Holiday Letter Discussion

Did you just run screaming to the other room as soon as you saw this?

It's the Annual Christmas Letter. Also not so fondly called, The ALCL (Annual Lying Christmas Letter), The ATSL (Annual Truth Stretching Letter),  The ABCL (Annual Bragging Christmas Letter.)

People love to write these. People say they hate to get these, but secretly, like a train wreck, we can't help but look. Some of us make an evening out of it; gathering up friends, lighting a fire, pouring the Pinot Grigio, and start ripping open the fat envelopes.

We write these, we receive them, but no one talks about them. You know, truth talks about them. Like, how they are *gulp* ridiculed. Yup. Made fun of. Passed around and taken to coffee klatches as a source of mirth and entertainment.

Is there no one to tell the writers of these letters that the chance exists, if they're not aware of it, of becoming the subject of tonight's mom's wine night out?

I will do it.

I'm at the halfway point in my life where I have to start knocking things off my bucket list. Holiday Letter Discussion is number 5 on that list.

Let's begin with assuming that everyone's got a good heart. I know I know, but let's just assume. You don't want to be boastful, right? You don't want to make everyone feel like they're the most underachieving family on the planet, do you? You want us, the ones on the other end, to know you wish us well and are thinking of us this holiday season. If we start at that point, then the rest will be a walk in the park.

How To Send Holiday Letters Out That Won't Make People Follow Up With a Request To Be Removed From Your Mailing List:

oAsk yourself, who are you writing this letter for? Really ask it.

oDo not write longer than one page. No buts. One page. End of it.

oNo $8.00 words, no matter how recently you learned egregious. Thank you.

oIf you've had the best year ev-er, if your husband is making money hand over fist, if your golden child finished up his third PhD in 18 months, we'd rather not hear about it.  Plain old happy news, like a new baby, new job, your first home, a first lost tooth on your kindergartner, your teen making the football team, your first writing gig; all good stuff we'd love to share your happiness over. But if you've had a bang up year and your home has increased in value over $100,000 again! Some things are best kept within the family.

oIt's easier for some of us to share happiness than others. For me, happiness and good things often feel foreign and like I stepped into that weird scene with the Gwyneth in Sliding Doors: Ooops! Wrong life! So, your effusiveness (that's only a 4 dollar word, not 8...) may sit with me as bragging. Bragging. Not catching up, but bragging. Bragging.

oThis suggestion is serious: be sensitive to your audience. Really. If you know of someone who has been trying to find work for most of the year, please don't send out a letter telling them how many times you've been promoted in your own job, or how may headhunters are after your awesomeness. Not nice. Same for a couple struggling with infertility; don't type up sentence after sentence on how everyone in your family is a fertile myrtle and gets pregnant just from the wink of an eye...Must be the water! LOL! This will only be LOL to you.

oWe know you want to make it fun, but Changing fonts and Shifting color changes leave me feeling like I've got an undiagnosed brain tumor. It does. And then I'll be too worried about getting an appointment with the neurologist before the New Year to pay any attention about your trip to Graceland.

oSelf deprecation is a great tool. Somehow, I'll listen about little third grade Tommy's history making ACT scores if you tell me how both you and your husband swear he's not from your litter and was dropped off by aliens.

oCount your adjectives:  if you've used wonderful or great more than 3 times in one page, time to stop.

oBottom line: you can't disguise bragging. We know.

I promise you that if you follow these suggestions, your Holiday Letter won't be turned into party fodder. Stick to these points, and no one will guess that you're telling us just what a GD good year you had. Even if you sign it, Here's to 2012! Though we can't imagine a better year than 2011 was!

Happy Holidays!

The Flying Chalupa Loves Hot Tamales, Especially El Grande Size

I'm having some great fun guest posting at Chalupa's place today.

It's impossible to not have some great fun when you click over to Chalupa's.

This woman has never heard of running out of the original, the creative, the so dang funny.

On this Monday before CHRISTMAS aaah!! I hope you take a break and click over to see the grand plans I have for my grande latte a**.

I think you'll want to join in.

xo 

The Flying Chalupa

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What Makes Us Remember The Things We Do

What are the things that make children remember a past so sweetly? When we close our eyes, and answer the question, What was your best Christmas memory as a child?, what is it about that time that leaves us silently smiling before we share our memory?

