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whitney is coming to help me decorate for christmas tonight! the anticipation around our house is high. ben and mary polly have been saying for days how much they love their aunt whitney. she has already done her house and her mom’s house, and she helped anna get started while we were all in chicago. so tonight she is bringing her talents to the chino house, and i have been pulling stuff out this morning to get ready. i love how every box i open brings oohs and ahhs from the kids and warm fuzzy memories for me.
yesterday i put out the nativity and the advent wreath. i have used these wonderful advent calendars by david and karen mains for years that i love. i also have a great book that a dear friend gave me called the 25 days of christmas that has ideas for celebrating advent. and we buy very inexpensive chocolate advent calendars from trader joe’s that make the arrival of december 1st super fun for all. fresh market sells them too, but they cost a bit more.
this morning i pulled out the box of christmas books. so the promised list is up!
we’ll be putting on the christmas music and enjoying sushi while we trim our tree tonight!
i’m stuffed.
yesterday i could barely move.
this morning was brutal. baby up before 5am, school children dragging out past 7…barely moving.
re-entry.
so…here’s what i’m hoping to keep out of my system this week in a small attempt to help with the stuffed bird-just want to stay in bed-there’s not enough coffee in the world-feeling:
white flour.
butter.
cheese.
milk.
sugar…except chocolate of course.
hunks of meat.
just in case you are eating at my house this week, you can come prepared:
oats.
barley.
wheat berries.
whole wheat flour.
fruits.
vegetables.
more vegetables.
two different soups for cleansing are simmering as we speak. or write. they are variations of other recipes i use frequently based on what i actually have around, since the weather is miserable and i don’t want to go anywhere, even for leeks. these are so easy because i’ve eliminated oil and butter so there is no sauteing ahead of time. just throwing everything in. very simple, but so good for us.
1. french vegetable
onion, roasted pumpkin (i roasted my centerpiece), celery root, 2 potatoes, 1 granny smith apple (peeled and quartered), 1 quart free range chicken broth and herbes de provence…simmer everything and puree. soooooooo easy.
2. beef barley
2 large cans tomatoes, small can tomato juice, beef broth, 10 minced cloves garlic, 3 chopped green peppers, 2 cups frozen green beans, barley, oregano and basil. simmer until peppers and garlic are soft.
so the kids might not be jumping for joy when they ask what we’re having for dinner. but at least we will all feel good. and then maybe tomorrow morning when i wake up, i’ll be better suited to face everything else… messy house, children who don’t want to go to school, commitments i don’t want to keep, dreary weather…
i had lists in my head all week. counting things. 3 carloads to chicago. 10 adults. 9 children. 2 hotel rooms. 2 babies. 9 beds. 2 baby beds. i counted bottles of wine bought at trader joe’s. jars of cinnamon from penzey’s. boxes of chocolates for christmas. hours of sleep my sister was getting when she was going into her new job as head baker at 4am. how many onions chopped? pies made by my mother? football games watched by cole? blessings counted by all.
but one of the most interesting lists i compiled was movies watched. between the 19 of us, we managed to view some movies last week. here they are. you can enjoy guessing who watched what? but i’ll go ahead and tell you that i sat next to my daddy bill in enchanted and i laughed hysterically while he sat like a rock, not cracking a smirk.
thursday night after yoga i went to a bookstore and sat in the children’s section and read a pile of new christmas books for children. i do this every year. every year since i used to work in a bookstore in deerfield, illinois while taido was in seminary. one december when i was working late… sidenote: everyone should have to work retail during the holidays at least once. i fully believe that i am both nicer in stores during the holidays and i buy less as a result of working retail for three holiday seasons on the north shore of chicago and being treated like cow dung by wealthy holiday shoppers…end of sidenote. so, one night i had the good fortune to be working late in the children’s section and i was reading christmas books for children. this book had just come out that year and it made me cry and feel happy and sappy and all warm inside. and the illustrations were as lovely as the story. as i sat in the children’s section upstairs in the corner reading, i decided that i would go ahead and buy that book. and one day when i had children i would read it to them every year at christmas. in fact, i would read them all the fun christmas stories i could find. i think this might be about the only thing that i said i would do as a parent before i actually had children that i have managed to follow through on. unlike my commitment to never use pacifiers. i am very patient with people without children who say, when i have children, i won’t ever… because, ahem, i used to be one of those people. such grandiose ideas. outrageous expectations.
anyway, reading christmas stories at christmas is absolutely my favorite holiday tradition. i have a whole tub of books in one of those red and green storage boxes and i get them out for the whole month of december and we read and read them. over and over. when i get that tub out, i will list them all for you, but this one is the best. some are very silly. but most have been carefully chosen with love, just like this week when i read and read christmas stories and then came home and ordered these three. it was hard to choose, but these are the additions to our christmas box of stories for this year.
