, I will briefly write about the things that were awesome about the past few weeks. Things that really did help pull me out of my grinchy mood (have I now covered all the Christmas fun suckers?)

I've already shared pictures of much of our baking. We baked A LOT. Many batches of pretzel/hershey kiss/M&M bites, cookies, toffee, peppermint bark and puppy chow. Homemade rolls and breakfast casseroles and cheesecake. Oh my. While it was all awesome, I'm afraid to put myself on the scale. Much of what we made we gave away, but we ate way too much of it, too. Time to put away the pile of clothes that seems to be a permanent fixture on my treadmill and actually USE it for something other than a dust and clothing collector.

I've also already shared pictures of the girls and I making fuzzy sock cupcakes, but I have to once again post this rare picture of sisters having fun together. Lauren is usually too cool to have her picture taken with her sister, and I love this one. It's awesome.




My kids were really awesome at Christmas. None of them really asked for much of anything. Well, except Rachel. I could have easily spent my entire Christmas budget on her alone. But, we managed to get some gifts that they all just loved, and it was easy to see that they were truly grateful and excited for what we got them. I sat here on Christmas morning in the midst of all the wrapping paper and boxes and realized that one of the biggest gifts from the past two difficult years is that our children are truly grateful for what they have. I know there must be things they wish they had, but it is nice to know that they appreciate what they DO have. It was kind of a pain buying gifts for them this year since no one would tell me what they wanted, so we were able to pull off a few surprises, which was a lot of fun.


I didn't make the big Christmas Eve dinner that I usually make because we were getting up early the next morning to drive to Illinois to spend Christmas with Tony's family. The kids always love having a big breakfast on Christmas morning, too, and I wanted to get it all prepared and put in the fridge. I also still had most of my gifts to wrap. So, in light of all that, I didn't want to do the whole turkey feast. I did make a nice dinner, but I thought it would be fun to decorate the table all fancy so that it would make our shredded beef sandwiches and homemade mac and cheese seem a bit more festive. I had a blast doing that, and I made Tony and the kids stay in the family room watching a movie (in the dark I might add!)while I decorated the dining room as a surprise. They loved it, and here are a few pictures:








Okay, so that was more than a few. I just really had fun doing this. And the best part is I spent NO money. I took a few ornaments from my tree...some glassware from my china cabinet, a piece of greenery from a box in the basement, some misc. glittery things that I don't even remember why I bought, and a strand of white lights that half the strand was burned out. And of course, my Christmas dishes. I'm kind of sad to put them away.


Christmas Eve in general was awesome. It was snowy, and I still had a few quick things to run out and do in the morning, but I was home by 11. Tony had other things to do, so he was gone most of the day. I turned off the tv, cranked up the Christmas CD's, Rachel and I baked some cookies, I drank peppermint coffee and prepared dinner, all while watching the snow fall peacefully.

Christmas morning was awesome. I was awake at 3, and the snow was still lightly falling. I watched a cute movie on tv called The Accidental Christmas, and at 5:30, I decided to go outside and take some pictures of the lights in the snow. It was so pretty that for a moment, I actually liked snow. That rarely happens. But how could I not think that this was pretty?




As I walked around my front yard wearing pajamas and Rachel's boots, I was praying that no one would drive by and wonder what that crazy lady was doing out in the snow before dawn on Christmas morning in her pjs.


We spent Christmas with Tony's family for the first time ever. We usually spend Thanksgiving with them, but not Christmas. It was especially awesome because Tony's brother and sister from Omaha were there, and I haven't seen them in many years. Tony's sister and I used to be pretty close when we lived there. She is 12 years older than me, and for a long time was like an older, wiser sister who kind of took me under her wing when Tony and I were newly married and I was so far away from my own family.

Here's a picture: (Tony's sister is the one next to me on the far right):




Here's a picture of Tony's brother from Omaha. Lauren challenged him to a game of horse, so the day after Christmas, they all went to the Y, and Lauren won $20 from him. He says he let her win, but I doubt it.




I met his new wife for the first time, and she is awesome. We had a lot of fun cooking together and hanging out watching movies with Tony's sister. In the photo above, she is the one kneeling on the floor.

These past few days since Christmas have been pretty awesome too, even though Lauren was sick, and now I am sick. (Have I said "awesome" so many times that you are wishing someone would have given me a thesaurus for Christmas?)

