Santa

Controversy alert! I've probably mentioned this before: our kids do not believe in Santa. We have never told them that Santa is real. Jeff and I both agreed long ago that we would never lie to our kids. Therefore, Santa is safely in his realm of make-believe. We watch movies about him. We read stories about him. We sing songs about him. But we don't BELIEVE in him. I don't think any of the fun is diminished by keeping Santa in his place. Every time someone who is really in to Santa finds out that I don't lie to my kids about him, they practically jump down my throat and try to convince me that I'm depriving my kids of a truly magical experience. I find myself instantly thrown on the defensive whenever Santa comes up. It seems like the NORM should be for parents NOT to lie to their kids, and yet at this time of year I am constantly defending my honest position. I'm telling you, people feel more strongly about Santa than they do about breastfeeding, circumcision, baby-wearing, car seat safety, and cloth diapering combined! "Let your kids believe in the magic!" they say in incredulously wounded tones. 

But magic is not real. The first time we read Harry Potter to the kids, we didn't tell them that the story was true to make it more magical. It was plenty magical in its fictional form. So why would we selectively lie about magic? And then a few years down the road say "just kidding! haha!" I want my kids to trust me. I tell them so many things that I deeply desire them to believe and TRUST. For example: Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world and he loves us! How can my kids know what's real and what's not in this progressively more fuzzy and gray world if they can't even trust me, their own mother to tell them the truth?

Is the fact that I did not lie to my kids about Santa really going to be the deciding factor on whether they believe in God or not? No. Do I judge people who decide to tell their kids Santa is real? No. I don't understand it (in fact it baffles me), but I don't judge. Cross my heart, I honestly do make that distinction between judgement and baffle-ment. And I also invent words when it suits me.

One of my family's most beloved (if cheesy) Christmas music albums is by the Ray Conniff Singers: Christmas with Conniff, released in the 1959. It was part of the package deal when Jeff married me: we listen to Christmas with Conniff in December (among other amazing old school Christmas albums). Being the classy fellow that he is, Jeff has learned most of the words, harmonies, and arrangements and now he sings along with me, cheesy intros and all. Jeff is a pro at embellishing a good cheesy song. One of the cheesy intros starts like this: "What is the meaning of Christmas? It is a celebration of the birth of the Christ child! This we must never forget! Oh, this we must never forget! But there are other little things too. Yes, there are other things tooooo..." then it transitions into "chestnuts roasting on an open fire..." etc. That funny little intro sums up my opinion on the great Santa debate. Never forget what's real, but enjoy the pretend along the way. 

Conclusion: I love the religious meanings behind holidays like Christmas and Easter. I also enjoy the cultural side notes to those religious roots, like Santa and Easter eggs. But I reserve my belief and do my best to cultivate my kids' faith for the more meaningful, lasting, and important of the two. 

All of that being said, I was surprised to find that I felt rather bummed when two years ago our ward stopped having Santa at the ward Christmas party. Before, when Santa showed up at the church I felt kind of squirmy, like Santa shouldn't be the focus of a church activity. I've been to ward parties that go overboard on the Santa thing, and other ward activities that go...under-board (?) on the big guy. Basically there's no way to make everyone happy, and I totally get that. BUT even I like a little Santa side-note! I know you can go pretty much anywhere to see Santa these days, but I do not stand in lines for Santa. So Jay and Rose have not seen Santa in two years (not that they ever liked him back then). Pictures with Santa are kind of a rite of passage in any childhood. I can't resist a good cultural icon, especially in photographic form. As long as long lines are not involved. Hence my disappointment when Santa ceased to conveniently appear at our not-overly-crowded ward Christmas party.

GET TO THE POINT, SHAINA!

On Sunday I had an epiphany: dress Jeff up as Santa and take the classic kids-with-Santa pictures in the comfort of our own home. The dad is basically Santa for the family anyways! Why didn't I think of this before! Fleece is my medium! "I know just what to do!" I laughed in my throat. And I made a quick Santy Claus hat and a coat. [singing "you're a mean one, Mr. Grinch!" in my head the whole time] I used an old red 5k race t-shirt turned inside out to hide the words. Then I safety-pinned pieces of white fleece in a most convincing configuration all over the red shirt. It was all topped off with a soft white fleece beard and a $3 Santa hat--what a great Shaina trick! This coat and this hat look just like Saint Nick!  

It does have a somewhat Grinch-y flare, does it not?





