When my girls were growing up, we told them their six-foot-three father was a Christmas elf who had grown too big to live with the other elves at the North Pole. This identity was our playful explanation for their often serious daddy turning into a Christmas carol-singing, storytelling, decorating freak from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day…
Any day now you will find all eleven of us at our local dollar store for the evening. Everyone will have their own baskets and will probably be using their coats to keep their precious purchases secret. There will be covert maneuvers and whispered plans between siblings. As the all-knowing mom, I will become the…
When I was a little girl, my aunt made us a nativity set. Every year it came out of storage to remind us of the story of Christ’s birth. It was plush, soft, and familiar, with rosy-pink blush painted on each character’s cheeks. My brother and I carefully unwrapped every bundle in hopes we might…
“More please. More laughter, a smidge more light-heartedness, and a lot more love.” ~Unknown Though I love depth in conversation, I’m also a huge fan of silliness. Laughter was a valuable commodity in my family when I was growing up. Most of my favorite memories involve shared laughter with people I love. My dad made…
I have a love/hate relationship with planning. I’m a planner by nature, and I thrive on it, but I can also take it to the extreme and become overly concerned with my plans turning out perfectly. My youngest child was born in September 2013. At the time, my firstborn was only fifteen months old, so…
As a child, I never believed in Santa. My husband’s parents, on the other hand, went all out to preserve Santa, even writing letters to their kids from the North Pole and not putting gifts under the tree until Christmas morning. Strangely, the Are we going to raise our kids to believe in Santa? discussion…