To Do:

I am sitting here, feeling very tired and a bit disheartened after a long day. It wasn't a bad day at all really, just long and tiring.

Sometimes it helps me to make a list of things that I need to do. Ticking off points on a to do list can be really enjoyable for me. But today I made a list of everything that I need to do during a day. The disheartened part comes in where I realize that I literally cannot get it all done in one day.

As stay at home mom, my job can be broken down into 2 parts, kids and house. Typically what happens is this: I concentrate on one side and the other one gets completely ignored.

On a good kid day, I get the kids up, feed them breakfast, play with them, give them lunch, put them down for a nap, get them up, play with them or go somewhere with them, give them dinner, read them stories or let them play for a little bit, brush their teeth, pray with them, and put them to bed.  Occasionally, I will even bathe them. I am a super-fun, paying attention, and disciplining when needed mommy.

But you may or may not notice the lack of cleaning anything whatsoever during this time, because children are needy little time suckers and they apparently don't mind living in bio-hazard dump. They are fed, but dishes and uneaten food is piled on my table and counters. On days like this, my house looks like a little slice of hell for anyone presenting with even the mildest symptoms of OCD.

On a good house day, I get my dishes cleaned up after every meal (which of course is made from scratch), I might go out grocery shopping, I might do the laundry. My floors are picked up and swept, my counter is clear, my laundry is done, put away and folded, the bathrooms are clean, the bedrooms are clean. I might declutter a closet in my journey to a more simple life. Things get dusted. Beds get made. I am a domestic goddess.

These days are only possible on the rare days when my children are completely out of the house. Completely removed. My husband might have them at their grandparents. I don't see them. I am absent mommy.

Sometimes, I imagine a day that I might spend on me. I would take a shower! I would paint using my sadly neglected watercolors! I would practice yoga (maybe even at the gym) and study my materials to take the yoga teachers certification. I would read my Bible and take my time. I would pray. I might even watch a movie. I might blog if I was feeling particularly motivated.

These days are a dream and cannot be.


But I try to do it all. The grocery shopping, the meal planning, the cooking, the cleaning, the laundry, taking care of the kids, actually playing with the kids, connecting with them in a way that they and I need. I even try to do something for me. But the kids end a mess, I end exhausted and a mess, trying to keep the kids happy while never truly connecting while I never really clean because I am being distracted by the kids. At the end of the day, the house is a wreck, the kids are in bed, and I am too exhausted to do anything fun for myself of with my husband. I am completely knackered.

And that's where I am right now. Sitting at my desk, typing out my frustrations and looking at the list of things that I try to get done every day and trying not to cry.

Because I cannot do it all, and because I don't know how to stop trying.

Do and Don't Like

This year, I am trying to make it a point to be honest with myself about things that I do and do not enjoy. There are some things that I really really wish I enjoyed that I just don't, and some things that I wish to the heavens that I didn't like that I simply do.

Example 1: I really, really want to like spaghetti squash. It is low carb. It is a vegetable. It pulls itself into noodle-like strands when cooked. It is clearly the PERFECT noodle substitute. But I just do. not. like. it. It is watery, finicky to cook and ends up either soggy or crunchy. I wish I like it, but I don't.

Example 2: Fake cheese powder. Do I even have to say in words that the stuff is bad for you? This strange violently orange substance that was never once seen in nature that coats cheese curls and Doritos doesn't even really taste like cheese. My food snob self wants so desperately to deny the feelings that I have for this probable poison. But I love the stuff. I mean, yum. Now admiting I like it doesn't mean I'm going to eat it, but how I wish I could justify buying a bag of Cheetos and set a world record for fastest time to snarf down a bag.

Some things are a little bit harder to admit to myself. Like;

Example 3: Gardening is wholesome, economical, environmentally friendly, outdoorsy, charming, and... well... dull. Once upon a time, I envisioned having a huge garden, growing mostly my own food, and spending countless magical hours cultivating growing things while my children eagerly assist or play quietly in the background. Here is the thing, I don't not like gardening. I kinda like having a (small) garden with some of the basic stuff that we eat a lot of... zucchini, tomatoes, cucumbers, sugar snap peas... you get the idea. But this year I am not going to pretend that I am a true hard core gardener. I am not planning on starting my own plants from seeds, I am not going to bother growing tricky things that frustrate the heck out of me (I'm looking at you spinach), and I am actually going to enjoy planting flowers this year. Just because I like them. So there.

