What's the best part about getting presents? I think it's seeing the presents wrapped and ready for you days before you get to open it, and you're just dying to know what's inside. The anticipation is almost as great as the gift itself!
My mom is really good at getting gifts wrapped ahead of time. For our birthdays she would wrap the gifts a few days before our birthday and set them out on the fireplace mantle. We would look at them, feel them, listen to them, for days trying to figure out what we going to get. She does the same thing at Christmas time. She likes to get a bunch of presents out under the tree a week or two before Christmas, because it looks pretty to have presents under the tree but also because anticipation is great! It's so much fun to see a bunch of presents under the tree and hunt for which ones are yours.
I like to get presents under the tree right away, although I'm wondering if it will work this year. Last year at Christmas Johnny liked eating tissue paper, which we discovered because we found it in his colostomy bag! This year I'm pretty sure he'll be into destroying any wrapped presents I'm brave enough to set out early. So, we'll just have to see.
One more thing. Today is my mom's Birthday! Happy Birthday Mom! I love you!
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My family has a tradition of Sunday night dinner. It's not quite the set-in-stone-institution that Friday Night Dinners are. (Because I know you are watching Gilmore Girls) (Thanks Netflix!)
yeah, that's basically what our dinners look like.
But most Sundays we go to my parents house for dinner. And sitting around the table, eating, telling stories, and laughing is one of my very favorite things that my family does. We do a lot of laughing when we're together for a meal, and I know it runs in the family because I've seen my mom and her sister around the table laughing until they are all in tears. And I've seen my dad with his parents and siblings laughing until everyone's sides ache and they're out of breathe. The family that laughs together, stays together.
It makes me happy that my siblings and I are still relatively young and still have years of laughing around the table together ahead of us.
What do we laugh about? Well, I could tell you about the time my little brother was really emphatic about potatoes. Or the time my sister didn't get a good look at a bumper sticker that read "make your next stop the library!" and thought it said "make your neck stop. The library!" But I'm afraid that if I tried to tell you these things here it wouldn't make any sense. I will tell you, though, it always starts with a story. Story telling, it's as old as time and it makes me so happy that despite all the technology that fills almost all of our moments we can still sit down, have dinner, and tell stories together.
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Have you ever gotten breakfast in bed? I hope so. It's a wonderful thing to be given breakfast in bed.
My family has a breakfast in bed tradition that started first on just Mother's Day and Father's Day, but at some point was extended to included all birthdays too. The thing that was so great about our tradition was that it was supposed to be a surprise, but because we did every year for everyone's birthday you always new it was coming.
Everyone except the special person wakes up extra early (7:00, oh my!) and gets his or her favorite breakfast items together. For my dad it's fruit and a small amount of a pastry or muffin. My mom likes blueberry scones. For us kids it was always our favorite kind of cereal. Can you say Lucky Charms? Or Cinnamon Toast Crunch? It was carefully arranged on the breakfast tray, which we've had forever and use only for breakfast in bed, along with enough breakfast items for everyone else to have something (because we all wanted breakfast), and we'd begin what was supposed to be a quiet procession to just outside the special person's bedroom door. It was in fact a very loud procession. I remember every birthday very clearly hearing every one getting ready to "surprise" me while I just waited in bed pretending to be asleep. Then the door swings open and everyone starts singing Happy Birthday to You, complete with four part harmonies. After the singing everyone would pile on the bed and my parents would tell the story of what happened on the day we were born.
This is our breakfast in bed tray.
One year, when I was a very mean 9-year-old I told my 5-year-old sister on the eve of her birthday that we weren't going to give her a breakfast in bed. I said I had talk about with mom and dad and we decided we were going to skip it that year. She accused me a lying and went to bed very angry at me. The next morning we got up and were of course getting her breakfast ready, but we were running very behind schedule. She in the meantime had woken up and was lying in her bed waiting for us, but we didn't come and we didn't come, and of course when you're 5 years old ten minutes feels like an hour. So she thought we really weren't giving breakfast in bed. When we finally did make it to her room, singing the birthday song, she lifted her tear stained face from her pillow, outed me as the terrible big sister that I was, and I was swiftly and justly punished. The lesson is thus: don't mess around with breakfast in bed.
When I moved out of my parents house I decided I wasn't ready to give up my birthday breakfast in bed. So I instituted the tradition in our own little family. We have our own tray, and we do breakfast in bed on birthdays, Mother's Day, and Father's Day. Johnny gets breakfast in bed everyday.
