A Step You Can't Take Back

Last Wednesday, my kids, husband, and I said goodbye to the home we lived in for nearly 16 years. It was not easy.

Aside from the grueling physical and material aspects of moving – countless trips up and down stairs and ladders to the attic and basement, lifting boxes, making endless lists and calling dozens of businesses related to the move, and, of course the costs – the emotional side weighed heavy on my heart. So much happened in this house.... Two sons were born and grew into sweetly funny and loving young boys, one nearly a man at thirteen. A baby girl was lost before the idea of her could fully bloom. New friends came into our lives, some staying for the long haul, and others moving on before I was ready for them to go. I treasure those who stayed and still feel grateful for having known those who outgrew me (or was it the other way around?).

We loved and lost pets and brought new ones into the family because there is just so much love to share. Romance peaked and waned and peaked again as long loves do, but always, always, always, there was a lasting love and a story to be written together.

I have focused much on the joys experienced in our Georgia home. Because that's what we do...right?

But I once called our home cursed and brought out the Holy Water and sage to try and cast out the sorrow I felt hanging about us during an especially challenging time. It wasn't the only time I felt that way living in that house.

Still, we look at the totality of our experiences and if nothing else, my faith and ability to love (deeply and unconditionally) grew by leaps and bounds in this home. It is where I learned what it really means to be a wife and where I became a mother. I evolved from timid and insecure to confident and experienced. I encountered the teachings of Abraham-Hicks which reinforced my Catholic beliefs about God's love for us and I learned that we choose joy and that doing so isn't always easy, but it's definitely worth the effort. I also learned how to take care of my physical and mental health with diet, exercise, and supplements. And I learned to choose me.

Now as I stand at the edge of my future, I realize that I'm really not leaving anything behind. Just a building, where a new family will grow and live their lives. I take the rest with me, but really only the good. Because ultimately, the negative experiences I had led me to the changes I needed to make to become the woman, the wife, the friend, the mother, that I want to be, that I am, that I am still becoming.  And in leading me to where I needed to be the chaff was transformed into gold.

I know our life in Chattanooga will be amazing because I believe in amazing. In the meantime, my kids and I will be spending the next six or seven weeks as vagabonds until our new home is complete. I hope to share some of our experiences. You can watch as I totally step out of my security-craving comfort zone and grow.

Feel free to follow me on Twitter, or here. And, in the meantime, I'd love to hear your stories about getting out of your comfort zone, or what happened when you took a step you couldn't take back. Please share your story in the comments. Namaste.

Grandma's Hands

As anyone who might still be reading my blog since I haven't posted in months may have noticed, I've been writing a lot about food. Tweeting about it as well.

Being that I never intended this as a food blog, it seems a might strange.

In actuality, I'm just getting back to the roots of who I am. This journey of parenting made me lose myself in a lot of ways for a long, long time. It has changed me. And now I discover that it has carried me back to who I am and who I was.

I joined a CSA back in June. At the time I had just read The Omnivore's Dilemma and watched King Corn and I was thinking even more than usual about the foods we eat and the damage done to our environment by conventional agriculture. I thought I was joining the CSA for political reasons as much as to provide my family with healthy, locally-grown real food. And, to be honest, at $25 a week for a huge box of vegetables, it was a cost-saving initiative as well.

What I've discovered of late, as the bounty of beautiful autumn vegetables has rolled in each week, is that I really did this for myself. Okay. Maybe at the time I didn't know that. But now, this endeavor is solely for my own awakening as a cook.

Before having children, cooking was a passion for me. I loved trying new recipes, trying new foods I'd never cooked or even tasted before, and playing in the kitchen. Having children turned my once relaxing and leisurely cooking sessions into frantic, chaotic, rushed hours of crazy-making where I would burn things, cook things my children would refuse to eat, and left me in despair that I would never be able to cook a decent meal again.

Then, my children got a little older. Right around the time I joined the CSA, my kids began to be able to entertain themselves long enough for me to get a meal on the table or plan a week's worth of meals without being interrupted 27 times. My oldest also began to ask questions about what he was eating and both boys love going with me to pick up our box of veg each week. They can't wait to see what's in there. And of course, they're more excited about the grits and apples, but I know I'm making progress when my baby says of a lovely red and green striped bell pepper, "That's a beauty."

This week as I washed and chopped collard greens to freeze and sliced fresh beets to roast for dinner, I thought of my grandmother. I thought of her again as I poured freshly ground cornmeal from our farm into a bowl to make corn muffins using her recipe. These were the foods she cooked and served when I was child. Her techniques may have been different than my own, but cooking and eating these foods makes me feel close to her. I carry her in my DNA, in my heart, and in the love of cooking she instilled in me as a little girl. I learned to cook at her hand. And while she grew most of her vegetables in her own garden or bought them from farmer friends she knew personally, I still feel happy that I can teach my kids how to enjoy foods that are in season, grown nearby if not by my hand, and in the slightest way pass some of my love for my Mammy on to them.

