a fireworks-free fourth

I don't like fireworks.

When I was a child, I remember enjoying some 4th of July fireworks. I especially liked the little snakes you could grow on the sidewalk. And sparklers, of course, because I was allowed to hold them. And these fireworks that made Chinese lanterns because I could then hang them in my room.

But even as a child, that was about it. Sometimes we would go to big fireworks displays along the river instead of doing 4th of July at home. I wasn't impressed. Or amazed. Or anything close. I was bored, hot, and rather annoyed with the crowds.

Now, as an adult, I see major drawbacks to fireworks at home. First of all, I have to wonder what is in those fireworks, all made in China as they are. I spend so much time (and money)  trying to improve my soil and our land and grow organically. I obsessively check labels in the store to avoid chemicals in our food, our toiletries and even our cleaning supplies. Do I then want to explode unlabeled bundles of toxic chemicals in our own space?

Um, no.

But even more importantly perhaps, is the total and absolute waste of money that fireworks are. The first year we lived here, we thought how fun it would be to go and buy the fireworks that are legal to shoot off here, but illegal in the state we moved from. My husband had a good and steady income, and we had a little in savings, so we bought a big pack of fireworks and invited some of our friends over.

The fireworks package cost us $175. It took us about an hour to let off $175 worth of fireworks. The children were bored after about 20 minutes. At the end, even we were bored, but we wanted to get through the pack. The smoke smelled horrible and at some point early on, I had to move away from it all with the baby, who kept coughing.

I kept looking at the sky, seeing those bursts of light as dollar bills. We were literally blowing up our money in the sky. I was ashamed. It was a blatant display of Western excess and it was shameful. I vowed I wouldn't let that happen again.

So, this year, we have different plans for the 4th of July. For years, I've wanted to find other ways to make the day special besides fireworks, and finally, I've gathered a few activities that I think will fit the bill.

First on our agenda, we will bake. After all, what is the 4th of July without a flag cake? I remember my sweet grandma making one of these every year. While I could give or take the fireworks, the cake was always eagerly anticipated. Plus, she usually let me help decorate. One berry for the cake, one for me, one for the cake....

Next, we might try this fun little fireworks in a jar experiment that's been circulating lately.

If the children aren't interested in that one, then we might try to build little bug houses for fireflies. They have been wanting to make a firefly nightlight for a long time now. Just for one night, I think that would be okay.

I'm curious to see what would happen if we added a little food coloring to a jar of bubbles. Might they make colored bubbles? We shall see.

If the evening proves cool enough to sit outside, we'll build a little bonfire for making s'mores-in-a-cone. I found a great deal on organic ice cream cones online, so we now have 144 ice cream cones sitting in our pantry. Wait, correction: 132. One full box has already  been enjoyed.

And finally, the crowning glory for my little ones: I have given them my full permission to stay up as late as they wish. No bedtime! May the firefly catching continue until they fall down from sleepy exhaustion and may they rest peacefully in their beds to the loud drone and swift breeze of window fans.

What a lovely summer day that would be! For me, as an adult, it might just be one of the few times I will have enjoyed the 4th of July holiday.

And when I think back to little me, as a child, if you add some beautiful cousins, take away some silly fireworks, these things - baking with grandma, roasting marshmallows over small fires, running after fireflies, letting it all go to the wind of a loud and constant fan - they are what I remember most. Long and lovely summer days.

What other plans besides fireworks do you have for the 4th of July?

local libraries with summer reading programs

In my last post, I listed some local businesses that were giving away prizes and rewards in summer reading programs.

Here, I wanted to list some of the various libraries around town along with their logging requirements and prizes available. This list is for K-6 readers.

Kenton County Public Library - sign up inside a library branch. Log the books you read and after you finish 5 books, return your log for a prize and sign up again.

Cincinnati Public Library - sign up online. You can choose to log minutes or books. There are different "levels" that you reach after reading a certain number of books or logging a certain number of minutes. Each level achieved earns a prize and there are also larger, grand-prize drawings at summer's end. An interesting feature of this program is in its online format. You can choose to review and rate the book, which is a fun learning opportunity for us.

