Holiday Tip or Dare # 8

I am setting this post to publish at 4 a.m. on BLACK FRIDAY. If you think I am really up this early, you don't know me very well! I just thought I would set it to post this early just in case any of you were up getting ready to shop...
This week's tip or dare is STAY AWAY FROM HOLIDAY SHOPPING THIS WEEKEND! I know some people just love shopping on Black Friday, but I am not one of them. Every time I have participated it has been a stressful thing and not worth the savings I did get. My one exception to my no shopping on the day after Thanksgiving, is Internet shopping. You can get some great deals online this weekend without having to wrestle anyone over that last coveted item.
Myself, I plan to enjoy Black Friday by participating in our annual girls' day/Christmas Card making party with my Mom, Aunt and all of my sisters. There will be food, there will be laughs, and there will be fun. It's a favorite tradition that we have been doing for many years now. (Usually we don't have the card party on Black Friday, but this year we are because it just worked out that way.)
My advice is to kick back and spend some more time with your family on Friday. Remember, it's just a tip if you don't take the dare, so if you decide to brave the crowds of foaming at the mouth shoppers, feel free. I won't hold it against you!
I hope you had a great THANKSGIVING!

Wordless Wednesday

I can't believe she is already six months old!

Holiday Tip or Dare # 7

First off...a quick update. After two weeks we finally have our computer up and running somewhat. However, I lost all my feeds and favorites, which is pretty frustrating to me right now. I think I found most of the blogs I read regularly and put them in my feeds again.

This week's tip or dare is to have a family countdown to Christmas. I am putting this on now rather than next week because figuring out how you want to count down to Christmas may take some planning on your part. I actually wrote a post about this activity last year, and I am going to repost it here. Whether you choose to use any of the ideas below, or to come up with your own, I challenge you to find a way to count down to Christmas (or another December Holiday if you don't celebrate Christmas) as a family.

You know those advent calendars that come with a tiny piece of chocolate about the size of your fingernail? Well...we came up with a better idea.
In years past we have seen advent calendars, the kids make a paper chain at school and each day of December we take one chain off until we get to the top and then its magically Christmas! When I was a youth we made an advent candle that came with a list of scriptures and each day of December you burned the candle down a little bit and read a scripture that had to do with Christmas. Those are all great ideas and I am not discounting any of them in any way. This year I thought up a way to have some family togetherness in addition to the excitement of counting down.
You can certainly make a calendar for this activity if that's the way you want to go, but my idea involves using a jar, a bowl, or any container you can fit 24 small pieces of paper in.
First of all, I would recommend looking ahead in your calendar for the month of December. Are there school concerts to attend? Other family obligations? Sporting events? Make a list of things you are already committed to doing for the month.
Next you need to come up with 24 activities to use for the countdown. The beauty of this is that you can tailor fit it to the amount of time you have to spend on a given evening. If you will be busy all evening and only have half an hour or even just 15 minutes to devote to an activity, that is just fine. All you need to know is about how much time you will have each evening or day to devote to a family activity, and then choose short ones or long ones according to your needs. Write the activities on a piece of paper. I recommend color coding. For instance, red paper could mean the activity is in the 15 minute to 30 minute range. Green paper could mean that you have more than an hour to devote to the activity. You can use as many colors as you want to, just make sure you write a key on the lid of your jar that says how long a time is represented by each color of paper, and make sure you put the appropriate amount of each color to fit your schedule.

Some ideas for shorter activities...

Reading a Christmas story at bedtime. Check your local Library and see what they have available. I have heard of people reading a different Christmas storybook for each day of the countdown. Its quick, its relaxing, and its good family time. You can also include reading scriptures about Christmas as part of this.

Watch a Holiday special. We don't get TV reception where we live, but we do have some Christmas and Holiday versions of TV shows on DVD. Garfield, Charlie Brown, Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph and etc. Many of these are between 20 minutes to a half an hour, and you can rent some of them from the video store if you don't own any yourselves. For us it has been fun to watch shows we loved as children with our own kids.