Santa came to family home evening last night. I set up a little photo studio and positioned the chair just right so the tissue papered lights could diffuse their glow at the most advantageous angle in our dark family room (we have zero ceiling lights in the family room--an evening photo nightmare).

Amber used up her best smiles helping me get the lighting right.

Jeff got all dressed up. He was going to wear jeans with the Santa-shirt since we don't have any red sweatpants, but when I offered him my TIGHT old high school-issue Underarmour running leggings, he said "you had me at tight." I could barely see straight to dig them out of the box, I was laughing so hard.

And that, girls, is why you marry quality.

Every now and then that pesky tissue paper floated into the shot. 

Rose took a picture of me on Santa's lap. Amber wanted in on the hug. 

Maybe I believe in Santa after all.

Leavenworth

Today at church I subbed for the Sunbeam class in primary. Two hours in junior primary with kids ages 4-7 made me wonder how on earth kids aren't sick all the time. I witnessed: hands reaching down pants, sucking on fingers, kids touching each other, licking arms, nibbling pencils, licking paper, coughs, sneezes, and more. And those hands touched ME too--my clothes, hands, and even my FACE. It grosses me out just as much when my own kids do these things, FYI. I do my best not to be a germ-a-phobe but by the end of church I was feeling very vulnerable. When I got home, I washed my hands nearly up to the elbow with lots of soap and changed my clothes. Then I washed my hands again. Please, oh please don't let me get sick.

Long drives for short rewards seems to have been a theme this week (the carousel), because yesterday we decided to go check out Leavenworth, which is supposedly gorgeously decked out in lights and all quaint and snowy. In one of our most epic-ly fruitless family adventures to date, we drove 2.75 hours to Leavenworth, WA yesterday (Saturday) afternoon to see the famed Bavarian-style village nestled in the scenic mountains and covered in thousands of Christmas lights. It's a Washington state tourist destination, especially at Christmastime.

Alas, everyone else in the state seems to have had the same Saturday plans as us because 5 miles outside of Leavenworth, after more than 2.5 hours of driving, we hit a huge traffic jam and ended up taking 45 minutes to drive that last 5 miles. Then when we were finally in the city limits, there were people everywhere, zero parking spots, multiple road blocks, and traffic cops. It also happened to be 36 degrees, pitch dark, and raining. We slowly wove-drove our way through a tiny fraction of the town, saw a few pretty lights through our blurry rain spattered car windows, and then proceeded to drive straight back to Wenatchee (20 minutes) for dinner. Red Robin restaurant made me think how glad I am NOT to be a vegetarian, at least when it comes to hamburgers--ha ha. Then, back in the car and on the road again, this time headed home. We arrived home eight HOURS after we left! We were only at the restaurant for an hour tops! Nothing like a nice 7 hour drive as a family to end up right where we started! Thank goodness for Harry Potter audio book on CD.

At the beginning, before we knew what we were getting ourselves into... 

All of those dark blurs along the sidewalk are PEOPLE. The place was packed, even in the freezing rain. 

Wet, crowded, cold, and blurry. Hah! That about sums it up. If we ever feel so inclined to see this pretty little town again, we will make sure to go in the off season!

Outings

Every year at Christmas my sister makes a photo book for my parents. She asks us to send her pictures and the top five events for each person that year. While I was sitting there trying to figure out what my top five for the year are, I realized how much I prefer to expound and explain when I write. I fear I'm becoming rather long-winded in my old age,  ha ha. My history teacher in high school always told us that when we write, it's better to have a small diamond than a large piece of glass. But I say it's even BETTER to have a large diamond, right? I'm not saying every long post I write is a diamond, but I comfort myself with good grammar and the fact that nobody is forced to read my loquaciously lengthy litanies! That calls for an alliterative laaaaa.

Well I just proved my point without even meaning to, and that's not even what I sat down to write about. Back to the point: while I was thinking about my top five 2015 list and trying to keep it at a hundred words or less, I thought about how much I enjoy writing blog posts. But how to put "likes writing blog posts" in a more fun way on a top five list? That inspired me to do a quick word count estimate for Where the White Things Are 2015. I concluded that this year I have written roughly 100,000 words in blog posts! I then proceeded to do a photo-summary for 2015. This year I took around 10,000 pictures! Can we say documented, life?

