Why I Believe in Santa

Santa is a tough topic this time of year. Christmas is suppose to be about the birth of Christ and a lot of focus is drawn away from that and focused on a fat man who flies around and gives presents to everyone if they are nice. Not very realistic in a lot of ways and so we have adapted the myth at our house to focus more on the Savior by but we discussing and reinforcing the parallels between Santa and Christ. That is the only way I can be okay with having Santa tradition.

Parallels include:

• Santa wears red just like Christ does. Christ wearing red is symbolic of our sins being washed clean "though they be crimson."
• Christ keeps track of whether we are "naughty or nice" and loves us regardless.
• Santa brings gifts to everyone just like the Atonement is a gift for everyone.
• Santa wants us to be nice and good so we can earn "rewards." Jesus Christ showed us how to doe this and He wants us to be nice and good so we can return to live with Him one day.
• Santa is a symbol of something good and full of hope just like Christ is our best example of good and through Christ's life and death there is hope for all of us.
• Santa is suppose to know what we want or need for Christmas even if we don't have a chance to ask him for it. Christ know what we need and gives those things to us as we need them.
• We are suppose to ask Santa for gifts or things we need (depending on our circumstances) just like we pray to Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ to ask for things we want or need.
• Even the impossibility of going to everyone's house in one night parallels with the miracle of Christ's love being able to reach all of us no matter where we are or what are circumstances may be.

There was a time in my life when I had stopped believing in Santa and then I read a book called "Why I Believe in Santa" and discovered how Santa is truly a symbol of Christ. The media and other traditions have distorted something meant to be beautiful. I believe in Santa as a symbol of good things in the world and the possibility of wonderful things happening. We try to keep Santa gifts simple and I have even been "caught" helping Santa do the shopping so expectations of Santa are kept realistic. The focus at our house is on the Savior, but we incorporate some fun in our Christmas traditions as well. It's tough to determine how to balance everything this time of year. I am hoping my efforts and beliefs will have an impact on how my children live their lives and celebrate the true meaning of Christmas.

Santa Pictures

Last year we waited in line for over an hour to see Santa at the mall, and they wouldn't let me take pictures because I had to buy theirs. With all the lines I have waited in so far this Holiday season, I just wasn't up for one more long wait in line trying to entertain three busy kiddos. When the place we had our family pictures done at offered personalized Santa pictures, I was delighted! The children had already talked to Santa at the Ward (Church) Christmas party, and I just wanted awesome pictures of my kiddos with Santa so I scheduled an appointment.

Today we went to our appointment and only had to wait ten minutes for our turn with Santa because we were ten minutes early. Our photographer took a couple of minutes to become familiar with our children and learn their names before posing them with Santa. Ten minutes later we were done, and he even got the baby to smile and Ryan is pretty shy around strangers. Now, I have a handful of awesome, unique pictures for the same price of one picture with the mall Santa, and I can print of as many as I want because I have the copyright for personal use.

Department of Lost Socks

Today I am working in the Department of Lost Socks a.k.a. doing laundry. Since adding another member to our family and trying to regularly clean our linens (you know, stop wondering when the last time I washed sheets or towels was) I seem to have several extra loads to do each week than I did a year or two ago, which is a good thing. The thing I find mystifying when it comes to laundry is the amount of missing socks we rotate through. I always have 3 to 5 socks that never find matches no matter how thorough I am in cleaning up dirty laundry which has not quite made it to the dirty clothes hamper. Ironically, more often than not, I do not have the same set of 3 to 5 socks without matches each week. Some day I will solve the mystery of where the lost socks are. I hope.

There's a Mouse in My House!

Dear Mouse,

I really, thoroughly enjoyed cleaning behind my kitchen appliances this morning once I discovered you. I am so glad I had the opportunity to clean up after you instead of doing my Christmas baking and running errands. I am so delighted to have you in my house I am going to buy you a large package of DICON for Christmas and give it to you early. I will even put it in all of your favorite place you marked so well for me.

Sincerely,

The Disgusted Mother of Three

God Created Wives

I stole this from my cousin, Krista, who received it in an email today.

"GOD'S SENSE OF HUMOR"

While creating wives,
... God promised men that
obedient wives would be found
in all corners of the world.
And then He made the earth round.

Benjamin's Piano Recital

I attended my first piano recital as a parent. I have gone to a lot of performances for siblings and other people's kiddos, but this was my first one as a mom. It felt a little strange and fun all at the same time. Benjamin played "Celebration" as a solo and "Rudolph, the Red-nosed Reindeer" with his teacher Mrs. C. It was fantastic!