Share some Christmas Memories. You can look at Christmas photos from years past, and talk about how Christmas was when you were younger. You can also find out your children's favorite Christmas memories and record them in a family journal.

Have hot cocoa with whipped cream and other fun ingredients and listen to Christmas music.

Take fun family photos with a Holiday Theme.

Have a gift wrapping relay race.

Color Christmas coloring pages. There are always coloring pages to be found on the web that you can print out.

String popcorn, cranberries, or make a paper chain...decorate the house a little bit at a time!

Longer Length activities...(an hour or more)

Make Christmas candy. You can get candy molds at your local craft store as well as chocolate melts to use for candy making. Our kids always enjoy making candy as a family.

Decorate goodies. Christmas cookies, gingerbread houses, cupcakes, whatever floats your boat!

Make Christmas Ornaments. Family Fun's Christmas Site is a great resource for finding kid friendly Holiday crafts, decorations and recipes.

Deliver Christmas treats to friends and family.

Do a family service project. Before we were married and had young children we loved to go and put shopping carts away at Christmas. In the rush of Holiday shopping many people would leave their carts all over the parking lot, and its cold! So we would deliver the carts back to their little stalls in the parking lot so the cart jockeys would have an easier time of it. I don't recommend it for families with young kids because of traffic. There are tons of other family service projects you can do though.

Make Christmas cards. Homemade cards are fun to make, and kids love the opportunity to be creative!

Go caroling! If you are too embarrassed to carol in public, just spend an evening at home singing Christmas songs together.

Watch a Christmas movie. Its a Wonderful Life, White Christmas, Home Alone...take your pick! This one is a great weekend activity.

Have a family gift wrapping party.

Make a snowman (if you live where there is snow). If you don't live where there is snow you can print out a paper snowman here or here. Or you can draw your own.

If your kids are grown and gone you could try wrapping one gift each day as a way to count down and get ahead on your Christmas preparations.

These are just a few ideas to get you started. There are tons of crafts, recipes and other fun things out there that you could use as an activity. I would love to hear ideas you have to add!

Once you have your jar filled, just pick the appropriate color of paper for the day you are choosing for. You could even draw them out one day ahead to make sure you have time to prepare, or if you would rather plan ahead, you can simply make up your own advent calendar and list the activity for each day and your kids can still be surprised when its time to reveal the next activity. I hope you have fun with this if you decide to use it!

Holiday Tip or Dare #6

Since Thanksgiving is rapidly approaching, this week's tip or dare is really more of a dare.
Do something Thanksgiving related as a family. This is aside from the usual Turkey and etc on the actual day.

Some ideas for family activities might include:
Watch a Thanksgiving video (we like A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, and the Garfield Thanksgiving special, or Thanksgiving Episodes of TV shows we have on DVD such as Cosby or Home Improvement).

Make Apple Turkeys. (This tradition came from D's side of the family and our kids look forward to it each year.) This involves making apples look like turkeys using toothpicks and edible items like marshmallows, cereal, fruit snacks and etc. See some of our past turkeys here.

Make a thankful tree. Use paper to make a tree trunk and branches to put up somewhere in your house (we like the dining room wall). Cut out leaves and have each family member write something they are thankful for on each leaf and use them to decorate the tree (this is a great one to do throughout the month too. Family members can put a new leaf up each day).

Write Thank You letters to extended family, teachers or friends.

Basically, any activity you can gear towards Thanksgiving and talking about the meaning of the day. Its more than just Turkey and mashed potatoes.

So go for it...I DARE you! I'd love to hear your own ideas for a good Thanksgiving activity for your family as well...

Wordless Wednesday

Note: We still haven't fixed our computer, so I apologize for today's Wordless. I am limited to the few (mostly Halloween pics) on the camera, and we are having rainy weather. Here is the proof!

Our back yard...I would have taken one of the Lake out front, but I didn't want the camera to get wet. This was taken standing just inside the back door. Those brown things in the picture...are Mushrooms.

The back walkway...the big wooden blocks are what we use to keep from wading in from the driveway. It gets this way every year.

Poor Judd is Dead...

