Celebrating the gifts you don't buy

Little friends

christmas carols by the tree



sharing Mr. Potato Head with Daddy




Elks in Estes Park




Enchanted by Colorado



Lazy cabin days

visiting with Lala

SNOW!!

Ginormous love

Happy snow days

the light of a child

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday week. Happy new year!!

Yes blog, there is a Santa Claus.

I feel it, again.

Each year this quiet, sweet energy creeps its way into our collective consciousness. It brings with it ideas about family, about love, about peace. It brings creativity and the joy of giving. It can also bring stress. It can also bombard you with songs and ads and feelings about money. (But those things are not born of the true essence of Christmas).

You may call me a Christmas idealist. I'm sure that I am.

I feel Christmas most when it's night, when the daylight bustling has stopped and you are safely tucked away home. There's family. The tree.  The flickering lights. The laughter of children. The call from your parents. The looks of love between your partner. The sweet hum of Christmas music. The quiet. The silent night.

In a word, magic.

Sure Christmas manifests itself differently for everyone. Some experiences losses at Christmastime. Some are homeless. Some don't have a family to go home to. Some feel overburdened with the stresses of gift giving. The year my father died I swore I wanted no part of Christmas and made sure to be boarding a plane to Hawaii on Christmas Day. (But that year my heart was overcome with grief.)

But everyone can tap into the magic. If they want to.

I believe that Christmas connects us. It reminds us to reign in the small stuff and focus on that which is most important. Family. Friends. Being present. Being together if at least through the heart.

For me, it fills me with love, it really does. And love, to me, is magical.

Christmas 2009

Christmas 2010

MERRY CHRISTMAS, EVERYONE!!

Guess what time it is???

Let me give you a couple of clues:

1) All day long I've had this terrible feeling that I'm doing something horribly wrong or supposed to be doing something but don't know what it is. It's been intense. It's hard to describe but it kind of makes me want to get out my address book to try to remember if I've pissed anyone off, or call my credit card companies to see if they've received my checks. I mean, it's bizarre!

2) I ran back into the house FOUR times to retrieve basic, essential items needed for my day. (ie cell phone, wallet...thank God I remembered my PANTS!)

3) Chocolate. Sugar. Gimme gimme gimme

4) I just watched a sappy chick flick (Remember Me) and cried like a little girl. WATERWORKS.

Now, as an adult, I can put 2 and 2 together to know that above symptoms = one very hormonal chick that's about to start the old monthly.

HOW NUTS IS THIS SHIT???? Seriously, it blows my mind how little molecular bitch slappers (aka hormones) can do this to a person. How they can make you feel so...wrong. What's up with this aspect of nature? A little drama to spice up the elegant design that is our bodies? Me not understand the function!

Ok, huge sigh with a hiccup from post-chick-flick-sob-sesh.
I'm calling it quits on this day. Onward to tomorrow!

truckin along...

I recently gave a blogging friend of mine some crap for being out of the loop for awhile. I mean, her blog was a part of my internet circuit which was entirely affected by her sudden blog disinterest. How DARE SHE!! She mentioned that she doesn't have interesting things to blog about right now, and I thought

by God do I know what you mean sister.

I mean how the heck have I even maintained a blog at ALL since I've become a mom? A working mom? In the WINTER?

Guys, I am SO boring right now. I actually bore myself I'm so boring.

We have very practical and unexciting things happening these days. We have tried to sell our house but just took it off the market this week. I started a new position. We have nanny drama. It's unseasonably warm. Blah blah blah...

So we are just trucking along, gearing up for the holidays. Keepin on keepin on.

And so to spice up this otherwise pretty boring blog post, allow to privy you to:

...the moment my husband figured out the remote control for our camera.

The Christmas card where my husband attacked my face



Aww, it's sweet right?





Um, still nice but let's keep it in your mouth sweetie...



No, seriously, TONGUE IN MOUTH!



LICKING!!! ATTACKED!!!



Sigh. This one's not going to Grandma I assure you...

I think she was beautiful.



I feel a mourning for this woman I never knew. This woman who lived a life in the eye of the public. This woman who got cancer. This woman who had an unfaithful husband. This woman who lost a child.

Elizabeth Edwards experienced things I fear most in life. Yet even after burying a child, even after discovering that her 30 decades long partner secretly fathered another child, she kept going. She got up each day. She got dressed. She faced the world. And she did it while her body was losing a long fought war with cancer.  But yet her gracefulness, her ability to keep on going, made her a beacon of strength to many. To me. She was truly a brave warrior.

Yet even the bravest of warriors meet their end.

I'm sad right now. I didn't know her. She's not a part of my life. And yet she is every woman.

(Hidden inside the grief I feel for this perfect stranger is fear that I see as my own.)

Life is fragile. Ever changing. BEAUTIFUL. Full of goodbyes. You hope you have it in you to be the brave warrior when life calls upon you to be. You wonder.

Elizabeth Edwards, rest in peace. Thank you for shining your light in this world. 

Simple

Do you remember when life was this easy? 

Where the hardest decision was what to do next?

Where the mere act of running down the street could elicit pure joy?

As adults,

we get bogged down with life,

tied to our technology,

worried about money,

I want to remember

Playing.

Laughing.

Learning.

Friendship.

Feeling oh so loved.