Elves at Our House

Tonight we delivered neighbor gifts. I had two little elves help me. They were delighted to run to the door and deliver the wrapped gifts to each of our neighbors and friends. I had Little Elf and Big Elf with me and when we came home Little Elf informed me that her little brother was Teeny Elf. I am grateful to have elves at my house tonight.

Baseboards & Trim

Something I've learned in painting the house and finishing the basement is that baseboards and trim are best painted before being installed.  Needless to say, I forgot on half of the basement so I will be taping, painting, bending, stretching, and laying on my back to make sure I get all parts of the baseboards and trim while trying not to paint the wall or the floor. Thankfully, I remembered before we finished the laundry room or closet so I can at least paint those baseboards before they are installed and save myself the acrobatics.

What's for Lunch?

I ask myself this question every night before I go to bed. You see, Benjamin takes his lunch to school and I make it each night before I go to bed. This week Benjamin has asked for strange things in his lunch. One day it was cold nuggets, another day it was a cold egg roll. He also likes cold pizza on Mondays because that is what the other kids are eating at school every Monday. So I sent what he requested and each day he was delighted to tell me how he really liked his lunch that day. Funny kid, but at least he is eating his lunch. I wonder what he will ask for next.

It's Under Your Pillow

When Michael and I were dating and I was looking for something, Michael would tell me to look under my pillow. Occasionally I would find my scriptures or my phone under my pillow, but not much else so I found his glib comment strange. Now, I have a child who hides things under her pillow.

If Bekah has something she is not suppose to, she puts in under her pillow. If there is a toy she wants to hold while she is sleeping and Mom doesn't want her to, she hides it under her pillow. When she sneaks food into her room, she hides the wrappers or the food under her pillow. If I every want to know what Bekah has been up to lately, I just have to check under her pillow.

Maybe Michael can tell her "Look under your pillow" as she gets older and she will be find things that are lost or missing.

Pumpkin Pie Solution

Every year I make pumpkin pie. It is one of my favorites. Each year I face the challenge of trying to fit the pumpkin pie filling in one 9-inch and one 12-inch pie without spilling or overflowing. While I have mastered the art of keeping messes to a minimum, this year I tried something different. Instead of using just two pin tins, I decided to spread the filling between three pie tins. Sweet victory! The recipe made three, beautiful, pumpkin pies without overflowing or being too runny. It only took 10+ years to figure out a better way to spread the filling evenly and cleanly, but I will remember it for future years. Good thing I like pumpkin pie.

Clean Carpets

I've been cleaning this week. I cleaned half the carpets in the house, washed out and reorganized the fridge, sorted and organized my craft and project stuff, and did some rearranging of our furniture. And, it's only Tuesday. Our basement is finally to a point I have been able to move some of the stuff that belongs downstairs out of the other corners of our house so we now have a more breathable living space. It feels so good to be able to actually put things away instead of lifting up a mess to clean under it or shifting one pile from this spot to that spot. Hopefully, in a few weeks the basement will be complete and I will be better able to keep up with the rest of the house, but hooray for being able to be more clean now!

Expanding His Diet

Ryan has been my pickiest eater by far. He does not like any kind of vegetables. He will not eat white bread. He eats grapes, bananas, and applesauce. He loves any variety of cheese when he wants to eat cheese, and he likes doughnuts and cake but not pancakes or french toast. When he is sick he only wants his milk bottle, and we have tried three different varieties of sippy cups to try to get him to drink water. Now that he has chosen which sippy cup he will use, he only drinks water out of it and refuses to try to drink milk. Expanding his diet has been challenging, but last night he surprised us by eating half a corn dog and several pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. Very unusual for our little guy, but we will take what we can get and keep trying new things with him.

Flashback Friday - Benjamin

The Folded Napkin

For the last several years, I have received this story from a different friend or family member via email. Today, I decided to share it to reflect the spirit of Thanksgiving we are celebrating at this time of year.*

"A Trucker's Story"

I try not to be biased, but I had my doubts about hiring Stevie. His placement counselor assured me that he would be a good, reliable busboy. But I had never had a mentally handicapped employee and wasn't sure I wanted one. I wasn't sure how my customers would react to Stevie. He was short, a little dumpy with the smooth facial features and thick-tongued speech of Downs Syndrome.

I wasn't worried about most of my trucker customers because truckers don't generally care who buses tables as long as the meatloaf platter is good and the pies are homemade. The four-wheeler drivers were the ones who concerned me; the mouthy college kids traveling to school; the yuppie snobs who secretly polish their silverware with their napkins for fear of catching some dreaded "truck stop germ" the pairs of white-shirted business men on expense accounts who think every truck stop waitress wants to be flirted with. I knew those people would be uncomfortable around Stevie so I closely watched him for the first few weeks.

I shouldn't have worried. After the first week, Stevie had my staff wrapped around his stubby little finger, and within a month my truck regulars had adopted him as their official truck stop mascot. After that, I really didn't care what the rest of the customers thought of him.