Lawrenceburg Public Library - sign up online and log your minutes to earn prizes. Prizes start at 6 hours or 360 minutes.


Are you participating in any summer reading programs this year? Do your children enjoy them?

local reading logs with prizes

Now that I have a young reader (who is rarely found without a new book at hand, actually), all the cool reading logs we have around us are catching my attention. For my local readers  - anywhere from Cincinnati to Indianapolis to Louisville - here's my handy-dandy list of summer reading programs and prizes for 2012.

If you have a reader like I do, why not grab some prizes for doing what they love anyway? Plus a special bonus: a shopping date with mom to collect the goods.

Half Price Books - for ages 14 and under, offers a $5 gift card for June and a $5 gift card for July for meeting the reading minutes goal outlined on the page.

Barnes and Noble  - for grades 1-6, read any 8 books and get a free book in-store

Scholastic - for ages 12 and under, this one mentions "rewards" and "chance to win prizes." Doesn't sound as straightforward as the others, but if you're reading (and logging) for the other sites anyway, why not?

Pottery Barn Kids - this one is a bit different. You read books from their recommended list, which qualifies you for "a free book" in-store. This is the most restrictive I've found yet.

Of course, our local libraries each have a reading program too.

 It looks like we'll be keeping a little closer track of the time spent reading this summer, so  I'll be recording our times in our homeschooling journals (might come in handy one day), help my little reader win some prizes, and look forward to a late summer shopping trip together.

If you have any summer reading programs to add - for child or adult - please post them in the comments!

do i need to separate you two?

Today has been a day of sibling fighting. Unfortunately, it's coming on the heels of more than a week of my three little girls arguing with, snipping at, and intentionally aggravating one another.

These weeks come in phases, they come and go, they vary in intensity.

And they drive me crazy.

This is why I had my earphones on half the morning.

As I was preparing lunch, I hear the screaming and squealing start on the daybed downstairs. Miss Three Year Old (the instigator) and Miss Nine Year Old (the retaliator) were actually hitting and kicking one another as Miss Nearly Two Year Old was booking it up the staircase as fast as her almost two year old legs could book it, screaming all the while about the terrible fight her sisters were in.

Instead of yelling (my first impulse), I separated them. I did the school teacher's equivalent of seating them across the room. I told them both to go to separate bedrooms and wait until I told them they could come out. And while I didn't yell, I also didn't say it all that nicely. There could have been a lot of jabbing at the air with my index finger to punctuate my instructions.

"Do NOT," jab toward Miss Nine, "leave your bedroom," jab toward Miss Three, " until I say it's OK." Door shut.

Miss Nine has been in timeout before. She went to her bedroom and sulked. Maybe she read a book. Maybe she packed a suitcase so she could run away. Maybe she thought about sneaking out the back window. I'm not sure. I had already put my earphones back on and was planning to follow the one minute per year of age, but based on the minimum common denominator here - three years, three minutes, one song's worth.

Miss Three has never really been in timeout in a room by herself before and I was surprised she was even staying put.

After my song was through, I headed down to the bedrooms trying to figure out how to approach the whole "here's our conversation about what happened so we understand each other and y'all can leave the stinkin' bedrooms" so that we could end on a positive note that had everybody loving one another again. And hopefully acting like loving sisters, too!

"Don't blame any one person," I reminded myself. "Remind them of the rule. Make sure they both know I'm on their 'side' equally. Don't force affection. Remember to find a way they can make it right again."

I open the door to find Miss Nine snuggled behind Miss Three while Three rubbed Nine's elbow for comfort and Nine stroked her hair. Nine looked at me apprehensively.

"She was crying. I know I was supposed to stay in my room, but she was crying and I think she was afraid."

I smiled. I felt a tear brewing - a happy one.  I said nothing. No rules and reminders needed this time.

What's the school teacher's equivalent of that? This is why I love homeschooling.

to my daughters: your calling

Every so often, I think of things that I would like to somehow impart to my daughters. Some life lesson, some been-there-done-that mistake I hope they don't repeat, some realization that I think might help them in their journey from the breathing pulsing beating moving human experience to the other side of eternity. Today I want to tell them about their calling.

