More than a Picture

Today, as we were on our way to a birthday party, I spotted this:

It was actually really beautiful, but this picture doesn't do it justice (crappy phone!).  I've seen this type of event before, but this time it seemed altogether more poignant: a foreshadowing of beautiful things to come in 2012, if you will.

So, in the interest of becoming informed, I Googled:

What is it called when light comes through clouds in rays

And like the over worked and under paid secretary that Google is, she knew what I was talking about; they're called Crepuscular rays and they're kinda fabulous.  There's 20 different names for them, my favorites being Jesus beams (think of every picture of Jesus, he's totally rockin' Crepuscular rays, hardcore) and Ropes of Maui, which is based on a story about tying ropes around the sun to make the days longer.

And this makes me think, if they're meaningful enough to have legendary tales assigned to their existence and the most famous religious icon in the world is perpetually bathed in them, I'm pretty sure it's ok for me to believe that what happened today was just a little more than beautiful.

30 Before 30

So every year I try and do New Year's Resolutions and they don't really turn out that well.  This year, I was inspired by Jaime (thanks, girl!) and decided to do a spin on the resolutions and make my 30 before 30 list. 

So, without further ado, here are 30 things I would like to accomplish before I turn 30:

1. Write a children's book.  Seriously, I'm doing this, not sure if I want to make it just for my children or as a real deal children's book.
2. Host a red party.  If Kyle and Diddy do white parties, I'm going to do a red party.  Criteria to enter: be fab and wear red.
3. Volunteer at least once.  I really need to start giving back and I realize that 1 time in 365 days isn't enough, but it's a start.
4. Participate in 5, 5ks.  Determination and lots of huffing and puffing and this shall be accomplished.
5. Organize my closet.  Shoes, old fashioned telephones and bubble gum machines... only one of these things belongs in a closet, so why are all 3 in mine?
6. Follow a general wellness regime: eat less, walk more, etc.  2012, year of getting healthy.
7. Get a new do'.  This scares the C-R-A-P out of me, but I'm going to do it.
8. Go on an old fashioned picnic, which includes a gingham table cloth.  Because, I mean who doesn't love a freaking picnic.
9. Make my lunch at least once a week.  My lunch consists of an $8+ meal a day (what can I say, I like my lunches), which adds up.  ($2080 to be exact.  Cringing, totally cringing.)  If I "packed" my lunch 1 day a week, it would equate to a savings of $416.  (Insert "joey woah" here.)
10. Attend a professional soccer game.  World Cup fever is where it's at; if refined Europeans can get into this, so can I.  I'm refined, dammit!
11. Travel to state that I've never been to before.  I've been to most of the bordering states, but I would like to go beyond...
12. Learn 50 words in Polish.  I'm talking about the text book words here, like: toilet and sock.  I'm not talkin' about no conversational Polish.
13. Read at least 5 books.  The amount of books I read is inversely proportional to the amount of children I have; therefore, this may not sound like a lot, but it will be 5 more books than I read when I was 28.
14. Watch the sunrise at least once.  When the time comes to do this, I'm imaging it will probably go something like, "Enh, I could go either way about watching the sunrise, but it's on my 30 before 30, so I've got to do it!"
15. Plan a surprise weekend for my husband.  Like, a real nice surprise weekend.  He's always doing nice things for me, it's the least that I can do.
16. Get a family portrait on the beach, I'm talking jeans and white t-shirts here.
17. Set up a home office.  Instead of having bills and important papers "strewn about" I am determined to get some sort of chic organizational system.  I smell a before and after blog post.
18. Publish 200 blog posts.  Roughly 17 blog posts a month... a little scary, but if anyone can do it... it might be me.
19. Get Arden to sleep through the night.  Honestly, the 2 1/2 years of being up all night long, has got to stop.  I'm exhausted.
20. Learn how to do a smoky eye.  I think there are tons of video tutorials about this on youtube, so perhaps I will do a smoky eye for my red party.
21. Hang up the portraits of the kids that I got blown up a while ago.  My kids are adorable and they deserve to be all over the walls of my house.
22. Become more educated about cars, so as to avoid getting ripped off.
23. Research and map out my family tree on both sides.  I'm fascinated by geneology, I desperately want to be on the show Who Do You Think You Are.
24. Create a finger print necklace.  Like this, only cheaper and more hand-madey.
25. Grow herbs.  Any herbs will do, just so long as they were planted by my little, fat fingers.
26. Rent a surrey at the beach and have the kids sit in the front basket.  If you don't know what a surrey bike is, you're missing out.
27. Plan the ultimate 30th Birthday Party.  Spoiler alert: the theme is Living My Life Like It's Golden.
28. Create a piece of art work.  Any kind, pick a kind.
29. Expand the recipe section of the blog.  I really enjoy cooking.  So does Jim.  Together we can cook a "mean" anything and I think it's a good idea to tell everyone about it!
30. Do one thing special just for me.

So, so I need to do 2.5 things per month.  Hell, maybe I'll be proactive and do 3 things for the first 10 months and then I will be ahead of schedule... or maybe I will do 20 things in December of 2012 and do like I always do: wait until the last minute and then try and cram everything into a week.