Example 4: Envision this; the kids are finally asleep after a grueling day of potty training, errands, and tantrums. You finally get the kids in bed. You look around the house. It needs cleaned. You look at the half finished painting you need to finish. You look at the rolled up yoga mat in the corner, just waiting to be used. This is your time. You can finally do something you want to do... so you sit down on the couch with your laptop, type in netflix and binge-watch Once Upon A Time for 3 and a half hours. Guys, I wish with all my heart I didn't like watching mindless tv so much. I wish I didn't use it as a pacifier for myself in the evening, when I finally have the chance to get things done. But I do. And I like it. So much so that I had my husband change the password to netflix and told him not to tell me. I just signed out and I can't get back on. I may regret this tonight, but with any luck at all, I can be more productive and do things that are more meaningful than watch hours of NCIS.

Sigh. The kiddos are down for the count at the moment... I love nap time. But they are bound to wake up soon. Probably I should go clean up the breakfast dishes now. Though I probably won't.

Checking in for my monthly report!

Waiting, Watercolor on paper, 2016

Hm... so umm... yes. Its been a little while. Sorry about that, but life happens you guys. Life just happens.

So some of you hypothetical people might be wondering how my new years resolutions are coming along. (For my years resolutions, go here for what's up) In January, I wanted to concentrate on making devotions a daily part of my life. I give myself a solid... C. Maybe C-. Guys, I just did not do as well as I had hoped. Devotions certainly have not become a habit. The combination of uncertain sleep habits with my kiddos and a slightly different sleep schedule than my husband (we try to do devotions together) didn't make the time or practice regular enough to become a habit. BUT I press on. I am certainly going to continue trying to implement devotions into my life this year. Still... one could wish my foray into this years resolutions had started off with some more success.

"But now we are in February," you say, "Isn't it time for something new?" Well yes, yes it is. This month had been designated my yoga month. But umm... remember how I said in the beginning of this post "life happens?" Well, it has indeed been happening and in a more expensive way than we might have hoped for. With registering our adoption the state and the accompanying paperwork and fees, an almost $1700 car repair, a new desk, and a new gym membership, we are hemorrhaging money at an alarming rate. So am I still doing yoga this month? Well yes I am, that is what the gym membership was for, after all, but I will be the first to admit that my mind hasn't exactly been on getting to the gym regularly or on mastering various asenas. We have been number crunching over here, and we are making the rest of this month and all of next month into the "Buy nothing month(s)". This will shift things around a little bit, and it doesn't mean that we wont do another buy nothing month in November. So yeah, that's what has been going on.

What else shall I say? Well, while my resolutions are based on creating habits this year, I have several non-habit goals that I hope to accomplish. One of them was to complete a series of free pieces of art I promised to people last year. It is going to be the last time that I will be offering so much free artwork. The goal of it was to get my butt in gear and to get some new artwork for my portfolio, but so much happened last year that I didn't get it all done. Now I am playing catch-up. But I thought you might like a sampling of some of the work I have done so far this year! There are a few more, but I am posting my favorites so far (The first one is at the top, obviously.)

 

Graybill, Watercolor and Ink on paper, 2016

Hobbiton, Watercolor on paper, 2016

In case you hadn't guessed, while I have been enjoying blogging an awful lot, given the choice between blogging and painting, I will almost always choose to paint. So I may not be a particularly consistent blogger while I have these projects going on, but I still plan on keeping at it and updating when I can. :) Also, I'll be posting some more of my artwork and projects, because I guess I need something to post about. 

That is all. Now if you will excuse me, I am going to go get ready for yoga. 

A transparent (and thorough) view of how much clothing I actually own

 Forgive the phone quality photo. My camera is otherwise engaged. 

I have searched high and low, dug through my laundry, emptied out my drawers. I have counted and tallied and here is what I have come up with:

29 shirts (30 if you include my crappy paint-the walls shirt. I choose not to.)
6 dresses/tunics
4 Sweatshirts/cardigans
3 coats
11 pairs of pants (3 leggings, 4 actual pants, and 3 pairs of "exercise pants")
4 skirts
13 pairs of socks
5 bras (including sports bras)
11 pairs of underwear
1 hat
6 scarves
4 pairs of gloves
5 pairs of shoes
7 bags

Assuming I added correctly (and I really dislike math, so I'm not even going to double check), I have 102 articles of clothing. 109 if you think of bags as clothing. I'm tentatively lumping them in with cloth accessories.