It doesn't matter what name you have for it: your calling, your vocation, your destiny, even your specific skill set. If you pick any well-educated, informed and thoughtful person in our society, my loves, they will tell you roughly the same thing in different words.

You must find your calling, they will say.

But your mama is about to tell you that I think they are way off-base, and why I've come to believe that.

My beautiful children, you are special in countless ways. You have all been well-endowed with endless generosity, love, acceptance and kindness. I watch you display it with one another every day. The ways in which you sacrifice your own desires to have your possessions and time (and your mama) all to yourself so you can help one another feel better always surprises me in a way that makes my belly ache from being proud of you. 

You are also each unique and have your own strengths and weaknesses. I could point out specifically what I see those being right here right now, but you are each so young that I will resist my urge to be specific so as not to risk pigeon-holing you into something you might not be.

And as you have unique strengths and weakness, you have unique talents and skills. And you have your own things that would drive you absolutely mad crazy. This is wonderful! This is life, and your generous, sacrificial and very grounded spirits will ensure that you do your best to avoid long-term situations that make you absolutely mad crazy. I am certain of it.

You might be wondering right now, what does this have to do with our callings? (Perhaps she has gotten distracted again, you might say to your sister, what do you think? Probably, she might answer.)

Because, you might wonder, if we each have all this uniqueness, why don't we have a calling?

Well, that's the thing I've been getting around to - you do! You have a calling, and another one, and another one after that. Each of you really does have a certain set of skills, talents, strengths, weaknesses, loves, dislikes, irritations, activities that ground you, activities that bore you, and activities that excite you. And that whole big ball of YOU prepares you for many, many callings.

Let me tell you loves, for as long as I can remember, I have looked for my calling. "What am I on this Earth for?" I've wondered. What grand plan does God have in store for me?

And while I was wondering and waiting for the grand plan to be revealed, I wasted a lot of time doing not much of anything. I ignored and missed all the little callings, keeping my eyes keenly on the horizon for the Big One.

I can pretty much guarantee you that doing nothing as you wait for your calling to be revealed, that is not your calling.

So here is what I want you to remember: you have many callings. You have endless vocations. You might find yourself pursuing three, four, even five of these at any given time. You might find that one has to come before the others, instead of the others, all by itself at one time, while later, you can balance so much more. You might find that what you felt called to do, and genuinely and passionately pursued when you were in your 20s, has no appeal when you are in your 50s. Things change, you change, and needs change. That is the nature of our human experience.

But whatever you do from a place of sacrifice and generosity to further God's Goodness in this world is one of your many callings.

The whole giant ball of uniqueness that makes you you - that is a gift. You must use that gift to promote God's Goodness, as far and wide as you can. It is your responsibility and you must take it very seriously. And then you must sleep easily at night knowing that whatever you have or haven't accomplished that day, week, month, year, decade, you have done this. You must not judge your accomplishments by the world's view of success, but by this alone. Have I used my gifts to promote God's Goodness?

You must live all of your callings, day in and day out.

van gogh-inspired sunflowers

As I mentioned in my last post, we finished up our two-week unit study on All Things French by painting some Van Gogh-inspired sunflowers. I have a larger purpose for the white signs I painted them on - I want to add a little personality and beauty to our homestead here. Sunflowers seemed the perfect choice.

We began growing sunflowers here two years ago and were pleased (and surprised) to find that they thrived on our land with very little effort on our part. How wonderful when we also found out that sunflowers have the rare ability to "cleanse" your land by leaching out the chemicals used by the conventional farmers before you. Now we probably aren't going to want to eat those seeds for a few years, but what an amazing function those beautiful plants provide! Plus, nothing says happy sunshiney sunshine to me like a giant bright yellow sunflower as it lifts its head up to the sky and follows the sun on its westerly path through the day.

I've been looking forward to painting the sunflowers since we started our France study. I don't bring out the paints very often. Okay, we paint next to never. I can easily count our painting sessions at home on one hand. Why do we not do this basic art activity? The mess.

