Santa, Help Us!

This is my Bad Parent confession. David and I have a serious problem. We try and try but our best efforts continue to fail.

Santa.

Before you continue reading this, please promise to never ever tell any of my children what you are about to see. At least wait until they're 18. I'm serious. Don't even hint at this around them. David and I try so hard to make this Santa thing work. This year, Denise agreed to take the kids for a couple hours while we went shopping. But where to put the gifts? David's SUV has an open back, all you have to do is turn around to see what's in the "trunk." As luck would have it, Mom had just finished using our luggage, so we stopped by their house and picked it up before taking the kids to Denise's. Then we put all our treasures inside the suitcases for the trip home. The kids never suspected anything. (I don't know why they didn't wonder where we were for four hours, but I guess they were so caught up in their fun with Aunt Neesy they never thought about us. Good.)

Now, where to hide the gifts after we wrap them? Oh, by the way, don't let them see the wrapping paper, right? So of course after the gifts were wrapped we put them back in David's car. But this time they wouldn't all fit in the suitcases so we just threw a blanket over everything. Just a few days to get to Christmas, should be fine.

No. No no no. Tonight we went out for dinner, but first David ran back inside to get something and when he came to the car, Shelly said, "Are you giving those presents to Santa?" Archer, who's been informed about the truth of Santa, tried to play along. But all he had was, "Yes." David announced he was trying to concentrate on driving and the conversation was over. As David and I stood in the kitchen tonight, him whispering to me what had happened, I laughed and cursed and said, "Let's just tell her. Let's just get it over with and give up on Santa. Too bad for E. We can't do it!" David didn't go along with my idea, but instead declared that all of the gifts would have to be re-wrapped with new paper. As I moaned about all the extra work, he reminded me that I hadn't done ANY work, he had done ALL of the wrapping. True.

(Let's go back a minute, Archer has been telling Shelly that there's no such thing as Santa. "The parents just buy the gifts and hide them under their bed, then they put them under the tree." Shelly's stubborn confidence in Santa caused her to completely blow him off, and after two or three of these conversations we had to tell Arch that he's right, but now he's on our team and needs to go along with it for Shelly's sake. And Elijah's.)

There was last year, or was it the year before? We put the roll of wrapping paper, left over after the gifts were done, behind the couch. The kids would NEVER be crawling around on the floor in that tiny space and notice the same wrapping paper that had been on their gifts, right? Ugh. "Santa had some paper left over, he asked us to hang onto it for him." Lame, I know.

There was a couple of years ago when my friend was helping me wrap gifts in the bedroom and Shelly walked in and spotted the doll house we'd gotten for her. She never mentioned it on Christmas, like, "Oh, its the one you were wrapping last week!" I thought maybe she was too young to have made the connection. Who knows.

We're bad parents when it comes to this Santa thing. Can't pull it off. And its starting to feel a lot like flat-out lying and I'm ready to give up on the whole thing. The kids will be excited for the presents either way, won't they? I mean, they're still getting stuff, wouldn't it be nice if they could say thanks to the people who gave them the gifts? Instead of the gifts just magically appearing from some guy they've never met?

Don't worry, David's pretty attached to giving the kids the Santa experience. So I'm sure we'll do it for a few more years. But we never seem to get it quite right. Just another one of those things to add to the "completely unable to do this right" list. Maybe by the time E is 10 we'll know what we're doing. Until then, wish us luck!

Celebration!

Hey guess what? Its almost Christmas! Over the last week or so I've been baking cookies and thinking about my mom baking cookies and I started feeling a little nostalgic, realizing I'm stepping into my mom's shoes and my kids are following right behind me. Only my mom's shoes are pretty big (in this analogy, of course, because her feet aren't very big) and I'm not sure I could ever fill them... Ok, back on track, here.

Today I called Mom and asked her if we could come over for supper, we'll bring food. She said not to bring food, bring the kids and come on over, so we did. And we had a celebration party! To celebrate family, and almost-Christmas, and cookies and playing and everything.

When we were driving up I thought about how Mom usually got out the sheet music and played songs for us when we were kids. Once a year my mom played the piano. Way back when we were little and celebrating Christmas at the Community Center in Argyle, and later on the electric keyboard at the kitchen table. And guess what? Tonight. She did it again, and I love that she did that, continued the tradition, and when the evening was almost over she plugged in that little keyboard, pulled out the music and gave us all sleigh bells to ring while we sang Jingle Bells. Mom and Dad have good voices, but I'm sure I was way off-key, and the kids were all over the place. Add some bells to the mix (E was hitting those bells as hard as he could while Shell delicately tapped each note) and it was quite the joyful noise!

There was a moment tonight when Mom and Dad were actually competing for time with the kids. You're taking them to the workshop? I needed them to help with the cookies! It all worked out, they spent time with Grandpa making wheels for a wooden car, and time with Grandma making and decorating sugar cookies. All the while, Elijah was eating chex mix and cookie dough and whatever else he could get his hands on. It was a laughing, shouting, awesome good time. I wouldn't trade those memories for anything.