It's amazing how many memories I have recorded with pictures and words. It's also amazing how much seems to have slipped through the cracks! When I look back to this summer even, it feels like ten years ago and I can hardly remember what we did every day. It's so easy to reconstruct memories while looking at pictures and reading old journals, but those memories are always edited and altered through the filter of time. There's no way to remember exactly how every single day really was. I guess that's fine, but I am kind of a bit sentimental when it comes to time passing and therefore I do my best to record it. It's all too easy to look back fondly and forget all the hard annoying things that happened. Who wants to remember those? My brain naturally grabs the happy and remembers it, discarding the blah. But those good memories are not balanced without both sides of the story! Hence my journal and blog and pictures of kids smiling and kids sobbing.

Ok, now that I've gotten that off my chest, I can proceed with the real purpose of this post: PICTURES! This past week Jeff and I divided and conquered: Jeff stayed home with Amber at night while I took Jay and Rose out on the town. We always prefer going on outings all together, but Amber has been teething and high maintenance lately so we decided not to rock her world too much with evening outings.

Outing #1, Saturday night: Sunnyside lighted farm implements parade. The title of the parade cracks me up, but the actual parade is pretty cool and fun: big vehicles decked out in Christmas lights, interspersed by parade floats, Christmas style. In an attempt to avoid the crowds and traffic, we parked around the corner (I thought) from the parade route. Turns out we parked around two corners and walked about half a mile in the cold to reach the parade. Jay and Rose were troopers, though, and we arrived in plenty of time to see as much of the parade as we wanted--about half an hour of it--before walking that half mile back to our car.

While we were waiting for the parade to start, we amused ourselves taking fuzzy selfies in the dark...

 Little camera hogs.

I loved the giant carriage--stage coach maybe--all lit up. Those horses were BIG, especially to us when we were sitting on the curb. 

Outing #2, Wednesday night: Carousel of Dreams in Kennewick. We could go to the carousel any time (although we've never been), but on Wednesday night they hosted a Christmas shindig there: donate a toy or two nonperishable food items per person and receive a free carousel token for each donation. We got four tokens and went straight in to the line. The place was PACKED. Jeff has meetings on Wednesday afternoons, so it was me and all three kids, pressing through the crowds. We happened to arrive at a perfect time and only had to wait for about two minutes to get on the carousel. It was an opulently sparkly ride, though the horses were somewhat rabid-looking. I was quite occupied with keeping Amber atop her bobbing horse while not passing out from the swirly dizziness that set in around lap three, haha. So I snagged a few blurry pictures and then endured to the end. Suddenly it was over and we were done. The event  offered Christmas crafts and a Santa visit, but when the kids saw the ridiculously long lines involved, they practically begged to leave. I was happy to oblige. Nothing like a 45 minute drive to ride the merry-go-round for two minutes! ha.

Jay noticed a concession stand selling hot dogs at the carousel and he informed me how HUNGRY he was. I asked where he wanted to go for dinner, and the blessed boy chose Costco. No problemo! $5 later the kids were eating their fill of cheese pizza and chicken bake.

We stopped at the temple to see what kind of Christmas cheer we could discover. There were no Christmas lights, but there was a simple, beautiful white nativity out front. It was perfect. We tried to get closer and have a look, but it was on a tall platform so we got as close as we could. I love white lights shining on white stone at night.

We stopped at Target on the way home for Jay and Rose to get Jeff's Christmas presents. Of course we walked through the toy section and Jay and Rose had to admire the enormous Star Wars and Frozen characters. What would a kid DO with those things? Just curious.

Two solo nighttime outings with my children at night made me very willing to spend a few evenings at home snuggled up by the Christmas tree with a book. 

Reality check: It has taken me all day to write this post. Today I'm watching a friends two little girls, age two and three. They have been playing happily, but Amber has decided to cry every time I put her down and all kids poop and eat and ask questions. So with a sigh of relief, I'll click "publish" five hours later.

Winter wonderland week

Living where we do, we never know if THIS snow will be our last snow of the winter, so we always try to make the most of every flake that falls. We got more snow this week, before last week's snow even melted! Tuesday school was delayed two hours, and Wednesday school was cancelled (finally). Jay and Rose romped and played till their cheeks were rosy-red. On Tuesday morning, Jay went outside and played in the snow for almost two hours before we walked to school in the snow. It's amazing the stamina kids have when they are doing something they love. They'll run and play outside for hours but when it's time to clean up the legos, suddenly they can't move a muscle. Ha! I guess I know the feeling. Show me a gorgeous trail and I'll run for miles and miles. Show me a messy kitchen, and my energy and motivation drop drastically. 