As I said in my last post I really like Marie Kondo's The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up and I have since bought and read her newest book, Spark Joy (a sort of illustrated companion guide to the first book). As I try to move towards simplicity, I wanted to use her method to declutter my house in one bold, radical sweep. I very nearly skipped going through my clothes, however, because I have done that so many times before. I just took a rather sizable bag to donate to the local Community Aid, for crying out loud! I actually thought I had a reasonable wardrobe going here. Now, though, I'm not so sure.

Some of you might feel different. For some, 150 items of clothing is probably seems almost scanty, and that is fine! Maybe clothes are your thing. But for me, someone who professes not to care about clothing one way or the other, 102 pieces is a rather shocking amount. Or at least, it surprised me. So while my wonderful husband has the kiddos at the PA Farm Show, I am delving in and "Marie Kondo-ing" my clothes.

2 hours later... 

19 shirts

5 dresses

3 sweatshirts/cardigans

3 coats (One of these I don't necessarily like or want to keep, but winter, y'all.)

7 pairs of pants (now with an appropriate number of exercise pants!)

3 skirts

7 pairs of socks

4 bras

10 pairs of underwear

1 hat (again, winter, y'all.)

4 scarves

3 pairs of gloves (light, heavy, and gardening variety)

5 pairs of shoes 

5 bags 

So we are left with 74 pieces of clothing... or 79, if you include bags. That is 30 things gone in total. This really doesn't seem like a lot of stuff does it? And it isn't. But I am sitting on my bed surrounded by clothes and thinking back to when I started my whole minimalist journey. I started out with maybe 150 pieces of clothing (I can't remember exactly, it was a long while ago. If we go waaaay back to the very beginning, it was like 3-3.5 years)... and this number was not counting shoes, socks, underwear, bras, bags, or any accessories at all. I've come a long way since then.

And the truth is, I didn't whittle things down as much as I could have... I am looking at one blue skirt next to me, for example, that I am just not sure about. Pretty much anything I wasn't sure about, I kept, hoping to get rid of it or keep it with more confidence. As I have time to see and think with more clarity about what I actually wear, I hope to shed more things as the year goes on.

But the whole point of this exercise (and of minimalism in general!) is not to be left with the bare minimum! The point is to weed out some of the excess that I could better appreciate the things that I really like... or in Marie Kondo's words, the things that "spark joy". Does everything that I have in my closet (or spread all over my bed) right now cause a thrill? Maybe not. But maybe, just maybe, one day I will get to a point where it all will. Either way, I am thankful for what I have right now. And that it enough.

Now if you will please excuse me... I have a lot of clothes to fold...

Resolutions 2016

 

Well Happy New Year... a week late. Totally didn't get to this post as fast as I had hoped to. As I mentioned in my last post, we were on vacation. And when you have 2 kids under 3, vacations aren't the kind of relaxing vacations everyone dreams about. They are nothing short of stressful. I may go more in depth about vacationing with toddler-monsters another time, but I really wanted to speak at greater length about new years resolutions. Having an extra week to flesh out my ideas on how I want to do this has really helped.

Initially, I started with a list of things that I wanted to do or improve... fostering better eating habits, exercising and the like, but after some thought, I've realized that everything boils down to three different ideas: improving my health, my spiritual life, and continuing down the road of becoming a minimalist. These are really broad, not easily measurable goals though. So I broke the overarching goals down and asked myself what habits I need to form to improve these different aspects of my life. It is supposed to take about a month to form a habit (sometimes shorter, sometimes longer, but a month is a good starting point). So this year I am dedicating each month this year to a habit I wish to form. Ideally the habits will continue beyond the month that I concentrate on it and become a regular part of life.

Now that is ideally how things will turn out, but I am also realistic. I don't expect all of these to stick forever (however much I hope they will!) But I figure that by taking on these habits one by one instead of all at once, I am giving them their best chance at sticking.