Christmas 2011

Please enjoy these pictures from our house on Christmas:

Yea!  Another stocking added to the mantle!

The Christmas present piles.

Oh look!  Another year of playing Christmas Tree roulette:
let's see how far the tree can actually lean without tipping over!

We hope that your Christmas was filled with lots of love and miracles. 


P.S. Speaking of miracles, my blog crush got one of her own.  If you're so inclined, please check it out here.

Sleeping Babes

Honestly, there is nothing more heartwarming than opening Cullen's door to check on him before we go to bed.  He's all, arms-sprawled-bear-hugging-snoring-old-fashioned exhausted.  It's the last thing we do before we go to sleep and it always makes my day complete.

The Truth

The truth about Santa is something like this: it's a way of living, giving rather than getting and remembering to bring magic to everyone not just during the holidays but all year round.  The other truth about Santa: he's a parents best leverage, "Santa's watching, drop it!"

Recently, I've been having many conversations about when to tell.  When children know.  And what happens after, because for as much as Santa is a complete psychological trauma, he's also also radiates innocence, a time when children believe in something that is almost entirely good (but for the naughty list).

So in the spirit of Christmas and everyone struggling with the dilemma of when to tell and what to say, here is a letter, written by Martha Brockenbrough (if you like the letter, which I know you will, please continue here) that helped illustrate the best way to tell someone that while there's no Santa, it doesn't mean that you have to stop believing:

A few months back, the Tooth Fairy got busted. She left a note for Alice up on her computer, and Lucy figured the whole business out. The Tooth Fairy cursed her need to write notes in elaborate fonts and tried to come up with a cover story, but it didn’t fool Lucy.
To her credit, Lucy has kept the secret from her little sister, who still hasn’t lost a tooth and deserves to wake up with money under her pillow.

But the Tooth Fairy knew it couldn’t be too long before Santa was similarly unmasked. She didn’t know when or how, but she knew the days of magic in her house, at least magic of a certain sort, were coming to an end.

And the Tooth Fairy—by which I mean myself—was pretty darned sad about the inevitable, which finally arrived last week.

Lucy and I have been exchanging notes since the school year started. We’ve talked about all sorts of things—sports, books we’d like to read, adventures we’d like to have, even stories from when I was in third grade. For the most part, though, it’s been light, casual stuff. Until last week.

I NEED TO KNOW, she wrote, using capital letters for emphasis. ARE YOU SANTA? TELL ME THE TRUTH.

What do you do when your kid asks for the truth? You tell it, of course, doing your best to figure out a way that keeps at least some of the magic intact.

Here’s what I wrote:

Dear Lucy,

Thank you for your letter. You asked a very good question: “Are you Santa?”

I know you’ve wanted the answer to this question for a long time, and I’ve had to give it careful thought to know just what to say.

The answer is no. I am not Santa. There is no one Santa.

I am the person who fills your stockings with presents, though. I also choose and wrap the presents under the tree, the same way my mom did for me, and the same way her mom did for her. (And yes, Daddy helps, too.)

I imagine you will someday do this for your children, and I know you will love seeing them run down the stairs on Christmas morning. You will love seeing them sit under the tree, their small faces lit with Christmas lights.

This won’t make you Santa, though.

Santa is bigger than any person, and his work has gone on longer than any of us have lived. What he does is simple, but it is powerful. He teaches children how to have belief in something they can’t see or touch.

It’s a big job, and it’s an important one. Throughout your life, you will need this capacity to believe: in yourself, in your friends, in your talents and in your family. You’ll also need to believe in things you can’t measure or even hold in your hand. Here, I am talking about love, that great power that will light your life from the inside out, even during its darkest, coldest moments.

Santa is a teacher, and I have been his student, and now you know the secret of how he gets down all those chimneys on Christmas Eve: he has help from all the people whose hearts he’s filled with joy.

With full hearts, people like Daddy and me take our turns helping Santa do a job that would otherwise be impossible.

So, no. I am not Santa. Santa is love and magic and hope and happiness. I’m on his team, and now you are, too.

I love you and I always will.

Mama

NYC

So, my sister and I got it in our heads that we MUST go to NYC to see "The Tree" and go on a holiday adventure in NYC over the weekend.  Cut to a cold Sunday with 5 kids in tow and 4 adults who were all freezing their royal rastfarian naynays off.  And it went a little somthin' like this:

My Christmas List

I'm going old school on this one and I'm busting out my Christmas List.  That's right, it's a written in pencil on lined notebook paper (only not really, because I'm writting it on blogger) good old fashioned Christmas List.  These are things that I don't need, but I want... really bad.  I hope you enjoy and that it inspires you to come up with a list of things that you just want, because there's nothing wrong with wanting things.

1. This horse sweater.  Awesome and awesomely overpriced at $715, but it's so freaking cool... need I say more.  Check it out here.

