Lazy

I'm quite enjoying these post-Christmas days.

I've been sleeping in until 10:30ish, eating Lucky Charms and chocolate. 

I've spent a lot of time snuggled in my covers.

It feels amazing...cuz, let me tell you:

December felt like a completely exhausting whirlwind.

Beautiful (which I'm going to post about), but I was bone-tired too.

In fact, here's something from a little ways into December, on a Saturday night when I was feeling completely worn out. I was on my bed and wrote out what I'd done over the previous two days: 

"Woke up on Friday. House was cold. Texted furnace guy friend. Made pancake birthday breakfast for Claire and Russian tea. Fed everybody. Did Mia’s hair. Made her a lunch. Dropped everybody off. Came home. Read to Claire. Cleaned up the kitchen. Furnace guy came. Got Claire ready. Dropped her off to school. Hurried home. Worked. Picked up Claire. Came home. Made birthday cake. Made her birthday dinner. Cleaned up. Showered and got ready. Plugged in to work again. Picked up the older kids. Came home. Made frosting. Frosted the cake. Made salad. Served dinner to everybody. Cleaned up (made the boys help this time). Served up cake and ice cream to everybody. Boys and Claire left with Scott. Cleaned up. Made sugar cookie dough for Claire’s friend party the next day. Found birthday bingo template cards for Claire’s party. Printed them off. Cut them out. Traced and cut out trees for the birthday bags. Got ornament gifts ready. Long talk with Mia. Went for a run with Mia. Came home, took a hot shower, read my scriptures, went to bed. 

Woke up. Headache, still from yesterday. Made toast and took medicine. Took a shower. Realized I was three hours behind on work. Worked. Got ready. Drove to IKEA to get one of Isaiah’s Christmas presents and pick up Grayson and Bella. Stopped at Walmart on the way home for small cookie cutters. Came home. Baked cookies. Cleaned everything up. Made frosting, two different colors. Managed a birthday party for seven girls: decorating cookies, serving up cake and ice cream, playing bingo. Cleaned everything up. Went to Walmart for Christmas wrapping paper and Christmas shopping. Stopped at Papa Murphy’s on the way home to get pizza for the kids and at the grocery store to get roast and potatoes for tomorrow (Sunday dinner). Came home and put pizza in the oven. Found lights out on the tree. Cleaned up again. Got dinner for everyone and turned on a movie. Unloaded the car. Hid purchases from Walmart. Got a text from the primary reminding me that Mia had a talk tomorrow. We’ve talked about it but it needs to be written down for her. Still have to work for a while and get 6 kids to bed and fix the lights on the tree. Totally exhausted."

I read that list after I wrote it down and thought, "No wonder I'm tired."

So yeah...that's kind of a peek into how December-until-Christmas felt. 

And you know what? I never fixed the lights. If you’ve been to my house at Christmas time, you know that I load my tree with lights…so, actually, when I moved some strands around, you really couldn’t see the small sections of a couple of strands that had gone out and I couldn’t bring myself to even dive into that project. Who gives?

So, the point is?

These lazy lazies are deliciously luxurious. 

At 12:30 yesterday, I was in my bed in my pajamas (gift from Becca), working. 

Isaiah was on the iPad next to my bed playing a game.

Benj was flying his lego Kylo Ren's Command Shuttle, one of the sets he got for Christmas (he is in love). 

The girls were quietly playing in their room with Christmas stuff. 

Sometime after 4:00, I changed out of my pajamas just long enough to go for a run in my new workout leggings Christa gave me for Christmas (love!). 

When I got home, I made taco soup and put my pajamas back on.
And I slipped my feet into these cozy slippers Becca knitted for me. (Love! They keep my feet so, so warm.)

We went downstairs with our food and watched 

"The Man from Snowy River." 

I haven't seen that movie in years, and I loved it again.

We read together afterward while the kids ate ice cream. At one point, I looked over and Benj had his rubber band gun in one hand, shooting at something far ahead in the distance, while galloping crazy fast and controlling the reins with his other hand (all at the front window, of course). 
("Man from Snowy River" must have brought it on.) 

(I love that he still goes away in his imagination like that.)

Today is shaping up to be similar.

Basically, if you need me in the next few days, I'll just be here.

In my pajamas.

(I'm not planning on changing.)

Quiet Time

Last night I sat right here, reading.

It had been a day full of...stuff.

Reading with the kids.

Riding bikes.

Reading stories.