Changing habits gradually, one at a time, this is not a new thing, folks. Totally not my idea. I wish I were that bright. I don't know what brilliant mind first coined the idea, but there are some people who I greatly admire who have paved my way. I am sure there are more than these 3, but off of the top of my head, this is who I've got:
Jen Hatmaker, a Christian speaker and writer who has a snarky sense of humor and who was totally my "gateway drug" into minimalism and environmentalism, wrote a book called 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess . In this book, she took a look at 7 areas in her life that needed a change, and took 7 months to shake thing up a bit. It was an extreme way of doing things, but It paved the way for smaller, more sustainable changes in her life.
Leo Babauta, a super-minimalist, father of six and author of the blog zen habits, offered a course last year called "Sea Change" which focuses on creating and nurturing 12 beneficial habits in 12 months. He offers something similar every year, if you want to get on that. I um... sort of followed last year, and it was really great, but I didn't take it for all it was worth, I am afraid.
Madeleine Somerville, environmentalist, blogger-extraordinaire, author of All You Need is Less and the reason I wash my hair with baking soda, took this month-by-month approach to resolutions a few years back and wrote a bit in her blog about the experience. This is kinda the model I am using. (Incidentally, I may or may not have a girl-crush on you, Madeleine. Hope that doesn't creep you out.) Aaaanyways. On with the breakdown.

Health: 

Does this even need an explanatory blurb? Physical Health is usually divided into 2 categories. Diet and exercise. Like most everyone who bothers with new years resolutions, I struggle here. And I almost cringe because of how many other people have these exact same resolutions, but here we go anyways. 

Yoga: Despite my crazy, overthinking, totally-don't-even-know-where-that-came-from post where I agonized whether or not I should do yoga... I am doing yoga. I started in December when a gym near my house did free classes for the month, and got hooked. I'd love to start going 2 days a week. I'd love to do more, actually, but realistically, I don't know if that will happen. I got off track when we went on vacation, and I don't want to sign up for a membership to a gym now when EVERYONE ELSE IN THE WORLD is going because of their own resolutions. So, I will be banking on people dropping out in the first month, and I will join up when things are a little less crowded.

Biking: This one wasn't entirely my idea. Over the last 8 months or so, my husband has become a rather avid cyclist. You know those crazy people who go outside to exercise in below freezing weather? The ones you goggle at or poke fun at? The love of my life is one of them, depriving me of my own goggling and mocking pursuits. So now, in an effort to have a happy heart and a happy husband, I am going to start biking. Its a shame cardiac health matters. *sigh*

Portions: Overall, I really think that I have a fairly balanced and healthy diet. I "cheat" every now and again, but seriously, people, live a little. What I don't do well, is watch how much I eat. I love eating, and I love eating more than I should, both in the "I really like eating" kind of way and  in the "This is my eighth chocolate chip cookie" kind of way. Not sure yet this will look, yet, but there you go.

Family Dinners: Loads of studies that I don't feel like looking up and linking to have concluded again and again that regularly eating a home cooked meal together is good for families and waistlines alike, and it is something that I really want to be more intentional about with my family. Again, details to be finalized, but I know we need to work on this.

Sleep: I'd love to change my sleeping habits up a bit. I get enough sleep now, I think, but I want to see if I can shift gears to become more of a morning person. I am a night owl by nature, and before kiddos this was no problem. But now I am so crazy busy during the day that by the evening when I should be most productive, I am sapped of all strength. This might not be specifically related to health, but I thought I'd stick it here anyways.

Minimalism/Environmentalism:

There are so many great resources out there about minimalism, that I'm not going to bother explaining what exactly it is here, particularly as it has different meanings for different people.  If you want to read about minimalism though, I highly recommend this article by Joshua Becker of becomingminimalist.com and this article by "the minimalists" Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus. Suffice it to say that this year, I am trying to become more minimalist and environmentally friendly in my habits, my spending and my home.  

Decluttering: I have a confession. I won't just be making one month out of this one (unless you do something pretty drastic, it will take more than 1 month to declutter your house), but it is certainly something I want to do this year, and it certainly fits into the minimalist category. For awhile now, my husband and I have been battling the clutter in our home. So, I plan on (yet again) reading Marie Kondo's The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up and go through our things using her systematic approach. I have started this before and never completely finished out her method. I do great through the clothes in books, trip up with papers because its so overwhelming, skip to "komono" (or miscellaneous items), which there is even more of and totally fizzle out. But, if at first you don't succeed, try, try again, as the saying goes. And on the bright side... there's not much to release from my closet at this point.