While I have had the usual housecleaning and laundry to do, they have also been lovely days of:

Lots of coffee and hot chocolate and hot tea drinking




movie watching(sorry, no pictures of that)

knitting



That isn't as ugly as it looks in that picture. For some reason, I could NOT get a good picture that shows off this really soft fuzzy yarn. It's my first ever project that isn't a rectangle or a square. It is actually about 1/3 of a huge shawl scarf. I've made so many mistakes that it's not even funny, and if I'm lucky, I will have it finished by July.


And of course, reading




I'm going to have a hard time going back to work on Monday. I have thoroughly enjoyed being home. My house is clean. Laundry is semi sort of caught up. My house smells good from all the baking. And I am wishing that I could hibernate for the winter.

You may or may not have noticed that I said "awesome" in this post about 399 times. Well, if you read this blog, get used to that word! Beginning on Saturday, I'm going to try something new here. Every day (well, hopefully every day anyway, I may miss a few here and there) I am going to try to write one thing that was awesome about the day. I won't be writing these loooonnngggg posts every day, thank goodness, right? But, I am going to try to consciously be aware of finding at least one wonderful, awesome thing every day. Make me stick to it, okay?

Crafting and Cooking at the Carlson Crib...Part 2

Yes, I really am on my computer writing at 6 am. Actually, I was on the computer writing at 5 am. But then Tony and Justin got up because they are running in a race, and I didn't want Tony to see me on the computer so early in the morning and think I need an intervention. Insomnia sucks! The sky is still dark, and I've already watched a movie, thrown a load of clothes in the dryer, eaten a piece of apple pie, and cleaned up dog puke. (Not in that order). Yesterday was full of creating and today may be full of napping.

I think I may have cured Rachel of her "I want to make something today" for quite a while. I'm sure you all (all 3 of you who read my blog!) are dying with anticipation to know what we did yesterday with that hodge podge of stuff. Well, I'll stop leaving you in suspense. :-) Before I show the finished products, I have to show the process. I had to take pictures of it all since Lauren is usually not into girly things like crafting, and she had a blast.




She doesn't much look like she's having a blast, does she? But trust me, she was. She did ask me though to please not post the pictures on Facebook. I guess she doesn't want to ruin her image.
Here's Rachel:



And now...TA DA! Here is what they made:



How cute are those? I wish I could take credit for being the creative soul who came up with that idea, but I cannot. I saw it on a blog last week, and knew it was the perfect thing for the girls to make as Christmas gifts for their friends. They both have too many friends they want to exchange gifts with, and I was starting to panic and wonder how I was going to fit that into our Christmas budget. I do have to brag a bit and say these are the cheapest gifts ever. I found the socks for $2, and the paper is left over from my scrapbooking days. So we made 8 gifts for $16. Most everyone who knows me knows how thrifty (cheap!) I am, so this was right up my alley. They will also be giving their friends some homemade treats along with the socks.

Onto the next thing. Although this one so far is on the fail list. I am trying to come up with a plan B for this project. First some more pictures:













That pictorial should have ended with a stack of cute little plastic containers of cherry lemonade lipgloss. But it didn't. The little plastic containers sit empty because the recipe I found online for homemade lipgloss flavored with Kool Aid didn't quite turn out. In fact, the flavoring part of the lipgloss settled into a rock hard clump at the bottom of that Christmas bowl, leaving a layer of pink tinted Vaseline sitting on top. And it doesn't taste anything like cherry lemonade. Trust me. I tasted it. Blech. So all the chopping of lipstick...the microwaving of Vaseline that overflowed making a pink slimy mess was for nothing. So I will either give up on the homemade lipgloss or find a way to make it work. I hope I find a way to make it work. Stay tuned.

And the projects weren't finished. Oh no. We moved onto a much more foolproof one after the lipgloss mess.





Finally, we made peppermint bark.

Whew.

One last picture, which made the whole day of messes totally worth it:


Moments like these don't happen often with these two, and it was the best part of the day.

I do have one more picture to share:



Eight years ago, I started collecting angel Christmas ornaments. I haven't bought one for the past two years because because I just couldn't find one that "spoke" to me. This week, I found one. I was at Michaels, not even looking for ornaments, and this angel was hanging all by itself, and I had to have it. That picture doesn't do it justice, but when the lights on the tree are turned on, it looks like sparkling ice, and I love it.