2.  Dinner for two at Vetri.  I don't care if it costs me $135 dollars, it's Vetri.



3. Another addition to our camera family.  The "body" alone costs $1559, don't even get me started on the lenses.


5.  Uhm, this... at $9999.00, it's a pretty good bargain.  And heck, why not throw in an extra dollar and make it an even 10 g's, probably because that'd sound to expensive!


6. Quality time with this guy.  Any day.  Any time.  I'll take whatever I can get.

7. This kitchen.  Price, you ask?  Who knows and who cares!



8.  This is the cottage of my dreams.  A 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom house that costs $58,000?  Don't mind if I do.



9. This necklace.  Heck, at $60, this is practically a steal!


10.  A Michael Kors watch.  Need I say more?

A big "L"

When we were little, my Mother would always tell us, "stick out your tongue" if she though that we were lying.  Most of the time she'd tell us that there was a "big L" on it and that meant that we were lying.  I occasionally ask Jim to do this because... well, just because it's fun.

Today, I wish Cullen's teacher had asked him to stick out his tongue while he was at school, because there was a cute story on his family communication sheet about a "big L."

Disclaimer: this story is 100% not true, but 100% hilarious:

Cullen to his teacher: Back seat driver!  Back seat driver!
Teacher: Who says this?
Cullen: Mommy!
Teacher: Does she say that to you, Cullen?
Cullen: No, she says that to Daddy!

As a side note, I really need to watch what I say to Daddy or one day I'm sure there will be a true story written down on his family communcation sheet.

I'm a believer



Uncle Jim and Cullen, November 2009


I believe in many things, like the goodness in others and the propensity for people to be kind and honest.  I believe in love.  I believe that life has a way of working out.  I believe that I am imperfect and that I have a lot to learn.  But the thing I believe in most is that my family and friends are the best people I know and that they bring me overwhelming joy.

Two years ago today, I lost a very important person in my life, my Godfather and Uncle, Jim.  He was a wonderful man and wise beyond his years.  He was a teacher and he taught me to be kind, to listen to others and to be a positive force when people are down.  My Uncle Jim was a believer.  He believed in his family and friends, he believed in gambling and having a good time.  He believed in the power of people long after they were gone; that while they may not physically be with us, they were never truly gone.  Uncle Jim was the first to believe in the possibility of a hereafter and a forevermore; he made it possible for me to believe that life wasn't over once he was no longer here, but that we had entered a new chapter in our relationship, one where I had to believe that despite the fact that I can't see him, he's helping me and guiding me.

Uncle Jim was someone who appreciated a good joke.  He got enjoyment out of things he believed had a higher meaning, so it's not surprising that we'd be on the lookout for signs that he's "watching over us."  Recently, we’ve been talking about him a lot, thinking about how it’s been two years and how much we miss him.  No, it’s not surprise to me that he’s hearing it all and sending us signs as a way to a sort of  say, "I'm still here guys!” and we're accepting the signs with with open arms.

It all started 2 weeks ago when my cousin was sitting on her couch watching TV and she looked down and there was a tiny, silver cross.  For sure this wasn't there when she sat down and no one had placed it next to her while she was watching TV, it was as though it had appeared out of thin air.  She told my sister and I and we felt strongly that this was a sign from our Uncle Jim, he wanted her to keep the faith and know that he's with her; sitting right next to her.

A few days later, my sister had a dream about my Uncle Jim and she asked him if that tiny, silver cross was from him and he said that indeed it was.  Megan then asked him if the pennies that she'd been finding were signs from him as well and he said yes, that was him too.  Megan told my cousin and me and I was believing more than ever that this had to be my Uncle Jim. 

So on Monday, exactly 2 years to the day that we last saw him, he sent my cousin another message.  When she sat down for lunch in a large food court, resting on the table was a penny with a cross "stamped out of it."  No one had been sitting there prior to her choosing that table, so it was as though it had appeared out of nowhere.  Her husband Googled "penny with a cross cut out" and it directed him to a bible verse, Jerimiah 29:11:

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. 

I had never heard this verse before, but after hearing it, I believe that this is the most comforting, beautiful verse I've ever heard.  I believe that Uncle Jim is helping her and all of us every day in a million different little ways.  I believe that tonight as I was contemplating how to write this story and do it justice that he was with me when I heard "Bad Bad Leroy Brown" one of two songs that always reminds me of him.  So, it brings me great comfort to have him with me and my family, smiling and getting the greatest of joy out of us connecting the dots down below.

This one's for you, Uncle Jim.

Two

Here's a look at the construction themed party that we had for Cullen for his 2nd birthday.

Please enjoy!

 

2 of my favorite things

Crafts and baby feet.  For real though, baby feet are real cute.  From now until April, most bus windows are going to be adorned with "baby feet," which are made by making a fist and pressing it against the condensation on the window and then adding in the 5 wittle toes.  I bet other motorists are like, "whoah, that little baby went to town on those windows!"

Happy Halloween

Fall Photo Shoot

Please enjoy these pictures from our fall photo shoot at our local park.  And just to be clear, when I say photo shoot, I mean me bossing everyone around and promising candy in order to get people to smile; I would say that's real professional like, right?