Buying M&M candy at the store to make some chocolate Christmas cookies.

Chocolate with bright green and red Ms throughout.

Spent the evening delivering plates of cookies to my neighbors all around and talking with people.

I love my neighborhood and I love the people here.

Mia went with me for the last few and it was so fun.

I feel so conscious of the fact that this little girl won't always want to go with me on every whim, that she'll have more important things to do, that these moments won't last.

Which is why I cherish them.

She was so cute on our deliveries and I could tell, at each house, that everyone else thought that, too.

I tucked her in when we got back and cleaned up my kitchen and swept the floor.

Put all my ribbon and the scissors away.

Restored order.

Later on, I nestled in for reading until Scott got home and we sat and talked for quite a while.

With Benji, who had woken up, and came and sat on his dad's lap.

Then, still later, I tucked him back in bed and giggled with him and his brother who had woken up.

It was a good respite from the past week.

The raunchy mom has been for a visit and I'm ready for her to leave, and for my gentle, patient, loving side to return.

But reading? Its roots go back to my own childhood, with my own mother.

If she had done nothing else, I'd still sing her praises because she gifted me with a love of reading, of words, of stories.  But she did more.

This is what my nightstand looks like.

Do you love to read too?

A quiet chair, winter chill outside, that time of peace before sleep.

It's a lovely, lovely thing.

It's All About Jesus

Yesterday morning we were across the street delivering a Christmas card to an older couple we love.

I was in the kitchen talking with Deon, and Mia had walked into the front room to look at the purple balls on their Christmas tree with Ralph.

He came back in and was chuckling as he told us what Mia had said during their exchange.

They must have been looking at the baby Jesus in the manger scene, because Mia told Ralph,

"There was a real baby Jesus, actually."

Tonight as I was tucking her into bed, she was asking me questions about Jesus.

Where is He?

Was he resurrected?

We discussed who Mary was, and then she told me that Joseph was Jesus' dad.

It was December 1st. 

I got to start something with the children that I've been anticipating for a couple weeks.

After dinner, we cleaned up.

I had them grab their blankies and pillows again.

 Each picked a spot.

We turned out the lights (except for the twinkles of the tree and mantle).

I gave them each a piece from a candy cane.

We lit the pyramid and watched the design it made on the ceiling.

And I read them the first chapter of Charles Dickens' The Life of Our Lord.

Dickens wrote this book to his children, telling them all about the Savior and incidents that happened in his life.

The room was quiet while I read.

Benji asked for more after we finished.

I told them that we'd read a little bit every night, before bed.  We'll light the pyramid while we read and snuggle up and listen.

One more way for us to think again about what this is all about.

Because, as Isaiah informed me while we were driving home looking at Christmas lights tonight, "Christmas is really all about Jesus, Mom."

We'll read more tonight.

I think this might be a new tradition for every December until the children are older.

I'm so excited.

If You Were Here

At 6:04 pm at our house tonight, you'd find...

Apples cooking on the stove for sauce, making the house smell DELISH.

Taco soup on my stove. Double delish smell.

Twinkly mantle

Yesterday's labors on the counter

Bounty by the back gate
A friendly face...

and some excitement in my heart for this.

Puff Revisited

We sing a lot of Puff, the Magic Dragon at our house.

The kids were up late tonight, and even after one of the twins had fallen asleep, the other one wanted me to go in and sing to him. It was about 11:00.

I went into their room, climbed into his bed and lay down next to him. We nuzzled noses and bonked heads and he giggled. This happened a few times and then I asked him what he wanted me to sing.

"Puff. Puffy."

So we started to sing, and I watched his big blue eyes and his long lashes in the low light in his bedroom from the gingerbread train that lights up in all different colors.

And there is a line, every time, that wrenches me in that song when my boys are singing along and I get to listen to their voices. It is this:

"A dragon lives forever, but not so little boys..."

We sang that tonight, and his little voice came in on forever and little boys. Really, my heart hurts each time. What he doesn't realize is that he is that little boy for me. When I hear him and his brother sing that at the top of their lungs, they don't realize that they are growing. They don't realize how sweet and how dear they are. They can't know how much they are engraving in my heart.

I feel a quiet and definite sadness in this.

But, one day, I will tell them about it when I am missing the snuggle time I have now, late at night, with my three-year-olds.

I will tell them how much it means to me now. I hope I can remember the details. And I hope that somehow, even though they are growing, this love grows deeper and sweeter.

It is what matters most.

