Monday, December 22, 2008

It's A....Family Tradition

Christmas traditions. What are yours? How about family Christmas traditions? I want to hear about them. Here are some of mine. There aren't a lot that we do as a family every year, I guess there are just small family quirks, like my mom's side-Italian-my aunts are all loud and we all make fun of one another and usually someone cries. Yeah and my little sister Michelle is going to bring her boyfriend this year. Good luck Mark! I suppose this next one isn't just a Christmas tradition..but I have an uncle on my dads side who sings at every family gathering and Christmas is no exception. This uncle, Tom, who has never been asked to sing, sings mostly country songs and although he stays pretty current with his selections his favorites are the high pitched ones that get stuck in your head. We all usually make a huge fuss about it and use it as a punishment, as in 'you better behave or Uncle Tom is not going to stop singing'. And usually, any given Christmas Uncle Tom's singing would bug the heck out of me but this year, when I call home I'm going to ask him to sing just a little for me. It just wouldn't be Christmas, or any other family gathering without it. Another tradition we have with my mom is that she always does stockings for us. Actually, now that we're all older we do them for each other too but back in the days when she did them, they would be full of candy and other small toys or little things, and there would always without fail be an apple and an orange. Now, attention all moms, the last thing your children want to see on Christmas day is fruit. She told us something about it being healthy or bringing us good health or something, who knows I was too busy shoving the chocolate down to hear or understand. But two weeks after Christmas long after the candy was gone and toys had been played out the fruit would still be there and when we took down the Christmas decorations we would almost always have to throw away the apple and orange. Now that I'm older I would soo appreciate fruit in my stocking, because it's from my mom and who else would give you fruit for Christmas. :) The next one I wouldn't consider a tradition, it only happened once, but it helped me to understand that parents can be smart! lol. My parents are divorced and both remarried, my mom married a guy who had two daughters from a previous marriage and so we celebrated Christmas all together, four kids and two parents. To our astonishment the presents were wrapped and nicely placed under the tree early, a few days before Christmas. What were the parents thinking, surely they knew that we'd sneak a peak. When they were out of the room and we were all hunched up under the tree, we found out that maybe our parents were smarter than we thought they were. On each gift there was a tag with a 'to' and 'from' spot but instead of names written in the to spot there were numbers. Numbers! It was a Christmas code! How in the world were we supposed to break this code?! We went through every imaginable order, oldest to youngest, youngest to oldest, birthday in month order, who they loved more, etc. and there was just no sense to it. We were stumped. Finally on Christmas day we discovered there really was no sense to it, they had just assigned each of us a random number and that coordinated on all of our gifts, however, I still believe in the number in order of love theory. That Christmas as we enjoyed our gifts, we reveled a little, even if just a little at how the parents had really stumped us, they laughed the whole time.

This year I'm not going home (gasp!) and I am determined to start a tradition or two of my own. I am planning a big Christmas morning breakfast (pancakes, eggs, and bacon with hot chocolate) and also all the fixins for dinner and a very long, very early phone call home while I'm opening presents. I've also requested info on service activities like serving food because what gets you out of your own pity land like service!? Last week my friends and I went to see the Lights on Temple Square, which apparently is a big tradition thing when you live in Utah. It was beautful and welcomed in Christmas for me. Well, that and all this snow that has so nicely dumped on us right before Christmas. So Merry Christmas everyone, and let me know about those family traditions. ♥♥♥

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Hey...It's OK!....




So it's the Christmas season. It's official, there's no running away from it now. And, as much as I love this season, the lights, the cards, the people rushing everywhere to shop, the traffic....I also acknowledge the statistics that say that the Christmas season is the peak season for tragedies like suicide, depression and killing of family members. And so, I've decided to share something with everyone that always makes me feel better. It's a little list I've compiled from years of reading Glamour magazines. You can argue with me later about reading beauty magazines such as Glamour, but this particular list is a list of things that we shouldn't feel bad or even a little guilty about doing. They are not all Christmas related, but rather life related and they make me feel better about the little mishaps or personal sillinesses of my days. So for this Christmas season, just give yourself (and others) a tiny break and realize sometimes you just have to say....Hey, It's Ok!

...Again, I make the disclaimer that although I agree with these things, I did not come up with them, they are from Glamour magazine. Enjoy :)

HEY....IT'S OK....