I am pretty relaxed in general about art and what creations the girls come up with. I don't critique it. I encourage them to draw and cut and glue and even tape sometimes (when we have it around! somehow it disappears as fast as Band-aids around here). Creativity is king here, not technique or even talent. Just try. That's what I want to see. Try and try and try again, because I didn't try. I was critiqued somewhere along the line, and so I censored myself, and then I quit trying. You can only freely stretch yourself in one frame of mind, and that is without censorship. I feel like once you internalize the critiques of experts and authority, then you self-censor every piece and that chance for free creative license and learning in the middle of the moment disappears.

But paint? Painting inside my home cannot be free by its very nature. It makes me Type A edgy during the whole activity. What are you doing? Keep it on the paper! Dang it, child, that is going to permanently stain!! Yeah, I am not fun to paint with.

So I was excited about the sunflowers because it's been a loooong time since Sassy and I have painted together, and because I rarely do anything artistic just for the sake of doing it. How fun to try to copy and learn from Van Gogh's style! How unlike anything we ever do!

Well, the results were more than I'd hoped for. We had fun and there was very little mess. Sassy has grown so much since we last tried that she was no problem at all. The babies slept through most of it, but Livvy did wake up when I was on my third flower and I had to paint one-handed for most of that one and some of the last flower. That was difficult, but interesting too how it changed things.

I went off this Van Gogh painting of a close-up sunflower.

As I was painting, I realized how my garden wisdom was helping my painting. I know exactly how the petals of the flower meet the seed head in the middle. I've studied it dozens of times over in my own garden. I know how the seeds in the head are arranged. I know how the sunflower seems to lift its head up to the sun, like a seeker. As I painted, I could almost see my flowers, almost be in my garden.

One of the petals in Van Gogh's painting had a mind of its own. A little wisp out to the side, a petal with flair. Maybe the wind was catching it; maybe it knew it was beautiful and was flaunting it. I wanted my petals to have flair. I want my garden to have flair. My hand wisped the petals out to the side. My hand was the wind, a wispy wind.

I would think that painting your garden, closely, the flowers and plants in your own garden, would make for more beautiful paintings and a more beautiful garden. The close and intimate knowledge you would develop for your garden would shine in your paintings and the process of studying and focusing while you paint would help you build an intuitive understanding of your garden space.

Something about painting is meditative, I found. Who knew? Ha! How I wish I hadn't been so critiqued and censored when I was young. Such focused meditation on a particular subject could surely bring about the mindfulness of being and universal wisdom that helps the immature grow up. Or that helps the self to sacrifice to something (and eventually someone) else. Or that helps the seeker find the ultimate Creator.

I wonder if my second-grade art teacher helped me screw up my life during all of my twenties. Haha! I'm joking, of course. First off, I don't even remember my second-grade art teacher so I have no idea when I was critiqued to the point of making me embarrassed to try. Also, I am wholly responsible for my own life.

But what I won't do is rob my children of a viable avenue for their own artistic, emotional, and especially spiritual growth.

They must try, try hard, try with all their feeling, try with all their senses, without bothering to ask me what I think of it. And the number one rule when putting pen or pencil or brush to paper is this: slow down, look closely, be still.

The gift of it all is in the process. Learning this is the greatest lesson of all.

little french things

We are now wrapping up a two-week unit study on France and all things French.

We started this unit with a documentary about Vincent Van Gogh's paintings. It showed the real-life places in France of Van Gogh's paintings. It wasn't necessarily for the art history major, but a good introduction to both French scenery and Van Gogh's art for a third grader and her non-art-class-taking mama.

This led to us creating French themes everywhere.

Mazzy had her third birthday party. We served up French bread, cream cheese, turkey salad (featuring our very own Thanksgiving turkey), French fries (haha), and a big over-the-top chocolate cake with chocolate-dipped fraises.

Sassy learned how to find and use an online translation dictionary. We did our best on le menu, but my French is way rusty. I was a Spanish girl, but for a short two-year stint in French class. We did get to talk a little about e's with accent marks - backwards and forwards - a's with hats and c's with tails. What were they for? What did they mean?

We decorated the girls' room with a Madeline theme in mind. What little girl doesn't adore Madeline? They love the coziness the new decorations brought.