Home Made Christmas

This year I'm going back to the long-abandoned Gruenberg tradition of Home Made Christmas. Yes we hated it as kids. The pressure. The paralyzing fear, what do I make for ___? I can't make anything. What do I do? Only ___ days and I haven't started it yet! There was always the last minute scramble, the declarations of "Stay out of my room!" and the frantic wrapping two hours before unwrapping-time. We did it for ten years. And then the kids got old enough to completely revolt and the tradition was gone. But this year, I find myself looking at crafty websites and blogs with recipes and brainstorming ideas for what to give our families. I told Mom and Dad that if the internet had been around when we were groing up (or at least in a state more like today) there would have been no excuse for not being able to think of what to make. There are a zillion ideas out there and a zillion more videos to show you how to do anything you can imagine. Despite the work and grumbling, the tradition produced many priceless treasures because we were forced to really think about what the other person liked, what we could do to create something they would enjoy without spending any money on the gift.

So this year I'm going back to that, not to produce some priceless gem, but at least spend a little more time thinking about how we can enjoy each other's company. And to break with tradition, I'm trying really hard to not wait until the day before Christmas to make the gifts. (Also, I'm spending money on supplies and parts, which wasn't allowed when we were kids.) So the kids and I spent all day today in the ___ making ___ and ___. I took lots of pictures to show how much fun we had and what a mess we made. But obviously I can't share now!

The best quote today comes courtesy of Archer. "Maybe we should stop thinking about others and start thinking more about ourselves. Wait! I mean..." He did get it straightened out. And then told me that he likes to help others. How's that for a gift?

Maybe if Dad sees this and emails me some pics from Christamases past I can add those here. :) Hint hint

The Best

One of the phrases often found on MOPS products is "Better Moms Make a Better World." Tonight Archer read that out loud and then said, "You can't be better, Mama. You're already the best mom in the world. Right?" Aww Arch. You're the best Archer in the world!

As a side note, tonight I bought three chickens from Aldi for the amazing low price of $0.69 per pound! As I was driving home and congratulating myself on this great find, I wondered if I was as excited about buying chicken as I was when I got my iPod many many years ago... Now that I'm a mom on a strict budget, a sale on meat gets my adrenaline going more than a cool new toy. Is that sad, or what?

What If...

What if you're making barbeque sauce from scratch, and at the very end you put it in the blender to puree the onions and garlic so its just a nice smooth sauce and then... What if the blender starts making a high-pitched noise and smoke comes out of the bottom? Obviously I turned it off and unplugged it right away, but can I ever use it again? Just wait for it to cool off (for a day or two), or do I have to throw it out? I guess I know what I want for Christmas this year. A blender that can withstand my Freezer Experiments.

Oh wait, you haven't heard? A Freezer Experiment... A little term that David and I use to describe a project in the kitchen that causes a big mess with doubtful results. As in, I'm trying a new recipe, making a big mess, and really not sure its going to be edible. The origins of this term go back to long long ago, maybe even before David and I had kids. Before we could comprehend how something like this was even possible. How could you leave a young child alone long enough for this to happen? We walked into Scott's house where Heidi was babysitting Nick and Christopher. Nick was... three? I don't know, little, but big enough to do some serious damage. He was mixing flour and whatever else he could find, and he called this concotion his Freezer Experiment. Heidi was in another room, unaware. The biggest problem with Nick's experiment was its location. The kitchen sink. What David and I didn't realize at the time was that Nick was actually washing the whole mess down the drain. And as we all know, large amounts of flour with a little (or a lot) of water cause a big, gooey, sticky BLOB. Inside the pipes. So when David and I brought this up recently at a family gathering, and we were laughing at the memory of cute little Nicholas making a big mess in the kitchen, Scott did not have such a fond memory. He, of course, was the one who had to deal with the aftermath. (For the record, I have since been educated on how that sort of thing could happen. I no longer think to myself, "I would never let my kid do THAT!" Because I probably already DID let my kid do that.)

So, back to the Freezer Experiment of the day. Barbeque sauce. A burned out blender. And the question... should I try using that same blender again? Or is it too much of a fire hazard now?

Run Run as Fast as You Can...

Yeah, you can probably catch me. I'm pretty slow. That didn't stop me from signing up for a bunch of runs and dragging my family along to stand in the cold waiting for me to come back to them. Thanks family, you're the best! My cheering section accompanied me, and the Fink team joined me as well and we ran around Milwaukee with a buch of other people dressed like Santa for today's 5K. I surprised myself and didn't have to walk, we finished in about 39 minutes.

Things to note in below pictures
- Don't Denise and Dan make such a cute couple?
- The kids are wearing Santa beards but not so much enjoying the picture
- Eli HATES hats, can you tell? But isn't he cute as a bug in a rug, all snuggled up in his stroller? I'm a little jealous, he's so cozy and warm while the rest of us freeze our fingertips off!

Last night we got to see our long lost relatives and have some great conversation. I love that Leah and I could compare notes on Momhood, and it was so fun to watch our kids playing together. To think that WE played together like that when we were little, now a whole generation later its happening all over again. And Grandpa Shorty got to be there, watching his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren enjoy each other's company. So awesome!

Singing and Dancing

Testing out the video feature of our camera...
Archer and Shelly Singing and Dancing