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Most of our vacations growing up consisted of driving to our cousins' house in Wisconsin, or driving somewhere further away for my older brother's gymnastics meets. We usually did a couple road trips every year and we always really looked forward to them. We'd all pack a bag of fun stuff to do in the car, along with the school work my mom made us bring. We'd stake out our spots in the van, it usually ended up that my sister and I had to share the back seat. We would eat in the car, have times of chattering, or bickering, and then there were times when everyone ended up snoozing.
Some people make really good time while road tripping. My Uncle Mike was the king of road trips. I remember making the drive from Milwaukee to St. Paul with him late at night; he only stopped once to quick run into a gas station for a pop. (soda?) I think the total drive took 6 hours, tops. My family would make the same trip in 8 hours, if we were lucky. But it was usually more like 9. We tend to make a lot of stops, stops for gas stops, stops for bathrooms, stops for latte's. Not the gas station "lattes" that you push a button to dispense, but good lattes. And finding a good latte in the farmlands of central Wisconsin is not always an easy thing, especially before the invention of the smart phone. We would take an exit that looked promising, and then drive up and down County Road Such And Such keeping our eyes peeled for anything that looked like a coffee shop. Sometimes we'd spend close to an hour, going miles out of our way looking for a coffee shop. Now of course my parents know where the good spots all along I-94 are. And if they didn't they could use a smart phone to find one. What a thing technology is.
One of the things we always stopped for when we would road trip to Wisconsin was frozen custard at Culver's. Once upon a time there were no Culver's in Minnesota, and so getting their super creamy and delicious custard was an extra special treat. Who am I kidding? It's still an extra special treat! We would each get a single scoop and I'd try to make mine last as long as possible. At some point we wised up to the fact that buying a whole pint is a much better value than buying six single scoops, so we'd get a pint, 6 spoons, and then pass it around the van.
My dad likes to listen to sermons while he drives on road trips. Usually once we had obtained the much sought after lattes, everyone would settle down to their napping or other activities and he would put in a cassette tape, then CD, now hook up his iPod, and listen to one of his favorites preachers. I remember being a surly teenager and preferring to leave my head phones on when this happened. But even over the roar of Five Iron Frenzy in my headphones I could still hear the voice of the preacher in the background. And as I listened more I became interested in what he was saying. Eventually the headphones would come off, my brothers and sister would do the same, and there we would all be, sitting quietly and listen to sermons as we cruised through America's heartland.
Alex and I have taken a few road trips together since we've been married. And we usually adopt the Shepperd method of road tripping with lots of stops, lattes, ice cream, and even sermons to listen to. It's still something I look forward to and something I really enjoy. Johnny enjoys road trips too! Actually, that's not true, but he does enjoy sitting in the driver's seat during our pit stops!
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I mentioned a couple days ago that my dad is a very healthy eater. My mom is too, for that matter. Fruits and vegetables abound in their house. They enjoy sweets and treats too, they just enjoy them in much smaller portions than most of us would.
It's not an uncommon sight to open my parents refrigerator and find half of a Mounds Bar in there. I'm not talking about a king sized Mounds Bar, I mean the little fun sized ones that you hand out at Halloween. Yes, my parents are the people who hand out Mounds Bars for Halloween. They said that way there would be something the parents would enjoy. Well, my parents enjoy a good Mounds Bar and they'll make one of those little ones last two or three days. And if my dad gets my mom a box of chocolates for Valentines Day, it will last them until Easter. You open the box of chocolates to find a bunch of halves, or quarters, of chocolates.
Another regular find in the fridge is a half consumed bottle of beer, stopped with a cork from an old bottle of wine.
Just last week Alex and I went out with my parents for dinner. They split a steak, and still took home a doggy bag. Maybe someday if I'm ever not pregnant or breastfeeding (no, not pregnant now, just breastfeeding) I will be able to show that kind of portion control.
my parents with the apple of their eye.
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Perhaps the greatest piece of advice my dad has ever given me, or anybody, has been these three words: Sleep On It.
There have probably been a hundred times he said that to me when I was trying to make a decision, or feeling anxious about something, or doubting a decision I had already made. I remember looking for jobs, applying to colleges, choosing a college, choosing a major, choosing a different major, every difficult kind of scenario a teenager and young adult might face was first approached with prayer, and then slept on. And after "sleeping on it" I was always able to see the situation more clearly and have peace about whatever I decided to do. Even the time I had a meltdown about my wedding dress.