He was like a 21-year-old kid in blue jeans and Nike's, eager to laugh and eager to please, but fierce in his attention to his duties. Every salt and pepper shaker was exactly in its place, not a bread crumb or coffee spill was visible when Stevie got done with the table. Our only problem was persuading him to wait to clean a table until after the customers were finished. He would hover in the background, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, scanning the dining room until a table was empty. Then he would scurry to the empty table and carefully bus dishes and glasses onto his cart and meticulously wipe the table up with a practiced flourish of his rag. If he thought a customer was watching, his brow would pucker with added concentration. He took pride in doing his job exactly right, and you had to love how hard he tried to please each and every person he met.

Over time, we learned that he lived with his mother, a widow who was disabled after repeated surgeries for cancer. They lived on their Social Security benefits in public housing two miles from the truck stop. Their social worker, who stopped to check on him every so often, admitted they had fallen between the cracks. Money was tight, and what I paid him was probably the difference between them being able to live together and Stevie being sent to a group home. That's why the restaurant was a gloomy place that morning last August, the first morning in three years that Stevie missed work.

He was at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester getting a new valve or something put in his heart. His social worker said that people with Downs Syndrome often have heart problems at an early age so this wasn't unexpected, and there was a good chance he would come through the surgery in good shape and be back at work in a few months.

A ripple of excitement ran through the staff later that morning when word came that he was out of surgery, in recovery, and doing fine. Frannie, the head waitress, let out a war hoop and did a little dance in the aisle when she heard the good news.

Marvin Ringers, one of our regular trucker customers, stared at the sight of this 50-year-old grandmother of four doing a victory shimmy beside his table. Frannie blushed, smoothed her apron and shot Marvin a withering look. He grinned.

"OK, Frannie, what was that all about?" he asked.

"We just got word that Stevie is out of surgery and going to be okay."

"I was wondering where he was. I had a new joke to tell him. What was the surgery about?"

Frannie, quickly told Marvin and the other two drivers sitting at his booth about Stevie's surgery then sighed. "Yeah, I'm glad he is going to be OK," she said. "But I don't know how he and his Mom are going to handle all the bills. From what I hear they're barely getting by as it is." Marvin nodded thoughtfully, and Frannie hurried off to wait on the rest of her tables. Since I hadn't had time to round up a busboy to replace Stevie and really didn't want to replace him, the girls were busing their own tables that day until we decided what to do.

After the morning rush, Frannie walked into my office. She had a couple of paper napkins in her hand and a funny look on her face.

"What's up?" I asked.

"I didn't get that table where Marvin and his friends were sitting cleared off after they left, and Pete and Tony were sitting there when I got back to clean it off," she said. "This was folded and tucked under a coffee cup."

She handed the napkin to me, and three $20 bills fell onto my desk when I opened it. On the outside, in big, bold letters, was printed "Something For Stevie."

"Pete asked me what that was all about," she said, "so I told him about Stevie and his Mom and everything, and Pete looked at Tony and Tony looked at Pete, and they ended up giving me this." She handed me another paper napkin that had "Something For Stevie" scrawled on its outside. Two $50 bills were tucked within its folds. Frannie looked at me with wet, shiny eyes, shook her head and said simply, "truckers."

That was three months ago. Today is Thanksgiving, the first day Stevie is supposed to be back to work. His placement worker said he's been counting the days until the doctor said he could work, and it didn't matter at all that it was a holiday. He called 10 times in the past week, making sure we knew he was coming, fearful that we had forgotten him or that his job was in jeopardy. I arranged to have his other bring him to work. I then met them in the parking lot and invited them both to celebrate his day back.

Stevie was thinner and paler, but couldn't stop grinning as he pushed through the doors and headed for the back room where his apron and busing cart were waiting.

"Hold up there, Stevie, not so fast," I said. I took him and his mother by their arms. "Work can wait for a minute. To celebrate your coming back, breakfast for you and your mother is on me!" I led them toward a large corner booth at the rear of the room.

I could feel and hear the rest of the staff following behind as we marched through the dining room. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw booth after booth of grinning truckers empty and join the procession. We stopped in in front of the big table. Its surface was covered with coffee cups, saucers and dinner plates, all sitting slightly crooked on dozens of folded paper napkins. "First thing you have to do, Stevie, is clean up this mess," I said. I tired to sound stern.

Stevie looked at me, and then at his mother, then pulled out one of the napkins. It had "Something for Stevie" printed on the outside. As he picked it up, two $10 bills fell onto the table.

Stevie stared at the money, then at all the napkins peeking from beneath the tableware, each with his name printed or scrawled on it. I turned to his mother, "There's more than $10,000 in cash and checks on that table, all form truckers and trucking companies that heard about your problems. Happy Thanksgiving."