Anyways, it snowed at least 3 inches on Monday night (we checked Jay's rain gauge that he stuck in our flower bed two months ago during his school weather unit--the container was full to the top with snow). The two hour delay for school on Tuesday, gave us ample time for a leisurely breakfast and a brisk romp in the snow. We all bundled up and I took the kids for a sleigh ride around the neighborhood in Grampa Dan's big ole Flexible Flyer heavy-duty beast of a sled. It glided smooth as butter over the un-plowed streets in the slick packed tracks of cars. I love that thing! I was practically dripping sweat after our half mile one mom open sleigh ride because even with an awesomely gliding sled, three kids are heavy. 

A specific moment that I want to remember from Tuesday: when we first started out on our sled ride, I was jogging along pulling the kids behind me. Jay and Rose (clutching Amber) started singing Jingle Bells at the tops of their lungs. It quickly morphed into the "jingle bells, batman smells" version. But they sang it with such joy and gusto, the actual words didn't matter. That's one of those delicious happy family memories that I'm treasuring up for my old age.  

 

The kids even managed to get a little sledding in on the teeny tiny slope in our front yard.

Watching.

Walking to school

 I took a picture of my reflection in the big school windows, but it didn't really turn out. I carried Amber in the baby basket again, and she is heavy! She's only 21 pounds, but the straps on the basket don't have any kind of padding and they gouged my shoulder bones hard on our walk.

Hot cider! We have these perfect little teabag style cider spices that you soak in warm apple juice for five minutes for instant, heavenly hot cider. Rose totally grossed me out by sucking on the soggy spice bag...blah!

On Wednesday morning school was cancelled! Our town does not plow its roads, so after a day of cars packing snow onto the roads and the sun melting it and the cold night refreezing it, Grandview was a veritable hockey rink. Sunnyside schools were cancelled too, so Jeff was home. He watched Amber while I went out to play with Jay and Rose around lunchtime. We had a snowball fight and built a snowman. When I say snowball fight, I use the term very loosely. Jay carefully scooped up a snowball while I waited for him and then he tossed it at me while I screamed and ran away. Then it was my turn. Ha, when I try to describe our snowball fight it sounds lame! It was actually pretty fun, thanks to Jay's infectious giggles and the excitement of running and sliding on ice. 

Rose preferred to throw snowballs from on high.

Since our yard was pretty well trampled, we decided to try building a snowman with the undisturbed snow in the soccer field behind our house. The powdery snow was softened from a day of melting and crispy from a night of re-freezing. It packed into dense ice-balls. After much packing and patting, I finally got a snowball big enough to roll around and around into a big bottom ball. The thing was HEAVY! I was panting and sweating while rolling it into place. When I had the middle snowball ready, I couldn't lift it! I had to rest a minute and really put my legs into it before I finally hoisted the snowman's belly onto the his bottom. While we worked we joked about what to name him. Jay and Rose always default to Frosty, but I said the snow was more icy than frosty, so we should name him Icy instead. Then I saw how much grass we were rolling into the snowballs and I thought Harry was a more appropriate name. We compromised on Harry Ice the Snowman. He had to have weighed close to 300 pounds. I was all wobbly and shaky from the effort of heaving those ice-balls around the field.

Since we were out of long carrots for Harry's nose, we used a piece of celery. Jay happens to love celery, and he ate the entire first nose while I was busy collecting rocks for Harry's buttons! Eventually, Harry Ice was complete and his exhausted creator forced the reluctant children into a triumphant snowman picture before we went inside for hot cider and stories. Another golden moment: two in one week! 

Biting Harry's nose. Mmm, juicy green nose--nice snack, Jay.

We had to strip the poor guy before we went inside--he wasn't in our yard, so it felt weird to leave our hat, gloves, and scarf on him.

We had celery with our hot cider--haha

Metaphor time! I just thought of this: everyday life is like an orchestra tuning up--there's a cacophony of different noises playing all at once. Every now and then, everyone is in tune at the same time, and the room vibrates with the perfection of that one note. I call those times my golden moments.Any parent knows that for every golden perfect moment there are at least a dozen poopy diapers, spills, tantrums, accidents, and messes. So when the gold comes, I gather it however I can (a picture, a paragraph, a hug) and carefully store it away, to be taken out and admired whenever I need a boost.

The snow is almost melted by now. This morning Harry Ice's head fell off, closely followed by his midsection. The snow was winter-wonderful while it lasted.