I have a holiday post up today at TikiTiki, one of the websites where I feel so honored to be a regular contributor. Besides sharing a childhood memory of Christmas past, you also get to see a picture of a very chubby wubby well fed toddler. See it here.... 

MERRY CHRISTMAS!
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How To Feel The Magic Again In The Holiday Season

 You know what's easy to do? To fall into the rush of December. One question I asked myself years ago when I first became a mother, was if I wanted my kids to remember the holidays this way, with me running in and out of stores, parking lots, looking at the time and slapping my forehead.

We don't have to put the brakes on this season, not if doing holidays are your thing, BUT what if we take some of that energy and spread some love around to more than just our own?

Here's a list of a few things our family has incorporated as new tradition. Sowing these seeds of kindness will grow into a harvest of your children feeling the same heart urgency to do for others, in their own families. What a thought, isn't it? 

 
1. Ask at your church to forward a donation of grocery store gift cards to a family that is struggling. Our church will announce to pray for those looking for a job, and through confidentiality, they will forward your donation. Place your gift cards inside an envelope wishing them hope and remind them that they are in your thoughts and prayers. Wish them the warmth of the season.

2. Let your children pick out some of their favorite toys or games from the store; then deliver the gifts to a women's shelter so the children there will know that the world does love them.

3. Include your children in a trip to the grocery store for the sole purpose of donating to the food collection barrels there. Buy only items for the food barrel, and let your children choose the non perishables they think children in other families would enjoy. They'll delight you with their choices of red licorice, Oreos, and they'll remind you that people in need have children who want something special.

4. Rather than gifts, purchase an experience for your family: like tickets to a local production of A Christmas Carol, or another holiday show. Your ticket will support local arts and you know what every show needs to survive: an audience!

5. Take a trip to a bookstore with everyone, choose a holiday chapter book there. Read a chapter a night, together as a family. Write the date on the inside cover, and have everyone sign their names and write a short message. You've just created a keepsake.  

6. Sit and share stories with your family about some of your favorite past holidays. Tell them why you remember the ones that you do, and what made it so special. Ask them about theirs. What they remember will impress you.

7. Go for a night drive, or a night walk; soak in how pretty all the holiday lights look. Enjoy being together with nothing else to distract you.

8. Check out a colorful holiday recipes book from your library, one with lots of pictures. Spend time poring over the pages, and choose a recipe that you can make as a new family favorite for your big dinner.

9. Rather than dinner one night, make several holiday appetizers: serve them all on round platters, along with small appetizer plates. I found some plates at WalMart for a dollar each and the kids' reaction was as if I was serving them up on emperor's plates.

10. Have a dinner by candle light during their winter break. Not just one candle holder, but many, many votives scattered all about the kitchen or dining room. Talk about the happiness you feel in having everyone home with you. The glow of the table will bring tears to your eyes, I promise.

11.Come home from the craft store with an armful of those fun paint it yourself ornaments. I have found them for less than a dollar each. Spread out an old shower curtain and paint away.

12. Rent a holiday movie and have a movie night. Declare this THE must watch every holiday season for your family. For us, it's Elf and It's a Wonderful Life. My family knows these two movies so well, we'll toss out a quote and shout, "Name the movie!" Shared memories, deepened bonds.

13. Really: this one. Make a gingerbread house. It is fun so don't let the thought terrify you. You can buy the kits for $9.99 now. With everything you need. Have little cups around of cut up red licorice, skittles, raisins, gum drops, pretzel sticks, to decorate. SO MUCH FUN but let your 'neatness' tendencies somewhere else for this one.

14. Don't stress over the holiday cookie bake. You can buy already made rolls that you just slice and they're just as delicious as the hand rolled out ones. Always fun to decorate and frost. Make an extra two dozen and deliver them to a senior center. They have coffee get togethers in the mornings, and you'll find people there who have no one else in the world to spend the holidays with. Make a card, kids' work necessary!, wishing them a healthy, happy new year.

15. Remind your children that the joy of the season is in thinking of our fellow man. Present options to them in how they'd like to give to help those with less. This year, my children chose to donate two hours of their time gift wrapping angel tree gifts for a women's shelter. My youngest went caroling at a nursing home.