Shortly after Alex and I got engaged I went wedding dress shopping with my mom and my sister. My budget was small so we went to a consignment shop. I kind of knew what I was looking for. I only tried on two dresses, and bought the very first dress I tried on. It wasn't my size, it was actually about 7 sizes too big, but I guess that's normal when you buy a used dress. The ladies at the shop had these big clips that they used to hold the dress onto me so I could see what it would look like after I had it altered. I liked it, bought it (final sale) took it home, and didn't think about.
Then about 2 months before our wedding I took my dress to the seamstress (is that what they're still called? That sounds so old fashioned.) to get it altered. I put it on for her so she could get the right measurements. And when I saw myself in the mirror in that dress my heart sank. What had I been thinking? I didn't like this dress, and I definitely didn't want to get married in it!
I held it together until my mom and I got to the car and then the hot, angry tears fell. I cried all the way home and when my dad saw me I think he must have thought the wedding was off, I was so upset. After he found out what the problem actually was he calmly suggested I sleep on it. And if in the morning I still didn't like my dress I could try to find one I did like. So that's what I did.
And guess what? I felt so much better in the morning. I decided I should wait to try it on when the alteration was complete, with my shoes and my veil and then see how I felt about it. And when I did that, I liked it again.
It's easy to feel despair and the end of the day. You're tired, you're more irritable, everything's quiet and you have time to think about situations that are worrisome. I think tiredness breads anxiety and impairs decision making. But there is something about mornings that are so fresh and new that make everything look and feel better. And that's why "sleep on it" always works.
Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.
-Ps 30:5
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
-Lam 3:22-23
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Yesterday's post highlighted a bit of goofy advice from my dad. Today I'm sharing the advice he will give you anytime you're not feeling well: drink water, get sleep, and exercise. Nine times out of ten, doing those three things will fix whatever ails you. If I had a headache, stomach ache, or if I was feeling anxious, he would ask me if I was doing all three of those things, usually I was doing none of them.
This advice is pretty simple, but I think it speaks volumes to how my dad lives.
He eats well. High fiber, whole grains, good fats, plenty of water, and he consumes more vegetables in a day than Alex and I do in a week. Yeah, he enjoys the yummy stuff too, (no, I do not count vegetables as yummy) but he enjoys them in moderation....more about that in a few days.
My dad goes to bed early, or at least he tries to. In a house full of chronic night owls it has always been a battle for him to get to bed as early as he would like. But he makes the effort.
The thing that I find most inspiring is that he exercises- every. single. day. Everyday over lunch he goes to the gym and he's been doing this for years. Now it's finally beginning to rub on the rest of my family. One night a few years back I couldn't get a hold of my mom, so I called my little brother to see if he knew where she was. He answered his cell and said she was at the gym with him, and my sister, and my dad! Well, I felt kind of left out and decided it was time for Alex and I to get on the exercise band wagon.
I enjoyed my gym membership for about a year, I often went when I knew one of my family would be there too. I began to actually enjoy exercising. Then I became pregnant and felt way too sick to go. By the time I no longer felt sick my belly was so huge and uncomfortable, and it hurt just to walk from one end of the house to the other, so no gym then either. Then Johnny was born, and there were a couple of weeks I was GETTING UP EARLY TO WORKOUT BEFORE ALEX LEFT FOR WORK! Then I realized- I have a baby who is a terrible sleeper, and if he sleeps in then I better be sleeping in too. So we canceled our gym memberships. But thanks to Youtube and Jillian Michaels I'm still getting my shred on. And I'm kind of enjoying it!
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Dads are supposed to give all kinds of advice right? Father knows best, after all. My dad gave lots of advice, some good, some practical, some just kind of goofy.
Whenever we were snacking on something biodegradable in the car, usually an apple, he would tell us to just throw the it out the window. It wasn't littering, he would say, because it would feed the birds, or turn into compost and nourish the ground it landed in. But it still felt like such a bad thing to be doing. I was certain that if a cop caught us we would be pulled over and ticketed. Now that's I'm old and wise it doesn't seem quite the delinquent activity that I once thought it was. But there are a few helpful rules you should observe before trying this at home.
1. You have to make sure there's no one following you too closely behind you. Otherwise when you toss your apple core it might end up hitting someone elses windshield.
2. Get in the right lane, and wait for a grassy patch. Remember, the whole reason we can justify throwing our apple cores out the window is that they will serve as compost. Make sure there is something that can use compost.
3. Make sure your window is down far enough. There was a time I attempted to throw my apple core out the window, but I was feeling overly confident in my aiming capabilities and only put my window down half way. Instead of tossing my apple core out, it ricocheted off the edge of the window, bounced off the car roof, and landed in the back seat, all the while getting apple bits and juice all over everything. Learn from my mistake and just roll your window down all the way.
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