And, as a post script, I sang in a Christmas program that my dad has organized tonight. It has been happening for 30 years now. And I can't really put words to what happened there, but the Spirit was electrifying. The music was beautiful, and there is something magical that happens when the beautiful texts you are singing proclaim honest, simple, breathtaking truth. And the poetry...oh the poetry! I can't recommend this book highly enough.

(Voices of Christmas by Nikki Grimes)

It touched me through and through and after all that beauty in one evening I left with my heart aching and full.

Who couldn't rejoice for the message of the angels and the shepherds and the prophets about the Savior of the world?

Tonight, We Were Shepherds

This morning I dropped the kids off at my sister's house to go to the temple. While there, one of my thoughts was thinking about the women I was doing work for -- and thinking about how it is neat that women represent women. I got to do work for family members that have already left the earth. A chain, linking us together, making possible priceless blessings for those not here to do it -- should they decide they want those blessings for themselves.

We came home and I made lunch for two of the kids, while the other one threw a huge fit outside in the driveway and took teeny-tiny steps toward the steps up onto the deck toward the back door. I was pretty frustrated. Didn't get why he was crying in the first place. I ended up putting him in his room without lunch because of how big a fit he was throwing.

I put Mia down to sleep and then came upstairs, cleaned up and then went to my room, climbing into my bed. I finished my book and heard my baby wake up just as I got to the end of it.

Later, I was in the kitchen making broccoli potato cheese soup and listening to Handel's Messiah in the background. I turned on the Christmas lights for the front of the house, turned on our front porch light to highlight the wreath hanging on our door. I walked outside with Mia on my hip to the garage to turn on the colored lights Scott and my dad hung on the outline of our garage. I came in and asked Isaiah to turn on the lights that go across our fireplace mantle. Benji turned up The Messiah and said, "Isaiah, trumpets!" I turned it back down twice so I could hear my sister's voice on the other end of my cell phone.

After dinner Scott had prepared our family home evening lesson. He talked to the boys about the signs given at the Savior's birth so that others would know He was born. (We really just talked about the star in the sky.) Upstairs, Scott had us don bathrobes and towels to be shepherds. He put a couple of his headlamps downstairs in our house, and we went looking for the star -- symbolically reenacting that journey of old. When we came to the last star in the house, we watched a couple minute clip on the Savior's birth, with the wise men seeing the star and the shepherds coming to see Jesus. Then Scott talked about how the Savior still gives us stars today to help us find Him -- we have prophets to be our stars, to light the way, to help us as we seek Jesus today. I know this. I do. I do. I do.

We sang Once in Royal David's City -- the quintessential Christmas carol for me. We prayed and ate M&Ms.

It made me grateful for family.

Grateful for Scott's preparation.

Grateful for experiences to share this most important of stories with my children.

A Dragon's Train of Thought

Scott came out of the boys' room tonight to tell me about his conversation with Benji as he was leaving their room after the bedtime routine.

Where you goin', Daddy?

I'm going upstairs.

To talk with mommy?

Yes, to talk with mommy.

Don't talk to Mommy.

Why?

She's not very nice.

No, Mommy's really nice. She's very nice.
No, she's not nice. (Insert: smirking.)

No, Mommy's nice and she's beautiful and wonderful.

(Insert: smirk.)

No, Mommy's a dragon. (Insert: chuckling.)

Seriously? A dragon? Of all things?

We laughed.

Last night I was upstairs after all the kids were in bed. I was sweeping the kitchen floor.

I sweep the kitchen floor a lot.

And I thought, "In my perfect world, my kitchen would always stay clean. It would stay clean!!!!" Etc. etc. etc.

And just then, I stopped myself. I thought, Wow. I'm worried about my kitchen. That's what I'd really want if I could have things figured out??

I started thinking. What would I want in my perfect world. It gave me things to focus on.

this could be a mighty long list, but here are a few...

in my perfect world, my pride would never come first.

i would apologize sooner.

perspective, perspective, perspective.

i would always seize the moment, the opportunity.

expressing love would be paramount.

i would listen more. try to understand first.

be forgiving, gentle, and unfailingly kind.

i would take more time, every day, to listen for God's voice. He is everywhere.

the people i love most would always know it and i would constantly reaffirm that with my actions.

the encouraging thing for me is that i can work to create that world.

right now.

today.

tomorrow.

in my prayers.

in the quiet.

in the bustle.

in my work.

in my thoughts.

with my hands.

in my words.