Our computer has died. Well...it needs a new motherboard anyway. Until we can fix it I am stuck using the kids' computer which is way slow and obnoxious, so if you don't notice me around the blogosphere that is why. I will try to read and keep up with your blogs, but I can't guarantee anything and may not comment if I do manage to keep up with my reading. All of my pics are on the other computer as well as my entire brain (at least the calendar part of it), so you can imagine that I am feeling pretty disconnected right about now.
I hope you all have a great week and I hope to resurrect Judd soon!

Monday Memory: Grandma's house

I have a lot of memories of visiting my Grandma Nora's house. Thinking back on it, I realize that it wasn't that there were a lot of fun things to do there that made us love going. I think it was that our Grandma loved us and we knew it. Grandma's house was also a place where some of our favorite traditions took place.
I don't remember Grandma and Grandpa having a lot of toys. There was one small toy box with some toys from when my Dad was younger. Things like plastic cowboys and horses, some baby toys including a mother duck and her ducklings that you could pull around with a string, and a few metal cars with hard plastic wheels. They also had a set of Tangrams and some Tinker toys and I remember spending hours sitting at the coffee table playing with them.
Because there weren't many toys we did a lot of entertaining ourselves. My older sisters and I would sing and dance and we used a carpet made of blocks of color sewed together as our own makeshift twister board. We also played a made up game that we only played at Grandma's house. Really it was just a glorified game of tag that we called "Faint Man". I was always it, and had to stay it until I had tagged everyone. The only problem was that you only had to faint for a short period of time if you got tagged by the faint man, and if someone else who wasn't tagged ran by and touched you, you could get free early. I never managed to win, but I didn't care. I enjoyed doing the chasing.
Grandma and Grandpa's house was painted bright red, and Grandpa had made shutters for the window. The shutters were white with crescent moons carved into them. The whole house had a lot of personality to it, and I loved it. I still often have dreams of being in their house, even though it was sold years ago after my Grandparents had both died.
Grandma Nora learned to oil paint later in life, and had gone back to school when my Dad (her youngest) was in high school. She sold paintings to help put herself through school and not only got her bachelor's degree, but a Masters in Psychology as well. The walls of their house had oil paintings hanging in each room, and in the hallways and I loved to look at the paintings and try to imagine being in the places they showed. One of her paintings that hung on the wall in the dining room showed a moonscape with the earth painted in the sky above the moon. There was a tiny mouse painted on a rock in the moonscape because as we all know the moon is supposed to be made of cheese.
The dining room is where many of my favorite memories happened. Every meal Grandpa would stand behind Grandma's chair and push it closer to the table for her (not because she couldn't, but because he was a gentleman). Then he would lean down, and give her a kiss on the lips before going to his place at the other end of the table. Grandma and Grandpa gave me my first ideas of what romance really is. They were the model for how I wanted my relationship with my husband to be. Before each meal, Grandma would say Velbekommen and then we could eat. I had forgotten about that until one of my sisters and I were talking about it recently. I looked up Velbekommen and found out that it is Norwegian (as well as Danish) and means "Enjoy your meal." I was lucky enough that my appointed place at the table was right next to Grandma, who always made sure that I sat up straight and didn't slouch at the table. I loved being able to sit next to her at each meal.
The dining room was also where we would decorate cookies with our cousins every Christmas Eve Day while Christmas movies like White Christmas, or Holiday Inn played in the living room. We didn't frost the cookies. They were plain sugar cookies and we painted the dough with food coloring using q tips for our brushes, and then baked them. Everyone in the family would have green, blue or red tongues from eating the cookies. We loved creating our masterpieces.
Even though we spent every Christmas eve at Grandma's house, I don't remember the gifts that we received so much as I remember the time spent with family. That time we had together is what really mattered. Even though my Grandma died more than 20 years ago, those memories hold her here in my heart, and keep me looking forward to being with her again someday.

Holiday Tip or Dare #5

Thanksgiving tips: Make a menu, and make ahead.