I don't let myself think of her often. She died when I was 16 and to this day I still miss her.

Who knew a box of vegetables would help me find a way to reconnect with some of my favorite memories of her and let me find a way to celebrate her life without feeling my heart break all over again?

Whoever did, whatever power led me here, thank you for giving me back one of my favorite outlets for creating and showing love and for letting me feel so close to someone I loved so much.

These Are a Few of My Favorite Things: 5 Fun Holiday Activities for Kids

To celebrate and promote the premiere of Dora's Christmas Carol, Nickelodeon has invited Twitter Moms to share some of their favorite holiday activities and traditions they share with their kids.

When it comes to the holidays, I'm just a big old sentimental softie. I bet y'all wouldn't have guessed the obvious, huh?

I love traditions and I love making new traditions with my husband and sons. I want to create happy holiday memories that the boys will carry into their adult lives. And I hope, someday, they'll share some of these same activities with the kids.

The first and most obvious tradition I share with my boys is decorating the house for Christmas. Growing up, my family always put the tree up the day after Thanksgiving and this is a tradition I strive to continue, although there have been a couple of years (like when I was pregnant with my second son), that it hasn't happened until later. I put on Christmas music and pull all the decorations down from the attic. I start outdoors with wreaths on the door and windows and garland around the door, a few lights here and there. Then we move inside where we have two trees. The one in our living room is a more formal tree with white lights and fancy decorations, but the second one is all about family! It stands in the corner of our kitchen near our kitchen table and has brightly colored lights and all the decorations the kids have made plus all of our special decorations that we have been given over the years by the grandparents. Part of this tradition is that each year I take the kids to pick out a new decorations for themselves and one for me and my husband. So far we have lots of Sesame Street and Star Wars ornaments for the boys and lots of guitars and musical notes for my husband while I get Santas because I love Santa.

Another way we celebrate the season is a tradition that started when my oldest was in preschool that we participate in through the school. The year he was three, as I was about to give birth to his baby brother around Christmas, this tradition took on new meaning for me. The preschool, which is part of an Episcopal church collects and organizes bundles of new baby items like diapers, blankets, bottles, layette, socks, pacifiers, etc., and puts them into what they call Baby Jesus Baskets. The baskets are then blessed by the priest at the church and taken to Atlanta's public hospital and given to new mothers and their babies who are in need of the items. I love doing this each year, but as I said, having my own December baby and imagining what it would be like not to have the resources to give him the basic necessities has made this tradition even more special to me.

Baby Jesus Baskets may not be as much fun for the kids as it is for me, but I hope they learn to give from their hearts, expecting nothing in return through that act.

Something that is more fun for them, and maybe the thing they love most other than Santa, is watching all the holiday movies and tv shows together. From It's a Wonderful Life to How the Grinch Stole Christmas we are a family that devours Christmas media. Our schedules are busy and since we also have a lot of basketball to watch at this time of year, we often Tivo the shows so we can watch them later, but we love sitting down and laughing or crying together as we bond over the perils, pratfalls, and precious moments holiday TV.

While my fantasies of spending a day in the kitchen baking 10 different kinds of Christmas cookies with my daughter may never come to fruition since I don't have a daughter and the boys seem to have no inclination toward the culinary arts so far, I am planning to introduce a new tradition this year that is tangentially related to baking: the gingerbread house. I figure the building aspect of the project will appeal to my little Lego lovers and give me a chance to play around with icing. Since I hate gingerbread I won't be baking it myself. We'll just buy a kit, but I think it will be a fun way to spend a day off from school in the week or so before Christmas and hopefully be a fun thing we can do year after year.

Our biggest and most meaningful tradition, the one that I think they will carry over with them in the most significant way, is spending Christmas Eve with Grandma, or MeMe, as she is known in our family. We spend the day at her house with all the cousins running around playing. There are usually Mimosas for the ladies and bourbon for the gentlemen. The kids create chaos but seem to love being with one another. At least until someone has a meltdown.

We eat a traditional Christmas dinner then we all go to Mass together at the church my husband and his brothers grew up in. There are so many of us now, we can take up almost two pews. We always sit in the same place if we get there in time and enjoy the beauty and solemnity of the Christmas Eve mass. I always cry when I feel the weight and beauty of the moment and am reminded why we celebrate Christmas. I look at our family, big and imperfect, and I am able to forgive slights and see only what I love about these people and feel thankful that we are all together for that moment.