Well, it got real noisy about that time, with everybody hollering and shouting, and there were a few tears, as well. But you know what's funny? While everybody else was busy shaking hands and hugging each other, Stevie, with a big smile on his face, was busy clearing all the cups and dishes from the table.

Best worker I ever hired.

*I edited out the "forwarding" part of the email, changed paragraph structure, and corrected some minor punctuation.

Wiggily Babies

Smile. You know you want to. I think I would have to add "changing a diaper," "feeding a baby solids," and "putting on clothes" as replacements for "rocking a baby to sleep."

Thanksgiving Dinner & Food Storage

I briefly went through the ads for this week's grocery sales and realized the only thing I need to pick up for our Thanksgiving Dinner is a graham cracker pie crust. Everything else is in my pantry, fridge, or freezers. I even have shortening to make pie crusts. Didn't think I had planned that well during the year, but I was pleased to discover I am doing better at planning our food storage than I gave myself credit for. Awesome!

If You Give a Baby a Cookie....

The 36 Books I Read in 2011

In March, I changed my goal for the year from 12 books to 36 books and as of yesterday, November 11th, I completed my goal. These are the books I read this year. While I will probably read a few more before the year is out, I am done keeping track. I am also going to take my list off of my blog because it is taking up a lot of room.

• A Distant Magic (Mary Jo Putney)
• A Spoonful of Poison (M.C. Beaton)
• Bachelor Father (Jean C. Gordon)
• Bleachers (John Grishman)
• Bound by Honor (Virginia Weldon)
• Copycat (Betsy Brannon Green)
• Drowned Wednesday (Garth Nix)
• Eat, Pray, Love (Elizabeth Gilbert)
• Extras (Scott Westerfeld)
• Fablehaven: Keys to the Demon Prison (Brandon Mull)
• Freak the Mighty (Rodman Philbrick)
• Fury & Light (Chris Stewart)
• Grim Tuesday (Garth Nix)
• Homebody (Orson Scott Card)
• Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet (Jamie Ford)
• Left Neglected (Lisa Genova)
• Mister Monday (Garth Nix)
• Persuasion (Jane Austen)
• Rachel & Leah (Orson Scott Card)
• Riding Freedom (Pam Munoz Ryan)
• River Secrets (Shannon Hale)
• Sir Thursday (Garth Nix)
• Sundays at Tiffany's (James Patterson & Gabrielle Charbonnet)
• The Actor and the Housewife (Shannon Hale)
• The Amulet of Samarkand (Jonathan Stroud)
• The Book of Mordred (Vivian Vande Velde)
• The Christmas Sweater (Glenn Beck)
• The Cry of the Icemark (Stuart Hill)
• The Ladies Auxiliary (Tova Mirvis)
• The Paid Companion (Amanda Quick)
• The Presence (Heather Graham)
• The Princess Academy (Shannon Hale)
• The Secret History of the Pink Carnation (Lauren Willig)
• The Secret Journal of Brett Colton (Kay Lynn Mangum)
• Wicked: Legacy & Spellbound (Nancy Holder & Debbie Viguie)
• Wicked: Witch & Curse (Nancy Holder & Debbie Viguie)

I enjoyed a lot of stories this year. I am glad I kept track of them so I can remember even though I do not read every single book I intend to in a given year, I still read quite a bit. Not the 15 to 30 books a month I used to read in junior high or high school, but still quite a few books.

Dinosaur Playground

Flashback Friday - Temple Square 2004

For almost a decade, I have been able to visit Temple Square at Christmas time. It never gets old. I love going there no matter how warm or cold it is. The year we were married was a mild winter and I only needed a sweatshirt whereas other years I have needed several layers under my heavy winter coat. I love the lights and the focus on the Savior who brings so much light into our lives.

Tour of Krispy Kremes

Watching the doughnuts cook and then become frosted.

Getting sprayed by the cleaning technician.

The doughnuts flipping to cook both sides.

Passing through the waterfall of icing.

Eating hot, fresh doughnuts.

Mad Scientists & Volcanic Eruptions

In Primary, the song leader had the children change the color of the water from clear to color and back again. Bekah enjoyed it so much she wanted to keep doing it rather than go to her class and was disappointed when she did not have a second turn changing water. I told her we could do it at home and scoured the Internet searching for instructions.

 Alas, I could not find any but I did find instructions for colorful, volcanic eruptions. We did that for family home evening instead of changing colors in water. Ryan sat in his high chair and laughed every time a cup of water overflowed with bubbling concoctions, Benjamin kept asking for more eruptions, and Bekah didn't talk about how we forgot to change the color of the water back and forth.