Saturday, November 30, 2013

Gearing up for Christmas

Thanksgiving was good. 

In years past, I've been very bad about letting the expectation of what the day should feel like get in the way of actually enjoying time with my family.  I'm proud to say I didn't do that this year.  Both sets of grandparents came to join us as well as my brother.  It was nice.

Now it's time to start getting ready for Christmas.  In years past I've almost had a sense of dread about the Christmas season just because there are so many things I feel like I have to do.  This year I'm not going to let myself get sucked into that.

In November, I noticed that 2 TV shows that I record and watch while I fold laundry were bringing me down.  I enjoy Rachael Ray and have started watching The Chew.  I don't love either, but learn quite a bit about cooking from both.  But especially The Chew did nothing but make me feel like if my Thanksgiving table wasn't exactly like theirs I was failing.  What?  When I realized that, I watched much, much less.  Good move.

With Christmas, I'm going to be very watchful of what I read, listen to and watch.  I don't need to make our Christmas a certain way.  I like what our pastor said last year about Christmas:  it's a time of the year when we make a little extra room for Jesus.  Celebrating Him.  Pondering the gift that He is for each of us.

My brother gave the boys a Lego advent calendar.  A year ago I would have wigged out and been weird because it isn't about Jesus.  I'm very, very happy to know that in the past couple of years I've made a real effort to teach my boys that Christ is the reason for Christmas and they get it.  Yes, we have to keep our focus on it, but I feel like we can just enjoy the season now and I don't have to hit that point quite so hard.

Fun is easy for Aaron.  For me, it's a challenge.  I have to brag--on Thursday morning, I knew both sets of grandparents were on the way to our house as well as my brother.  I was cooking a big breakfast for the boys because I knew we would be eating later than they're used to and I didn't want to be bothered with them being hungry if lunch was late.  Boy #1 asked if he could help make the pancakes.  The task master in me that wanted to have a clean kitchen when her mom and in-laws showed up wanted to say, "Shoo, messy child."  But I didn't.  I let the messy little guy help.  He loved it.  Through my actions I told him he was important to me.  I even took a deep breath and enjoyed his company.  Very, very big step for me on that one.  And no one made a comment on the cleanliness of my kitchen.

I'm weird about dishes.  I want them done NOW.  However, I knew my parents and brother weren't staying very long at our house and I chose to spend time talking to my mom instead of washing dishes.  My brother even joined us for a really nice chat.  That was a cool moment that I'm really glad I chose to join in.

I want Christmas to be that way.  Keep my focus on these precious moments with my kids and my Savior.  Today I am planning to make an Advent calendar for us in which we have 24 strips of construction paper linked together, each counting down to 1.  I want to write our church's Advent theme for each week on them so that each day when we tear one off, we're all reminded of what it is we're waiting for.  I was going to do an elaborate 12 days of giving in which we came up with ways to give to those around us, but I've decided to just relax the structured feel of that and let giving as it happens.  Last night #1 went to the store with me.  We bought some groceries for needy families (the store makes it very easy to do so--hooray Brookshire's!) and #1 got to physically put the bag of goodies in the big bin.  Later he told me doing so made him for special because he got to do it and thoughtful because he was giving to others.  Cool, cool moment that I hadn't scripted. 

I'll wrap up here so I can order my address labels for my Christmas cards which are already done!  As you can see, this post is all lofty about the true meaning of Christmas but what really makes me happy?  Knowing it's Nov 30 and I have my Christmas cards in hand.  Oh well.  Some are happy with watching sunsets.  Some with listening to the waves on the shore.  I am happy when my Christmas cards get to people before the 24th of December.  Wow, I am shallow!

Friday, November 15, 2013

Closets bring happiness

This morning I chose to tackle the linen closet.  It's been mildly bugging me for a few months.  I'm hosting Thanksgiving and even though no one is spending the night at my house, somehow cleaning out a closet that no one will look in gave me a great sense of accomplishment.

It took less than 30 minutes from opening the door to completion.  The cool thing is that the lowest shelf is now my boys'--it's puzzles that they are welcome to do by themselves.  Score!

#3 loves that the closet is now his "puzzle closet" and I love that it's tidy.  Tidy is just so pleasant.

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Awesomeness

I haven't posted in a while.  My routine from last year has shifted.  I teach the 1st-3rd choir at church now and I have to take my twins to kinder as well as pick them up each day.  Somehow the 2 of those things have made me out of the routine of blogging as often.

I read the book Start--Punch Fear in the Face the other day.  My husband and I are big Dave Ramsey fans and the author, Jon Acuff, is a speaker at Dave events so I guess Aaron heard of him that way.  Anyway, he read the book and encouraged me to read it.  I'm glad I did.  It's a motivational book basically about the road to awesomeness.   

It's funny--I think of awesome as this wow kind of thing that people who are CEOs get to do in ivory towers somewhere.  This book helped me see that every day, just being who God made me to be, I can be awesome. 

I can be an awesome wife.  Just yesterday at the grocery store I did a very rare impulse buy of hot sauce for Aaron because I knew he didn't care much for the previous one I got for him.  That was awesomeness. 

I can be an awesome mom.  The past weekend Aaron hung his banjo (he's teaching himself to play) and my guitar up on the wall, well within the boys' reach.  The boys love strumming both instruments while they sing.  Precious!  The musician and adult in me who is averse to non-musical instrumentation cringes that they play, but the awesome mom in me applauds that they love music and worships as they sing "Jesus Loves Me' with such gusto. 

I got to practice awesomeness in friendship the other day when I took a mom who's new to the area to MOPs.  I even got to figure out how to attach her 2 car seats in my car--not my skill set.

But here's the thing--these awesome things come rather easily to me.

What's harder is what I did this morning--I said no.  Let me preface to say that no is just not a word I say easily.  I want the whole world to love me and I figured out at an early age that "yes" wins many friends.  "No" can be lonely.

As the choir teacher, I took on a huge project:  I'm directing a children's musical at our church combining 3 choirs (ages 4-6th grade), drama, etc to do basically a living nativity program.  Should be very, very sweet.  There are just lots of moving parts I have to coordinate.  I've delegated well and now I get to work on managing the parts to be sure everything comes out as it should.

Tonight is choir night and I have to be at my best to teach the kids what we need to learn for the very quickly approaching program.  This morning was Community Bible Study.  I play the piano for the worship section and it is not a snap for me to play.  I have to practice the song and be prayerful that the Lord will bless my effort for his glory.  If I'm not in the right mindset, I get nervous, flustered and I miss God's blessing.  Today was good.  However, after I played the children's director gently reminded me I had signed up for being a Love Lady today.  (Extra helper for the children's program). 

I know my face fell.  She knows that 3 years ago I loved helping out.  Now, not so much.  She graciously asked if she should ask someone else to do it today and I said with my hesitation..."yes."  I couldn't believe I actually said that!  I apologized but she was very quick to say that there are ladies who love doing it and she would much prefer honesty to me doing it with a reluctant heart.  What a blessing!

Yesterday I got an email that pertained to the kids' musical.  I won't go into it, but suffice it to say it was a request for me to do even more than what I committed to with this project.  I'm the world's worst at a knee-jerk "yes" and then I feel bad about it later.  This time, I knew no was best, but I talked it over with Aaron and had his full support of the no.  Saying no still wasn't easy, but doing so is the road to awesomeness.

We all have moments of awesomeness.  I'm just glad that I'm finally learning that being awesome isn't making everyone else happy.  It's being true to who God made me to be and being my very best version of that every day.