After Mass, we head back to my mother-in-law's where we have dessert and the kids open their presents from MeMe. Then we bundle everyone into the car and head back home to snuggle in bed and wait for Santa's arrival.

Living La Vida Loca and Loving It

What a long month it's been and we're only 10 days or so into it.

Last week was spent with two boys and a husband all with the stomach flu. It started on Halloween night and didn't end until sometime early this past Sunday morning. So far I haven't gotten it, but did have alternating chills and hot spells with nausea on Saturday night while caring for a still vomiting six-year old.

Earlier that day, though, everyone was fine – well, the kids and I were fine, Scott was still sick. We spent the day in Cumming with my in-laws taking in my niece's play in the a.m. and then going to my nephew's football playoff game that afternoon. Maybe it was the hot dog and Icee at the football game that did Brendan's tummy in.

Thrown into that mix were Brendan's first basketball practice, which he loved; starting his big first-grade Language Arts project on blends; and learning that we are doing Thanksgiving at our house because both my sisters-in-law have other plans with their families this Thanksgiving.

When I wasn't taking care of sick people last week, I spent much of my time updating my resume and sending it to friends in the hope of networking. I really need to create some more freelance work for myself and/or find a regular gig. There's something about working that makes me feel happy. I feel like a real human again, with my own thoughts and ideas that involve something other than what's for dinner. I enjoy talking about words and the functionality of web sites and how to translate one person's idea into words another person can understand and that drive people to action.

I also had an article published in Special Needs Parenting magazine. It's been really nice to get so much positive feedback on it. Mothering is an often thankless job. It has been nice to do something and have others tell me they appreciate what I did or that I did a good job on it.

I am working on another seralized article for a different parenting magazine.

With all of that going on, finding time to blog has been hard. I was awarded the "One Lovely Blog" by Sarah at The Stroller Ballet, but haven't even had time to write about it or share the bloggy love with some of my other favorite bloggers. Oh well. Maybe tomorrow.

For now, it's time to revel in the still warm and loved feeling I have after spending the morning with my Familia group from my church and get to cleaning the kitchen and starting supper before we head to speech therapy after school.

Have a lovely day, my friends. And thanks for stopping by. In case I haven't told you lately I really appreciate you all. Smooch!

Beautiful Life: When Ordinary Moments Become Extraordinary

I just watched this video by the band Fisher, who Scott and I discovered way, way, way back in the past when music by indie bands on the Internet was a groundbreaking phenomenon. The song and the video are just so joyful they have helped make my Monday.

I had to share it because it feels like an extension or perhaps rather an expression of the golden ball of Happy that I felt in my heart and soul on Saturday night after a perfectly ordinary day spent with Scott and The Boys.

We slept in, which for us means about 8:30. Then we just puttered around the house. I played with the kids a little, fixed breakfast, made a shopping list. Scott did some work. We ate lunch, and then went to the Buford Highway International Farmers' Market so I could pick up some produce for the week and get the things I needed to make a Broccoli Salad to take to a friend's house for dinner that night.

When we got home, we rushed to get ready to go to our friends L. and F.'s for dinner with them and their two darling little boys. And it was the perfect evening of perfectly ordinary pleasures. Margaritas on the patio. Delicious food like bacon-wrapped, cheese-stuffed peppers. Smoked burgers. Broccoli and potato salads. Watching the boys run and tumble and play until they were exhausted, sweaty, sand-covered little messes. It was the kind of night that helps people grow closer and can stay in your heart forever. And what I loved most was that it did seem perfectly ordinary in the sense that these are people who have grown to be our friends slowly and over time to the point that we now have a shared history and I hope a long shared future. It didn't seem like a big deal to be going to their home. It just seemed perfectly natural. The way friendships do over time. And it's a wonderful feeling.

Even after we left, loaded into Scott's car with our leftovers and sweet, sweaty, sandy boys, and half a pitcher of margaritas L. sent home with us, I felt so...Happy. All four of us together, laughing and teasing and joking. I felt like I couldn't stop smiling as I thought, "This is it. This is what my life is and it's amazing and I am so thankful for it."

Sadly, it's a rare thing that a day spent doing not much of anything makes me feel connected and alive and perfectly content the way this past Saturday did. The experience, though, makes me appreciate the wonder of my life that much more and makes me determined to experience that joy in every day if not in every moment.

Hope

As I've mentioned before, Brendan has an uncanny way of mis-hearing or misstating things that cuts closer to the depth and essence of something than the actual word he intended or the word that is actually used.

One word he used to use and that I allowed to some extent because I loved it was rainbrella.

Several times recently, a new one has cropped up. And it's actually so accurate in its heartbreaking truth that I get teary-eyed every time he says it.