Sassy wanted to look up Madeline cartoons, so we struck a mutually beneficial deal. We brought back spelling and math worksheets in the morning, and if she finishes them by the time the babies take their naps, she gets to watch Madeline while they sleep.

Sassy read Happy Orpheline in less than a day (go Sassy! yay!) and loved it. Of course, orphans are a favorite reading topic for her, so that worked out.

We watched a few videos. The first was called May Festivals in France. I was more interested than the children in that one. One of the festivals was for real-life gypsies. What an interesting subject. I'd love to explore that one further one day. Another festival did medieval re-enactment, including torture re-enactment. How macabre and, um, strange.

We also watched a cooking video loosely based on the movie Rataouille, starring several famous chefs. They liked the Rachel Ray segment best, as she taught a little boy how to make "chicken toes" - smaller than chicken fingers, she said, so they would call them chicken toes. The girls loved this. Chicken toes, hehe.

During dinner a couple nights, we watched a documentary about castles in France. Turns out, some castles are owned by ordinary people, ordinary families. They pay very little for them, then spend all their money (and then some, I'm sure) fixing them up. One family paid only $60,000 (US dollar equivalent) for an enormous, ancient, beautiful castle. We're talking forty plus rooms here, complete with wood-burning kitchen and servant's quarters below. For ten years, they have been renovating the castle. It still isn't done, but it is amazing. They put their own modern apartment in one "little" section of it (one little section about as big as our whole house), and they live there while they renovate the rest true to period. It is also a bed and breakfast, as most of the castles we learned about seem to be.

On an unseasonably warm January day last week, I re-painted the trim on our barns and sheds, with the intention of finishing them off with little French signs starring sunflowers (our take on Van Gogh's sunflowers) and titles in French. We painted the sunflowers on the signs today while the babies were napping. I still have to paint the words, so pics on those later.

And what was our soundtrack to all this French focus? Why, the French Cafe Radio on Pandora, of course. It provided the perfect backdrop for both inward-focused January in general and all of our activities al francais.

(And on a side note, it made Mama want to find lots more music by Pink Martini.)

I can't speak for Sassy, but I have several take-aways from this study. The most significant came when we did our Van Gogh-inspired sunflowers; more on that in the next post. The other is how badly, badly, very very badly I want to go back to France. And Ireland. It hurts, it is an ache. I want to go, and I want to go now.

But I think the girls would also enjoy it so much, especially when they are a little older. So my pragmatic Europe-bound goal for this year is to get our passports. I'm sure if recent political history is any gauge, then it will only get harder to get a passport with each passing year, so procrastinating in this instance would surely be a fool's slack.

christmas spirit

  

the village

the carol-

ers

the advent wreath

gingerbread cookies

We wrapped up our focus on all things gingery this morning when we finally decorated our gingerbread cookies.

They were delicious. The recipe I used made cookies less in the tangy ginger vein and more in the sweet, spiced cookie vein. They were mild tasting, the dough was easy to work with, and they ended up perfectly crisp - just right for decorating and for dipping in afternoon coffee.

We made ginger tea tonight as well. Sassy said "Umm...too strong for me. Too ginger-tasting." I thought it was pretty good, but was surprised to find it so inviting each time I went back to the fridge tonight. "Maybe just one more sip?" it would whisper to me.

We started the next unit. This week we'll be learning about St. Nicholas. Since she finally realized the Santa Claus gig was a ruse, her interest in St. Nicholas has gained momentum.

I printed off many stories and activities from The St. Nicholas Center. We bound them together at the top with a hole-punch and some yarn to make a little book.

More on St. Nick as the week progresses....

gingerbread characters

Tuesday, we had a run-run-run kind of day. Miss Sassy had some money she had been saving and she was determined to take it to a little store we like to go to. The store is more or less a Big Lots of food, and it's where we get amazing prices on organic food that is a wee bit past its expiration date. The back of the store is a pioneer-loving girl's dreamland. It is stocked to the brim with toys, and since the store is run by an Amish family, there are many interesting finds there we don't see anywhere else.