Ready for some crafting and cooking at the Carlson crib

We are armed and dangerous...check back later to see what all of this will end up turning into:

I'm being a copy cat and writing this post based on a topic I read on another blog this morning. It started out with this:

There is an ancient Native American story about an old Cherokee who told his grandson about the battle that goes on within us. "My son," he told him, "Inside every one of us dwells two wolves, one evil, one good. The evil one is angry and jealous, full of regret and arrogance, greed and sorrow, guilt and self-pity. The other is good. He is kind and loving, full of hope and peace, joy and compassion."

The young boy thought about it for a moment. "Which wolf wins?" he asked his grandfather.

The old Cherokee smiled and simply replied, "...the one you feed."

Wow.

I've been thinking about this all day. And I came to the realization that I have definately been feeding my evil, self-pitying wolf lately. Although I do feel the need to clarify that he/she is not greedy or jealous!

Life is just not easy for me these days, no matter how much I try to pretend that it is and do my daily 'dance in the rain.' I haven't written much lately, I know. And it's not because I haven't done anything worthy of writing about because I have. But, I've been in such a bad place lately that I feel sort of fake I guess coming here and writing about whatever is good. Not sure why, I feel that way, but I do. I am still making the effort to write things that I am grateful for at the end of each day, but I know that I have spent way too much time dwelling on all that is wrong in my world. In other words, I guess I have been feeding the hungry, evil wolf and starving the wolf that is full of hope, peace and joy. He's probably all shriveled up and emaciated by now.

I always get a bit depressed this time of year, and it is always challenging for me to be holly jolly and in the Christmas spirit. The holidays are always a little tough for me for several reasons, but the biggest one is that my beloved Great Aunt Mary died right after Christmas nearly 9 years ago, and Christmas just hasn't been the same since. She was like a little kid at Christmastime. She received well over 100 cards each year, and she left them out all the time in a basket on an end table in her living room. She only put them away when the current year's cards began arriving. One Christmas, a friend gave her a Christmas wreath with a Cardinal on it, and it hung on the outside of her apartment door for several years, even when it wasn't Christmas. I could go on and on with stories of her.

I'll not ever forget her last Christmas. In her card to us that year, she wrote that all she wanted for Christmas was to spend it with us. She lived 3 hours away, and on Christmas Eve, the day we had planned on heading to my parents for the holidays, we were hit with a blizzard-like storm and so we weren't able to go. I know she was disappointed, but she also said that she felt better knowing we were safe at home and not out on the roads in bad weather. A week later, she went into the hospital for something minor and she died 2 days later. She was 90, and I know she lived a good long life, but I was not ready to let her go. I guess no one is ever really ready to let their loved ones go.

So, even in a good year, the holiday season is hard for me because I can't help but remember so many of my wonderful memories of someone who I was closer to than my own mother. And this year has been less than a good year. Yeah, I know things could be so much worse, and I am so very grateful for the way we have handled all that has happened. I tell myself this every single day.

So back to those 2 wolves...tonight, I decided to feed the nice wolf some chicken pot pie and a glass of wine for dinner! Surely making my dearest friend's yummy pot pie recipe and eating it from a Christmas plate will be enough to strengthen my neglected good wolf, right?






Things I am thankful for right now:

*First and foremost, I am so grateful that the nasty stomach bug that attacked Lauren Monday night has stayed away from our house and not infected anyone else.

*I am grateful that even though this year has been tough, we will still be able to give our kids a wonderful Christmas.

*I am grateful that I am raising 4 children who aren't greedy and into all the "status" things that many teenagers are.

*I am grateful for my boss who is treating us all to a Christmas concert Saturday night.

*I am grateful for my children who cleaned up the mess that was my kitchen after I made pot pie.



Oh, and just in case you are interested in the blog I am referring to, here is a link:

http://www.kellehampton.com/

It's called Enjoying the Small Things. I stumbled across it last winter, and it is one blog that I always check several times a week. I love/hate her. She is a great writer, and an even greater photographer. And she lives in Southern Florida. As it those aren't enough reasons to hate her, her family owns a vacation home in a lovely sounding place called Isle of Capri.

Okay, I will stop before I end up feeding my inner jealous, nasty wolf.