the all i’ll ever want for christmas doll by patricia k. mckissack
who knew that frank mccourt could take his mother’s sad stories and create something so sweet for children? and toot and puddle are just staples in our house. plus, hollie hobbie says this is the last one. she’s saying goodbye to the characters and moving on to something new. so of course, sweet little opal has to make a final appearance. the last book is sweet in a way that mary polly will just get. and i love that about her. it is set during the depression and the christmas morning treats include things like fruit and nuts. three sisters have to work through a squabble over the little that there is. which just seems real to me. a fight on christmas morning with your siblings. but you’ll love how this fight ends. even better is that the parents make the sisters work it out on their own without their help.
a close runner up was great joy by kate dicamillo. i’m just so excited that she wrote a book for christmas that i almost bought it without even reading it. but i’m saving it for next year, mostly because it’s about a girl and already two out of three of my books for this year center around girls. and i couldn’t give up either of them.
so when my package arrives, i will wrap them all up and we’ll open them up one cold night when our hearts are ready to be warmed with new stories.
i have started a new book page. the only thing the books on this page have to do with each other is that i love them all. i would love to write descriptions about all of them, but you can always find a well written blurb on amazon or somewhere, so i won’t try fill out my entire list right now, but maybe slowly, one by one i will tell you why i love each of the books on this list. i will tell you how they are a part of me, how they found their way on my shelf and why they move me or make me laugh or cry or just think.
the first book on the list is my very favorite novel of all times. resurrection, by leo tolstoy. i have given it away like twice in my life for a gift because i just cannot bear for it to not be read. and let’s face it. not everyone is going to read a 600 page nineteenth century novel with lots of long russian names. but it is so worth the struggle to read it.
i met tolstoy on a train between olomouc and prague in what was then czechloslovakia when i was nineteen. i spent the fall of my sophomore year there immersed in eastern european literature and political science, which very quickly lead to obsession with russian literature. i read anna karenina over the course of several train rides that fall, an appropriate train ride book, i think. and i fell absolutely in love with tolstoy. i had already plowed through lots of british nineteenth century lit, but had not yet read the great russian novels. there was an english book section of the student bookstore at charles university in prague and i snatched up other russian novels, which of course shows my lack of forethought with regard to traveling. because, ahem, most russian novels are sort of heavy, even in paperback. this was my first great journey to europe and i had not yet learned the art of traveling light. my parents still love to laugh about how much i packed to go to prague and at the number of mundane things i had convinced myself might not be available in prague, one of which was paper. i had enough paper to last me through my entire college career. i had bought a large number of 5X7 notecards. i am pretty certain i thought that somehow europe was going to turn me into emily dickenson and i would need lots of notecards on which to write poems, so many that i would later need to tie them up neatly with ribbons for the trip home. sadly, the notecards were relegated among other things to a pile that would have to stay behind when my luggage exceeded the weight limit at the little rock airport, bringing me to tears before i even said goodbye.
after europe, i went to the uca library and brought home piles of russian literature and history. i even took a class on russian culture just for fun. this precious woman from russia taught it and she always said…we have a saying in russia, “there is no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothes.” only she pronounced clothes, clothe/ess, with her accent and we still say it just like her in our family.
when i read resurrection, i knew i had found my favorite book. it is an amazing story of redemption. a wealthy man is called to serve on a jury for a murder and realizes that the woman on trial is a girl that he had known in his youth. he had taken her innocence and discarded her and now has to face that his misuse of her has somehow brought her here. the whole book is about what he does with this part of him. it is his redemption story as much as hers and it is beautiful. i think because i was young, i wanted her rebirth to come easily, but years of hard living make restoration timely. and hard won. i so adored this book that i did what i always do first with books i love. i took it to mother and daddy. now i have to put myself in my mother’s place and imagine mary polly bringing me such a book and saying that i MUST read it. my mother read it, of course. and loved it as i did. and said of course it had to end this way, honey. that’s why i love that woman. and now, however many years later, i would still choose resurrection as my favorite. even over pride and prejudice. which is saying a lot.
i am so thankful that i am going to chicago for thanksgiving and i am not planning or shopping for a big thanksgiving week right now. instead i am enjoying a snippet of time to focus on something i love. christmas cards. even though i am a fan of reducing mailbox clutter and not spending a crazy 41 cents on stamps, i just love christmas cards. they herald the season for me. their arrival and the sweet pictures of families i haven’t seen for a long time make me ready for christmas. i am not sure why. i line them up on my bar or on a makeshift clothesline and i just enjoy seeing them. and because i really want to keep hearing from these people who live far away from me, i also love to send christmas cards. i love knowing that someone i hardly talk to is still somehow connected to me, even if it is only in this very small little way. an acknowledgement of the life we have shared together. the christmas card connection is often sort of perceived as shallow, but there are many people i have known in my life with whom i don’t even have a christmas card connection so it is still special to me.