This was grounds for a wonderful lesson in money. I decided a month or so ago that she needed better basic understanding of money. Okay, I decided she should know how to count money. Period. So I'd been trying to teach it here and there, but getting a little resistance. I suppose it was sinking in because she did quite well.

A little German music box caught her fancy right away, and she marched up to ask how much it was. $35 was the response. She was a bit disappointed, because she quickly realized she would need $19 more dollars than what she had. (She started out with over $20, but gave $5 to her sister so she would have "spending money" and another $1 to a little girl we didn't know who was browsing the toy section with her. Can you say proud mama??)

So instead, she purchased a little farm set for $7, and decided to save the rest until she could add to it and go back to get that music box. What a magical music box it must be!

Wednesday, Sassy and Tiny Mouse got chicken pox.

But Sassy still had enough energy to do an art project. All that gingerbread talk this week inspired this:

Although it might not look like much to our adult eyes, this is actually a play scene. See, each gingerbread character is put onto the house with double-sided tape so that they can move around on the house.

Right now, Sassy is upstairs. Magpie is outside. Mommy is holding baby ("Mommy! Did you notice where the baby is? Hmm? In your arms!!"), and Daddy is on the roof. ("I put Daddy on the roof because I kind of ran out of room, so he's putting up some decorations.")

Yes, Daddy is indeed the only one brave enough to climb onto the roof around here.

Her project inspired a super Christmas gift idea, but mum's the word on that for now.

We are hoping to make real gingerbread cookie dough tomorrow so we can make houses and people and awesome fun cookies.

gingerbread funschooling

We're looking at all things gingerbread this week. What's up with that spicy sweet treat that is so fun to decorate?

Today we made gingerbread garland. Very fun. Here's our take on the project.

This little short story about ginger tea will complete today's activities.

A generally peaceful, rainy little advent day.

a little Christmas joy

I am going to out myself here as a total lover of All Things Christmas.

I am that person who puts on the Christmas station on Pandora in the middle of October. (Just once! I mean, the weather suddenly turned cold and the ground froze over by the morning, so I pulled on a sweater from the back of the closet and stayed warm listening to "I'll Be Home For Christmas." Can you blame me?)

I also love all the Christmas decorations. Decorating my house for Christmas is so worth the joy that I don't even mind the clean-up in January okay, February.

I love the candlelight service on Christmas Eve. It's so hushed, so dim, all those candles passed from one person to another. I love the Candlelight Service so much I still go out of my way to look for Baptist Churches that are holding one so my now Catholic girls and I can go there on Christmas Eve.

And if these aren't proof enough of my love for Christmas (also known to me  as "the only good thing about winter"), I even love Christmas shopping. This year, sadly, I don't have any money to go Christmas shopping, but that's okay. With even twenty dollars in my pocket, I love to go to that bane-of-all-that-is-local-and-fair-trade - the mall. It's really not about the buying. It's about the atmosphere. Christmas music everywhere, jingling bells outside the entry doors, villages where you can pay to tell Santa what you want and have the picture to prove it. I love it!

The only thing that wears on me is that it is a holiday that revolves around gifts these days. Personally, I neither want to buy needless, thoughtless things for myself or others, nor do I have the money to buy for the sake of buying. I think I enjoy the mid-October Christmas music the most of all because the gift buying stress is a long time off. No need to worry over that now, I think. Let's just feel warm and snuggly and happy right now and fool with all that later.

Every year, I tell myself I am going to spend more time on things that I want to do at Christmas and less time on things I feel I have to do. "This year," I will say, "I am really going to enjoy it - all the way through to December 25th."

Well, this year, I believe my dreams will come true -whether I'm ready or not. Two years of underemployment plus one new house plus one rather unexpected bonus baby has taken its toll. Discretionary income is non-existent, the credit cards have reached their limits, and my priorities are pretty clear: food, utilities, and loans (that carry heavy fees and penalties if not paid), pretty much in that order.

So what will this Christmas look like instead? Let's see....

Decorating. We are in a new house with its own, unique characteristics. I can't wait to decorate this house for Christmas. Where will our Christmas village go? How about the tree? How about outside decorations - what can happen there? Anything by the road? It's all so exciting! Finally, we can bring out all the decorations we haven't been able to unpack in smaller spaces and enjoy them.

