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Christmas Eve
A few days ago, I was scrolling through Facebook and saw someone complaining that her child had just radically changed his Christmas list. “He wants a dozen laser tag guns now! And I just finished all of the wrapping!” the person whined. I get it. These small details can be annoying when we have a million things going on. But do you know what it made me realize? At that point, five days before Christmas, I had purchased just one present for each of my children. ONE. Last year it wasn’t like this at all. I planned ahead and bought most of my presents in November, so when Shawn was…
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Decorating for Christmas
My front yard looks like something out of one of those bad Christmas movies. I’m serious. There are lights randomly strewn about, two fake deer, a dozen solar-powered candy canes and two massive inflatable figures – a snowman and a Santa. I bought none of this stuff – it was all Shawn. Last year, he set it all up even though he was in the emergency room less than 24 hours later. I know he worried that I wouldn’t be able to figure out the wiring system he used, and he had very specific ideas about how the lights should look. When I think back on it, I remember him…
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Santa Shawn
I can’t actually remember why we decided to throw our first Christmas party, but I do remember this: Shawn was adamant that he was going to dress up like Santa for it. He spent hours scouring the internet for the perfect outfit and he even bought new shoes and tiny fake eyeglasses. He tried on the outfit before the party and decided that his dark eyebrows gave him away, so he went to the drugstore and bought a white makeup pencil which he used to color in his eyebrows. He took it all very seriously. “You know the kids are TWO,” I told him, “so you don’t have to do all this. …
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Joy!
When Shawn and I got engaged, I sent out my first holiday cards. I was 24, but I felt like such a grown-up. On the card, we joyfully held each other with the sun setting in the distance. Honestly, when I look back at it, I think about how cheesy it looks. But in 2003 I thought it was amazing. I’ve always sent out holiday cards, and over the years, our list of recipients grew to over a hundred families. Part of the reason I enjoyed sending out cards was that I loved getting cards back from my friends. I hung them up in my house for months, and they…
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Thanksgiving
Three years ago, we spent Thanksgiving break with our friends Becky and Josh in an old farmhouse in Delaware owned by Josh’s family. All of our kids were really little and so we spent a lot of time dealing with their needs, but we also drank wine and sat around the dinner table each night for many hours. One night, we spent much of the evening talking about Josh’s brother, Chris, and the teenage antics he pulled during his gap year between high school and college. Josh’s mom told a particularly funny story about Chris and we all laughed and laughed. I remember thinking later how amazing it was that…
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Dad Is Not a Zombie
A few weeks ago, I was driving through DC with Tommy and we passed a cemetery. “Mom, look!” he said, “graves!” “Yes,” I said. “There are graves in a….” He stopped because he couldn’t find the word. “Cemetery,” I answered. “And,” he said, “there are zombies in cemeteries.” I didn’t expect him to say that, so I paused for a second to reply and then before I could say anything else, he said, “My Dad is in a cemetery. So my Dad is a zombie!” “Dad is not a zombie,” I said back to him. “Dad died and his body is in the ground. He did not become a zombie.”…
There’s No Handbook for How to Do This