because i am slightly obsessive, i have had to make some small rules for myself regarding christmas cards, the first of which is that i don’t have to send one out every year. some years it just isn’t meant to be. for any number of possible reasons. no one wants to take a picture. i have nothing to say. i don’t like any of the people i am sending them to because i am in a bad mood. i am not in the spirit. whatever. if i need to pass on the card guilt free, i can. this is especially true for me if i sent one out the previous year. also, because christmas is sort of crazy, i like to get my card done early or just let it go. if it’s not going out near the first of december, chances are it is going to be a new year’s card, which i am not above doing. but i like to have time to address them and enjoy the whole process instead of stressing and feeling like…i have to get these cards out!! so usually if i don’t have a picture by thanksgiving, it isn’t happening.
and that is where i am super grateful (as others) for my sweet sister-in-law, whitney. she not only took our pictures. she picked out all of our clothes, many of which came from our actual closets, but ahem, i still could not have picked them out. (actually…whitney’s picking out my clothes for me is a whole other post all unto its own.) and she encouraged my reluctant family members to get them done, which would include all the male chinos. and she takes amazing pictures. she will very soon be running her own photography business, so call her while she is not having to pay rent somewhere.
she gave me my pictures yesterday and i have been playing with them on snapfish ever since. they have like a million different ways to arrange your pictures. and you can use more than one photo. it is so much fun. here’s one of my favorite pictures that she took. i am ordering it for my house but i’m not using it on my christmas card. it just captures for me how much all three big chinos adore that baby brother.
i meant to put this up immediately after the carrs left because we ate it like 3 times the week they were here, but i am just now getting around to posting my new favorite (and easy) hot cereal. you put it all in a casserole dish (or in my case, a cast iron skillet) the night before and set your oven timer for yummy hot breakfast. you can buy all the ingredients in the bulk section at whole foods or wild oats. and always use penzey’s cinnamon to make your whole house smell delicious. enjoy!!
company oatmeal
makes 3-4 servings
1/3 cup wheat berries
1/3 cup whole oats (also called oat berries)
1/3 cup pearled barley
1/3 cup dried blueberries (or any dried fruit)
1 tablespoon butter
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
add 5 cups of boiling water and bake for 90 minutes at 375 degrees.
i use a cast-iron skillet, but any casserole dish would work well.
optional: after baking, add brown sugar, pecans or walnuts.
oh the camping trip stories to be told.
soon after our arrival at longpool campground, the girls we had in tow discovered a spot to which they referred as their “clubhouse” for the entirety of our camping holiday. countless trips were made to and from the clubhouse in order to drag various necessary items to this secret place. hours were spent there. plates of food were precariously carried to the clubhouse for mealtimes. many fistfuls of goldfish crackers went to feed the fish in the big piney creek. boys invaded on several occasions in order to steal the tot spots for the making of their own clubhouse, an effort that was soon given up because, let’s face it…boys just can’t nest as well as girls can. and besides, the girls were happy to invite anyone into their clubhouse. in fact, no other camper was permitted to miss out on a trip to the clubhouse to see the wonders that were there. have you seen our clubhouse yet? have you been to our clubhouse? they would even tell you the password, which had to be changed frequently for security reasons.
friday night, kindell told the other girls to wake up really early the next morning so that they would have as much time as possible to play in the clubhouse before we had to go. the sighs and laments upon driving away from longpool on saturday were all for the clubhouse. talk of one day returning to the clubhouse abounded. mary polly was even in favor of leaving a sign for future campers saying, “up here is a very wonderful place for a clubhouse.“
if you are thinking that in this picture, the aforementioned “clubhouse” really appears to be a narrow ledge of rock dangling over the murky waters, well then you would have a perfect grasp of what the clubhouse truly was. it may not have been roomy, but the view made up for it in spades.
the chino house is feeling oddly roomy tonight. for about a week (except for three glorious days of fall camping), our house of six has been housing eleven. we had five kids bunking in one room, the other two rooms holding two adults and one baby each. after the camping trip vomited on the house saturday afternoon, you pretty much couldn’t see a square inch of floor or counter anywhere. craziness.
we played, we baked about one million cupcakes, we cooked all kinds of food, we ate, we trunk or treated. the kids had more fun than could really possibly be good for them. there was even a touchdown miracle in the midst of our visit with the carrs. somewhere in the middle of it all, i had to let go of how much schoolwork cole completed. and cole had to let go of…well, controlling the world.
thursday morning we left for camping at longpool which is just one of the most beautiful spots i know of. this morning at yoga i held the image of these perfectly placed rocks in my heart. thank you God for such wonder. to sit in a camp chair. soak up fall color. listen to children squeal.
some even jumped in. they just couldn’t resist.
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