Pictures. I'm not sure if I will take my girls to a portrait studio this Christmas, but chances are good. I know certain deals are out there for portrait packages as low as $13 with no sitting fees, and I always said once I had more than two children, Christmas would be the occasion for taking family portraits rather than birthdays. Plus, how fun it will be to take pictures of the house after we decorate!

Crafting. I once asked Sydney what she likes to do together, with me. If we had our own Mommy-Sydney time to spend, what would we do? "Crafts," she told me, without missing a beat. "We would have a little craft project and we would sit down together and work on it and each make our own thing." Well, I'm in. I'm not sure just what we will make yet, but I am thinking ornaments, soap, decorations, and a few toys to start. How about some freezer paper stenciling for gifts? We like to peruse the catalogs that come this time of year and think about how we could re-create the things we see in them.

Baking. Of course. We love to bake. Lately I've noticed Sydney seems to not have as much of a grasp on fractions as I think she should by now. This is a lesson begging to be learned in the kitchen.

Candlelight service. Yep. For sure this year. Last year, I waited too long to find one but this year I am keeping my eyes open early.

Now on Christmas morning, of course there will be stockings filled with goodies and packages under the tree. They will be enjoyed for the few hours we will have at home before we head out for the day. But will they be remembered?

Do I play Christmas music in October because of the gifts I received on December 25th?

No. I play Christmas music because of the power it holds to make me feel instantly warmer. It conjures images of villages, trains, lighted trees, a full house: aunts and uncles and cousins.

I see the Christmas tablecloths covering tables set with poinsettia china, gravy boats overfilling, my grandma busily filling the table with more food, smiling, humming Christmas music.

I see my grandpa poking the fire, hauling, arranging, and re-arranging the logs so we can sit on the brick hearth warming our backs.

I see my other grandpa with his wide smile, hugging me as I walk into his house. I hear him patiently answering all my little questions about this and that and the other, making me feel welcome, knowing in my heart he loves me.

I can honestly say that while I remember several of my favorite toys, I don't remember a single Christmas morning of opening anything specific the way I remember that dinner table, that fire, that wide smile.

And I can say also that while I remember the candlelight service being so very special, I don't recall any library "Christmas program" or any planned  "Holiday party" or really, anything at all about what I did with my friends around Christmas. I remember very much what I did with my family, though.

This is important for me to remember when I'm tempted to plan and attend and drive and host and go-go-go. Every four hours spent in commuting to  and attending an enriching program is four hours I have not relaxed with my children. A friend used to call that putzing around the house time "moodling." Without time to moodle, nothing extra gets done. The dishes and counters might stay clean, sure, and everyone is dressed in clean clothes, but that's it. The mind has no time to wander, and the hands have no time to create. Moodling time is absolutely essential.

I have plans to mix some lessons and ideas I want to introduce with some Christmas creations. These ideas come to me on relaxed, at-home days. I have a feeling December will hold much more real-life learning and many fewer workbook pages.

And then there's blogging. Today's post is the end result of a good hour of moodling. Lately, I've been focused so much on writing for a paycheck that I've felt guilty to write for myself. Not only have I felt constraints on my writing time to be spent in pursuit of something financially viable, but I've also felt constraints on my writing style. Certain venues might be a fairly reliable income source, but they are particular in your voice, your subject matter, your point of view.

Then there's my own self-imposed constraints. I know that if I put something on my own blog, I won't be able to sell that for first rights or full rights anymore. At that point, I have self-published. That has been a hard pill to swallow.

But I've begun to realize that when I can't spend time in my own creation, my writing itself suffers. My skills grow in process, while I'm working, in the middle of the essay, in the middle of the thought process. With all those constraints I lose the freedom that allows that growth to happen.

Maybe, just maybe, creating things with the children for Christmas will inspire me enough to take the risk of self-publishing, knowing that although that article can never be sold, it has given me the moodling space in my work that I so desperately need to stay interested - and interesting.

What do you hope to accomplish this Christmas?