Of course for most families, Thanksgiving already has a traditional menu. The menu planning part is usually relatively easy. Our family does the traditional turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, rolls and oyster stuffing along with whatever additional sides we decide on that year, and of course pies for dessert. Having a big menu can get pretty stressful for a host or hostess though. This week's tip or dare is to make a menu of everything you are planning on having for Thanksgiving and figure out what things you can make ahead of time.

Rolls, mashed potatoes and pies for instance don't HAVE to be made the day of Thanksgiving itself. They can be made the day before, or even farther ahead in some cases, and refrigerated or frozen. The preparations for getting the turkey ready can be done the evening before so that its ready to put in the oven in the morning.

Also, hosting Thanksgiving doesn't mean that you should have to do all the work. If you have guests coming, assign them something to bring. If they are flying in from out of town, then assign them something to help with on the day itself.

Our family has a tradition of switching off every other year for Thanksgiving. My parents planned it so that every other year they will have all of their children there for Thanksgiving, and on the in between years, we can all have Thanksgiving with our spouse's family, or have a quiet Thanksgiving at home. This has worked out well and cut back on the stress of us trying to fit two Thanksgiving meals in on one day (D's Dad lives in the same town as my parents). This year it is my side of the family's turn, and we are each taking on an assignment for the meal. I already volunteered to do the mashed potatoes and told my Mom that if she needs me to do anything else to let me know. With each of us doing a little bit, none of us have to be too stressed out about making sure everything is perfect. We can spend the day enjoying each other's company and thinking about the meaning of the day.

What are some of your favorite Thanksgiving foods?

Wordless Wednesday

D took this picture of the frost on his windshield recently. It looks like a mountain range to me.

Monday Memory: Busted

After D and I got married we moved to Provo, Utah so that he could continue attending BYU. Our first apartment was a basement apartment somewhat close to campus. It had very low ceilings (as in, when you got dressed you were likely to knock your hands against the ceiling when taking your shirt off) and the house above us had several single young guys renting it. Our apartment was small, just one bedroom, a tiny living room, bathroom and a decent sized kitchen. There was a door in our kitchen that opened up into a laundry area that we shared with the boys from upstairs. (That was fun, trying to get my laundry done so that none of them would open up the dryer and find a load of our underwear in there.) The door between our apartment and the laundry room didn't have a locking knob, but there was a sliding lock at the top of the door that kept anyone from being able to come in from the laundry area. The neighborhood was not the nicest ones in Provo. It was a little bit on the run down side.

One night in late summer or early fall D and I were getting ready for bed and I told D that I didn't really feel safe in that neighborhood. Almost immediately after I said that there was a loud banging sound and I heard people in our apartment on the other side of our bedroom door. I quickly grabbed a robe and put it on. Our bedroom door flew open and on the other side of it were several men dressed in black and wearing flack jackets. They were also pointing guns and bright lights at us and yelling at us to put our hands up. D had his hands up but took a step towards them as he was trying to ask what was going on and that was all the excuse they needed to shove him down on the floor on his stomach and handcuff him behind his back. They were a little bit nicer to me (maybe because I was in a robe and I was pregnant). I had to sit down on the bed and they handcuffed me with plastic restraints (like big zip ties) behind my back. After questioning us for a few minutes they cut our cuffs and explained to us that they were on a drug raid and that because there was no lock between our apartment and the upstairs one that constituted shared space so they had to search our place too. They were in the kitchen with D explaining this when he casually pointed up at the sliding lock. They had assumed there was no lock because of the knob, and had kicked the door in, causing the bolt of the lock to tear a groove through the door frame. The officer in charge was a little bit embarrassed when he saw that there was indeed a lock between the apartments. They had also kicked in our front door and there was a nice black shoe mark on our bathroom door as well where they had kicked it open and smashed the knob through the wall behind the door in the process.

As it turned out, the swat team had gone to the wrong address, and there were no drugs upstairs either. I was pretty shaken up by the whole experience, not enjoying having guns shoved in my face, being handcuffed or watching my husband get manhandled, so I called my Mom for comfort. D's reaction was the opposite. He thought it made a great memory for his journal and wrote about it right away. Although traumatic at the time, it does make a good story in hindsight.