These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

I love Christmas: the decorations, the weather, the food, the people, the music. I love it all.  This year, I was very intentional about making memories to hold onto until the next Christmas we are all together (date unknown).  For those who don't know or aren't related to us, these pictures are meaningless.  To me, they are priceless.

One of my favorite traditions is our family ornament.  Every year, we get a new ornament, usually at a craft show.  They are often cheesy, but I love picking out the ornament with five of whatever it is on it--reindeer, stockings, snowmen--and then have our names added to it. (One year, I didn't make it to any craft shows. Thankfully, my dear friend, Cathie, took it upon herself to find our ornament that year.)  I know that one day the boys will have their own families, and I will give them the ornaments they made or that I bought for each of them through the years.  When that time comes, my tree will only have these family ornaments.  I'm pretty certain I will be glad I have them.

Another tradition we have is to buy gifts for the dogs.  Originally meant to occupy them while we opened presents, it's really now just entertainment for us to watch how quickly Liberty eviscerates her "baby" to remove the squeaker.  She will then carry the squeaker around for WEEKS until I get paranoid about her choking on it and throw it away.  For whatever reason, and this is really amazing considering we have Labs, they've always left our Christmas presents alone.  Maybe that's because they know they have their own.  As a bonus, the dogs don't seem to notice they don't get to open as many presents as everyone else does.

My boys get new pajamas every year for Christmas.  They open that one gift on Christmas Eve, and they somehow know it's going to be pajamas.  What started as a way to ensure pretty Christmas morning pictures, it has become something so much more than that.  It's now a part of who we are.  We are new-pajamas-at-Christmas people.  Additionally, it seems as though we are also don't-smile-for-the-pajama-picture people. Oh, well.  At least they each have nice, new pajamas for the don't-smile picture.

New this year to the family Christmas nap tradition is Dixie, Spencer's coon hound/bird dog.  She is absolutely beautiful.  Not brilliant, but beautiful.  And she adores Spencer.  I find myself wondering how she will get along when he leaves.  How long will she sit at the window and watch for his truck to drive up?  Or worse, see his truck in the driveway and continue to look for him in the house.  Come to think of it, how long will I sit at the window and watch for his truck to drive up?  I don't know, but she and I will watch together.  And when he does come back, I will cry tears of joy, and she will lick Spencer's ears.  In this instance, I'm glad I'm not a dog.

My future Marine.  Where will he be next year?  Tanner has quite a few adventures ahead of him, including, but not limited to: surviving the last few months of high school, surviving the last few months of negotiating the high school parking lot, his older brother's deployment, his own high school graduation, leaving for boot camp, and cleaning his room.  Sadly, the two most dangerous things are the high school parking lot and his room.  It will be exciting to watch this kid walk down his own path, and I know he will be a great Marine.  But to me, he will always be the boy in this picture.

Calder battled through some pretty tough stuff last year, and I was sad when he was sick over Christmas break.  However, I was thrilled for the opportunity to hold him for a little while at Dale's folks' house.  (I don't know if it can really be said that I was holding him since his feet were touching the floor, but my heart says I was holding him.)  This year will bring many changes for Calder as well.  Spencer and Tanner are not just brothers who are leaving; they are friends. As we walk through this next year together, I hope he lets me hold him some more.

I love the relation-ships my boys have with their cousins. They have done a lot together through the years: vacations, riding bikes, building tree houses and forts, going to movies, etc.  But my favorite is when they just hang at the grandparents' house.  It was precious to watch four teenagers sit in one room, no TV, no iPods, just drawing and sketching, each of them quite talented, and listen to their banter.  These kids really love each other.  That makes my heart happy.

If you know Dale as a quiet, introspective guy, you only know one side of him.  If you've ever played Rock Band with him, however, you know him as a rock legend.  In fact, for this picture, he wasn't even playing Rock Band.  The boys were playing their real guitars and singing Hotel California when Dale grabbed the Rock Band guitar and entertained us with the dig-me guitar riff. Dale and I have had numerous conversations about how life will change this year, but we pinky swore we would hold onto each other.  I am extremely blessed to know and be loved by someone so solid.  It's just a bonus that he is a rock star.

Not pictured is the Rock Band hilarity we had with our friend, Amy.  Also not pictured: the Jack Stack BBQ New Year's Extravaganza, the Apples to Apples Tournament to the Death, and the Gift Card Redemption Frenzy.  Sorry. A blog can hold only so much fabulosity.