Buy Nothing Month: Part of the reason that we are continually battling clutter in my house is that it just keeps creeping back in. I tried a buy nothing quarter (3 months) at the end of last year and totally bombed. Buying nothing doesn't happen so easily over the Christmas Holidays. But, to reset our spending habits and stop the tide, I am going to do a buy nothing month this year. I will set down my rules when my Buy Nothing Month Begins.

Waste: According to the EPA, the average American generates 4.4 pounds of trash each day. That comes out to a whopping 132 pounds a month and a staggering 1,606 pounds. People, the trash we dispose of each year weighs more than a full grown male moose. And that is just one person. Imagine everyone on your street throwing away a moose. Now your city. Now your state. Its incredibly, incredibly daunting. This year, though, I want to put my moose on a diet. I don't aspire to be totally waste free existence... I don't think I am up for that, but I still want to produce less garbage than I currently do. So, for one month I won't alter my habits, I will just keep track of LITERALLY everything I throw away or stick in the recycling bin. At the end of that month is when the habit changing begins. By seeing where and when and why I produce the most trash, I can target these times and improve them. That is where producing less waste really starts.

Spiritually:

I am a Christian, and have been for awhile. But faith is not stagnant, not a once and done deal, it is a living thing that changes and grows as you do. I've realized for some time though, that my relationship with God has not grown as much as I would like. So:

Devotions: I pray a lot... but so often my prayers are talking at God rather than with Him, often asking for something or other. I'm sure many other parents are familiar with some of my prayers: An exhausted, "Dear God, please help Amelia and Bini sleep a full night tonight!", a long suffering, "God, please help me to be patient...", or the desperate pleading, "Lord Jesus, PLEASE help us find Bear!" (Bear is the most important stuffed animal in our house. If you have never lost your child's lovey just before bedtime, you can't understand this last one.) So much of my time is spent talking at God, that I don't take the time to listen.
So to address this, my husband and I are together developing a habit of (almost... I'm not perfect) daily scripture reading as a couple. We have started this already, and already have accidentally skipped 2 days. Whoops.

Prayer: Yeah, I know, I already said that I prayed a lot. But I want to set aside some time each day for intentional prayer. Don't know yet exactly what this will look like, but that is the basis.

***

 If you were counting, you will have noticed that I don't have 12 habits laid out. I have 9. This will enable me to adjust to my new habits for awhile without adding things in. It will also provide me with some wiggle room, because things tend to crop up, and its always wise to build in times to just let life happen. But if things go according to plan, the next year will look something like this:

January: Devotions
February: Yoga
March: Prayer
April: Breathe
May: Portions
June: Biking (I will be biking before June, but I will set some actual biking goals for this month)
July: Family Dinners
August: Breathe/ Start tracking trash for next month
September: Waste
October: Sleep
November: Buy Nothing Month. Hopefully this will get me into the right mindset before Christmas.
December: Breathe/ Reflect

And there you have it! Happy 2016 everyone! Wishing you all a very blessed year!

Christmas is over, and we all know what's next...

Everyone knows what comes after Christmas. You knew it was coming before Christmas arrived, but now it is staring you in the face. No, not the post-holiday clean up (surely you are all cleaned up by now anyways, right??? Riiiiiiight???!?) and not the inevitable looking around the house in bewilderment and wondering what do do with they sudden influx of stuff your house has to deal with. Not the sugar detox, not the decoration putting away party. While all these things are coming or have come, I am talking not talking about these. I am talking about the new year. Ah,  2015, its been fun, but her is a bright, shiny, yet untouched New Year!

For the longest time, I didn't take new years resolutions seriously. In fact, I had the same new years resolution for many years running that I could break and keep all at the same time. "I resolve never to make another new year's resolution." And I kept it until the next year when I would break it by making the resolution again, but I never really broke it because it was the same one. See the way my mind was working here? I was about... 17 or so when I came up with this and thought myself desperately clever. My 26 year old self rolls her eyes.