16. Donate to every coat and mitten and boot and hat drive you read and hear about. A quick search on the internet will give you info on where to drop off, what size items are needed. We gave a few items last year to a community through our neighborhood high school who had put out a call for Syrian refugees expected that winter.

17. I just read this one, suggested by a friend of a friend, and it's something we can do in any amount. Check in with a school office and ask to donate or pay toward the account of a family who is behind in their lunch plan payment. Some schools will say yes and you've just taken the stress out of a financially taxing month for a family who will never forget your kindness.

Let your family, and you, feel the joy in giving. When you hear your children say, "That was fun, mom, and it felt good," you will have the magic of the holiday season, of how we really are happiest when we do for others.

Glitter and all.

*Happy Holidays to all of you, I wish you peace, and the making of new memories that will delight the child in all of us.
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Therapy Post

It is quite disconcerting to hear screams that continue from my children that are downstairs, when I am busy cleaning upstairs, and the father of the children is with them, downstairs.

It perplexes me that upon my return home after finishing working the hours at my job that is away from home, I am attacked by my children at the door with cries of, "Finally! We get to eat!" though the father has been home with them, in the house, while I have been gone, away from the house.

It is off putting that despite taping my husband snoring as evidence, he insists the footage I have is extraordinary and atypical, and that most nights he hardly emits anything above a nasally whistle.

It is disturbing that all four of the males that I share a home with have refrigerator blindness and I am the only one that is able to locate the orange juice and maple syrup in the mornings.

It is upsetting that though I ask the children to each take care of their own laundry folding and putting away on a weekly basis, that communal disturbances continue to break out between the age groups when it is time for the weekly laundry distribution.

It leaves me with head shaking bewilderment that though I am the smallest of three males in this house, I am the only one who is left unnerved enough by the howling coyotes in the field behind our home, to still be able to take out the garbage in the evening.

It baffles me to the point of cross eyedness that our children complain about "creepy, fiendish fields" around our home and ask why we're not able to live in a place where neighbors are five feet away as their friends do.

It frosts me to no end that though I have preached on the expense of the snakpak individual pouch cranberries that are reserved solely for lunches, and therefore have kept the snack cabinet filled with the large Family Sized Pouch of cranberries for home snacking, that the members of this household continue to snack at home from the expensive lunch snakpak cranberries pouch.

I find it quite annoying that I am asked "What's for dinner" as a disguised form of the question "Will I like it?" and then told I am overreacting when I answer with "You'll eat what you're served" when they say they are only asking a simple question.

I have a feeling of great annoyance as a result of the children's inability to properly secure the orange juice jug so that when I reach for the jug in the refrigerator it never fails to spill as a result of an insecure cap closure.

I feel my temples severely constrict when I see healthy children idly spending time on the family sofa, expending their energy on quick witted name calling and tossing balled up sweaty socks at each other, while the father of the children rests his eyes for "just a few minutes" watching a football game on the sole television in the house, while guarding the remote like an aging napping dog in front of his food dish.

I have feelings of mounting anger when I ask my children if they have put away their laundered clothing and they have answered me with a yes, only to find columns of T-shirts hidden behind the toy box in their bedroom three days later. 

I find it irritating and baffling when I am behind the steering wheel of the car and asked if I know where I am going by my husband. I temper this feeling with sarcastic thoughts of Poor Man, He must truly worry when I chauffeur his children around without the astounding availability of having him only inches away.

It is exasperating when I am asked for photo identification along with my credit card when making a purchase at a store, while the woman in line in front of me has only to provide the credit card. When questioning the clerk, I am told my handwriting is difficult to read. I tell her description is subjective and she exasperates me further with her response of a double eye blink.

I have a strong feeling of displeasure and find it extremely offensive that humans standing next to me in the cereal aisle feel it permissible to pass strong gas, as though the silence of it makes it a non occurrence. It demands tremendous self control on my part, as well as biting my lower lip to not turn and say, "that which cannot be heard will sure as hell still be smelt."

It vexes me that despite telling the youngest child that we are only purchasing things from our list while at the store, that I am asked twenty or thirty times to purchase things that are off the list. I find this feeling akin to drinking two pots of double measured coffee.


*Thank you, dear reader, for a much needed therapy session.  Payment in chocolate truffles is on its way. 
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