....to crow for a while about losing a couple of pounds
...to have more than one picture of yourself on your desk (I currently have 6 on my computer alone :)
....to hang on to a wilty bouquet
...not to have fully mastered long division
...not to need both of your hands when counting your past conquests
....to take a 2 hour lunch
...to worry about whether the Backstreet Boys will muddle through
...not to own a cell phone (MOM!)
...to believe you will someday invent something revolutionary
..to wear heels to the laundromat ;)
....to get your Hepburns mixed up
....to have a few regrets
...not to own an iron
...to like your age
...to skip the Pedicure till Spring
...just to hold hands
....to dry clean your jeans
...to see your first gray hair as a sign of progress
...to make Tuesday Nights Boggle Night
...to like super stinky cheese
...not to make it from scratch
...to fake your way through a Monday meeting
...to wear the shoes you just bought out of the store
...to open the door for him
...to sleep in a long flannel night gown
...not to bite your tongue for once
...to think salsa counts as a vegetable
...to snore
...to make cake from a box and fib!
...to like how you look in pictures
....to fall asleep without brushing your teeth
....to require some maintence
..not to want your boss' job
...to do your Christmas shopping at 11:50 on December 24
...to NOT take yourself seriously
...to find humor in everything
...to tell the whole truth and hit 'send'
...to sit out the polka dot trend
....not to give a crap about carbs
....to yell at your computer
...to admit you got it at Wal-Mart
...to let them see your freckles
...to only pretend youre trying to find the 'door open' button on the elevator when someone's racing to get on
....to retake a group photo simply because your hair isn't just right
...if you consider the season finale of Grey's Anatomy a much bigger deal than the Super Bowl
....to have popcorn for dinner every once in a while-It's a whole grain
...to change outfits seven times...and then back into the first one
...to think the solution for dying batteries is pressing harder on the remote
...to consider riding on a swing a form of cardio
....if you still don't have an ipod
...to want your mom when the going gets tough. Whether you're running a small country or Scout Troop 145, no one else really knows how to make it better ♥
...to eat it right out of the box
...to use a binder clip as a barrette
....to stage your own "blackout"-candlelight and no TV
....to give up on the whole boyfriend hunt for a while...all winter even
...to truly stink at something you love doing, the world has enough experts
...if you haven't quite kicked the tendency to overthink, overeat or oversleep
...not to share the credit if you did all the work
...to really, really like turkey skin
....to have a rude day at work (Sometimes "rude" equals "productive")
...if, no matter how hard you try you are still a serial killer of plants
....to use your old high school slang whenever you get, like, totally excited
....to suffer from Scrabble rage
....to consider your life happy and on track, even if it doesn't involve a mortgage or a man
...not to want to see your neighbor's vacation photos
...to be moved to tears by a well-timed HUG
...not to be the thinnest girl in the room-She envies something you've got, Guaranteed!
....to believe in yourself above all others, no matter how egotistical some people think that sounds
....to prefer Dr. Seuss to Dr. Phil
...to eat the garnish
....to love your beauty mark
....not to call back
....to think brunch is for wimps
.....not to know exactly why you're crying
....to pick your doctor because A) he's good and B) he looks like Patrick Dempsey ♥
....not to share your dessert
.....to get excited about a guy you haven't even met yet. The world needs a little more enthusiasm, not to mention, faith.
...if your idea of home decor is to throw a blanket over it and cross your fingers
...to dance around the living room and call it exercise
...to cry a little bit in private when your boss or even your sister is short with you
....to ask for what your owed, 20 bucks, an apology, a back rub whatever!
...to let yourself get shaggy in the winter, this is why God invented tights
...to wish the results were more exciting when you Google yourself
...to wish they would've given up on Bond movies a couple of 007's ago
....to insist on carving the turkey yourself, even if you hack it up beyond recognition. Men have hogged the knife-wielding spotlight for too long.
....to say "I knew that" when what you really meant was "Um, I know that now..."
...to turn off your cell phone when you're with the one you love
....if you still need to think "righty tighty, lefty loosy" to screw and unscrew stuff
.....if your idea of 'changing a flat' is putting on a pair of heels ;)
...if you've never seen the classics-Gone With The Wind, The Godfather, even Bambi
...to insist on treating your friend to dinner then cross your fingers that she doesn't order the steak
....to, when everything is going wrong, simply take a nap
...not to be a skim milk, dressing on the side hold the bacon kind of girl
...to start your to-do list with a task that's already been done
.....to smirk when the big tough guys at the gym trip on the elliptical
...to demand to be taken off speakerphone
...to start thinking about lunch at 9:35 am
....to RSVP without a plus one
....To bail on plans because the Grinch is on, you don't turn your back on Little Cindy Lou Who

And I made one of my own....It's Ok...
....to wear alarmingly bright red lipstick and consider yourself adorable.... ;)




Merry Christmas ♥