I still take new years resolutions with a grain of salt. Yes, I am sure you will lose 100 pounds. Of course you will go to the gym every day of 2016. Naturally, it will be the easiest thing in the world to write a book about... what was it you said again? Yes, if anyone is going to solve the problems of string theory, it will be you. Lured by the promise of something new, people try to remake themselves every single year, and every single year they are disappointed when they fail. Many start off the new year determined, but still with a seed of resignation in their heart, knowing that they will trip up all over again. I know that not all people out there are total defeatists, but come on, y'all, don't we all feel that way a little bit sometimes?
There is also the matter of what do you most want to change? Will this year be about health? (lose some weight? start working out? become a vegetarian?) Will this year be about your artistic passion? (write that book? paint a masterpiece? learn to play the bagpipes?) Or maybe it will be about personal growth? (meditate daily? do a year long devotional?) There are literally infinite possibilities- infinite categories in which you can better yourself.

But this year, I am once more hopping on the new years resolution bandwagon. And I have decided to work on improving not 1, not 2, but 12 different areas!

Whoa, now, slow down! If doing just 1 thing for 1 year seems impossible, how can you possibly expect to do 12 things for 1 year?

Well, the goal isn't to start off all at once on January 1st, trying to change my spending habits, AND my sleeping habits, AND my workout habits, AND my eating habits (you get the idea) all at once. The idea isn't to change all at once... that would be exhausting and defeating and there is just no way, people. There is. Just. No. Way.

But according to research (that I haven't done, but I think I've head or read about somewhere) says that it takes (about) a month to create a habit. So what I would like to do is spend one month working on a change, integrating it as a part of my life, and then the next month, try to integrate different habit, so that by the end of the month, I'll have made 12 changes in as many months.

I have been thinking about what I'd like these to be, and while I have a good idea, I haven't totally planned it all out yet... So while my husband and mother-in-law are taking the kiddos to look at alligators in the everglades (we're on vacation in Key Largo... did I mention that? Its so nice out you can positively taste the sunshine! What a change from rainy Pennsylvania!) I am going to have a think, work on a plan and write some more tomorrow. Till then!

Christmas Tradtitions (The Davidson Side)

Now that Christmas is over and I am on vacation, I have time again. And I promised myself that i would write a bit about the Christmas Traditions coming from my side of the family.

With the Davidsons, tradition centers more around Christmas Eve and Christmas day, as opposed to the events leading up until Christmas.

There is the Christmas Eve party where everyone in my family (and I do mean EVERYONE, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, boyfriends and girlfriends of all involved...) crams together into somebody's house where we eat delectable food and exchange gifts. After everyone eats we crowd into a room and the younger children read take turns reading the sections of the Christmas story. Its really a beautiful thing to have the whole family together in one room and reading together the whole reason for Christmas. (somehow this didn't end up happening this year, which was really really sad to me). After that, the under 16 crowd do a "Secret Santa" (the names for which are typically exchanged at Thanksgiving). But the adults do a somewhat cutthroat version of white elephant gifts.

If you don't do a white elephant gift exchange, you totally should. Its the best. Here is how it works: Everyone brings a gift with no name on it and puts it in a heap of other gifts on the floor. The participating crowd draws numbers, and the fun begins. The first person picks a gift, which is fairly boring. But when number 2 gets his turn, he can choose to pick a gift from the pile OR steal the gift from the first person, who would then have to pick again. If a gift has been exchanged 3 times, then it is considered "dead" and can't be taken again. Compounding the interest is huge variety in gift quality. From bright pink mini tool sets, to "snuggies" to hand crafted pottery, to family heirlooms, you really could get just about anything. In one particularly well remembered exchange, my uncle unwisely picked a gift brought by my husband... a "Peruvian bar-b-q Set" which included a giant spatula, and Guinea pig bedding, among other things. This year, a 12 pack of beer went strangely quickly. This game gets rough, you guys. Bribing is common, and stealing is encouraged. Don't get to comfortable with that apple pie in the beautiful polish pottery dish. It won't be coming home with you.
After this, we are brought back around the table where a birthday cake sits. After singing happy birthday to Jesus and eating our cake, we start to pack up and go home. (AGAIN, something that didn't happen this year. How? How can this be?!?!)

On Christmas Morning after opening gifts, everyone gets their choice between baked oatmeal or oatmeal a la mode. We also eat some kind of egg dish and "monkey bread" If you don't know monkey bread, I am so so sorry.

I have to say, now that I am comfortably on the other side of the holidays; Christmas, while really lovely this year, lacked some of the traditions that I have come to depend on and love... Singing happy birthday to Jesus, reading the Christmas story all together as a family... I love that part of Christmas and looked forward to it. I missed it this year, and I truly hope that this doesn't mark the beginning of a trend in the family.