May 2011 be a year of realized dreams, continued hope, and peace on earth.

A Week Before Christmas

'Twas a week before Christmas, and all through our house,

The boys were on iTunes, choosing music with a mouse.

And Dale in his red shirt and I with some treats,

Were headed to a party to hang with our peeps.

When out on the front porch the doorbell did ring,

And the dogs started barking, and growling, and things.

"We won't let them in here, You will come to no harm."

Thus said Duke and Liberty, our burglar alarms.

The boys looked through the peephole, but nothing did see.

So they opened the door thinking "Package Delivery!"

It was a package, indeed, but not from Fed Ex.

It was shiny and pretty, with a note nonetheless.

"It's a Christmas miracle" said the note, so sweetly written,

The boys were wary; protectiveness kicked in.
They carefully opened the package that night,
Checking for bombs, anthrax, and other such frights.

The next day they told us of the mystery gift.
From what they were saying, we thought something amiss.

Sure enough, it's a gag gift from a few years ago,

And it's really quite creepy, as the picture does show.

The gift had been passed at a white elephant party,
It was mocked and made fun of; the laughter was hearty.
But it had special meaning to one of the girls,
Seems she'd had one just like it in her growing-up world.

We'd long since lost thought of that silly decoration,
We'd heard rumors of its demise in a small conflagration.
So when gifted to us, we were quite taken aback,
The boys wanted it thrown into a large garbage sack.

But the friends we suspect of this dastardly prank,
Are ones we hold dear, and to them we say, "Thanks."
You'll get back this angel, this fun Christmas gift,
And we will be laughing--we'll keep the power strip!


*My sincerest apologies to the family of Clement Clarke Moore (no relation) for the misuse of his classic poem.*

Military Mom, Part Three

NOTE:  This is third in a series of sporadic posts about this military thing happening in our family. How many military mom posts will there be?  No clue.  But more than three.

Tie a Yellow Ribbon Around the Whole Weekend

I had a lot of work to do over the weekend.  Dale had a lot of work to do over the weekend.  Dale's company holiday party took place this weekend.  My coffee/support group held a Christmas breakfast this weekend.  And the first of the stick-to-the-ground snow fell this weekend.  This was not a good weekend to have to make a trip and sit through meetings.  It's just the wrong time of year to try to add one more thing into our schedule. (That's not really fair, because it's rarely a good time to add to our schedule.)  But this was the weekend of the Yellow Ribbon Meeting for Spencer's unit.  (I assumed this meant we would receive a yellow ribbon to tie around our tree for Spencer's deployment.  Sometimes I'm really dense.)

NOW my understanding of the Yellow Ribbon program is that it is a series of meetings (some before deployment, some after they get home) for Guard and Reserve soldiers and their families.  We sat through 2 days of briefings about insurance, VA benefits, PTSD, spiritual health, and resources for counseling, care for exceptional children, and legal and tax issues.  I took pages of notes.  Which is funny, because the majority of what was talked about does not apply to us (Spencer is single with no children, and we are not eligible for 99% of the benefits they offer), but I am now a walking encyclopedia of information for families of soldiers. 

In addition to the vast amount of information thrown at us all, I feel that I learned so much this weekend.  In no particular order, here are a few of the highlights:

• I am sucker for free stuff.  Pens, notepads, books (especially books).  If they are handing it out at a booth, I feel a need to have it.  I missed out on getting the patriotic stress ball, which kind of bummed me out, but I am going to score big on books, so it's all good.
• Although I can get quite a bit of work done in the van, I can get much more work done in the middle of the night in a hotel room that is not moving lickety-split down the highway and blasting loud music.
• The Duncan Air Band is the best. Don't even try to compete.
• Even high-ranking personnel pass notes when the meetings get long (this made me feel WAY better about the game of hangman a few folks at our table played).
• I am so darn proud of my soldier. (I already knew that one.  I just wanted to say it again.)

So, I learned a lot, some of it quite useful.  I also got to see some boys act pretty silly, as only brothers can do.  And I got to wake up and tiptoe past peacefully sleeping young men and thank God for letting me borrow them for awhile.  The clock is ticking as Spencer prepares to leave.  I'm cherishing every moment.