Our neighborhood is situated so that there are several different ways to access the various Interstate highways that intersect nearby. And each of those exits, we are seeing an increase in the homeless as they are pushed out of Downtown Atlanta. Brendan has recently begun to notice them and ask questions. So, Scott and I have both had opportunities to talk to him about homelessness and what that means.

What he has heard instead of home-less is Hope-less.

Mommy, he will ask, how did they get hopeless?

And I am left to explain the heartbreak and tragedies of this world while trying to hold out hope as a shiny, never-fading reality to my own child.

When he asks if we will ever be hopeless, I tell him no because we have a wide and extended family and friends who love us and who would help us if something bad ever happened to us. I tell him that this is why family is important and that he and Beckett will always have one another and they should always help and honor and support one another. I tell him nothing is more important than his family.

I tell him, and I pray that it is true, that when you have family and you love one another and treat each other with respect that you will always have a home. And you will always have hope.

Just Got Lucky

I just received a phone call from my brother-in-law and had to take a break from working out to take the call and now blog about it because I am so grateful about the news I received I'm teary-eyed.

My mother-in-law had an arteriogram this morning to check for blockages in her heart. She had been having some palpitations and other issues and a stress test was inconclusive.

The doctors found no blockages in her heart and said the heart looks healthy. This, in my opinion, is nothing less than a miracle.

Both of her brothers (one older, one younger) have had by-pass surgeries in the last four years. Her mother died following open heart surgery two years ago. Compounding the issue is the fact that my mother-in-law is extremely overweight. When Scott and I began dating 12 years ago, she was only slightly overweight and really did a good job taking care of herself. Then she quit smoking and became focused on her grandchildren and stopped caring about herself it seemed. We've all talked to her and tried to encourage her. I've given her so many different diet and healthy living books it's not funny. Nothing has worked.

I pray that this is the wake up call, the second chance, that gets her to start taking care of herself. I love her like my own mother. And my boy adores her.

I want her to be around for him to have a relationship with. I want her to see all the milestones in his life. I don't want her to die.

I just wish she felt the same and would start making the changes that will keep her here a while longer.

Happy

What a busy weekend we had around here!

On Friday, our friend J. and his son, E., who were passing through Atlanta on their way to visit an ailing grandparent, stopped by for a visit. They went with Beckett and me to my MOMS Club Easter egg hunt and we all had a great time.

After visiting with their family in another town that afternoon, J. and E., came back to spend the night with us. More friends came over and we ended up going out to buy curtains for our basement and installing them that night. Brendan and E. played amazingly well together, with baby brother Beckett tagging along as best he could, and had a wonderful time. We all ate pizza and laughed and talked and had a wonderfully relaxing night.

On Saturday morning, we had Brendan's soccer game at 9 a.m. and J. and E. came along with us to that. Brendan's team lost, but he played really well and had fun.

After the game, we all relaxed back at the ranch, had some lunch, then J. and E. headed up to J.'s in-laws house to meet his wife and daughter for the rest of Easter weekend. Scott, Brendan, Beckett, and I hung out at home, watching the Duke game (boo-hoo! I am very sad the team lost because they seem like a great group of kids.) and packing for our Easter trip to Montgomery. After the game we hit the road and got there in time for dinner. We were all so exhausted though, that within, 2 1/2 hours of getting there, we all fell asleep.

I was up at 5:30 on Sunday though, getting my Easter Bunny groove on, stuffing the baskets I bought last year at 70% off the markdown price (making the baskets that were originally $10 each, just $1.50 each!). By 6:30, I had stuffed both baskets, made a pot of coffee, put together a casserole for later in the day, and laid out both boys' Easter attire. And for once, we were all dressed and in the pew before Easter services began.

After church, we all headed over to Scott's brothers for a wonderful Easter dinner and egg hunt. The kids had fun. I enjoyed being with our family and just felt really close to both my sisters-in-law and all the kids. It was a really great day, I thought!

We were home by 8:30 p.m. with happy boys and leftovers for dinner. Brendan grew up it seemed and cheerfully offered to help Scott unpack the car. He ate well the whole weekend (a big concern for me is his poor appetite and picky palate).

He went to bed without a fuss and the weekend ended with all of us tired, but reasonably content.

Home for the Holidays: December's Perfect Post

In my mind, I've always created visions of how I want things to be or ideals of situations. Essentially daydreams of how I wish life could be, I guess.

For me, the perfect Christmas is all about being with family – not some rushed and hurried let's-get-to-the-presents dash through dinner, open the presents, and everyone go their separate ways, but rather two or three days spent together, cooking, sharing stories in a warm kitchen over coffee. Nights cuddled in front of a fireplace singing along to carols and laughing at memories of Christmases past. Quiet, intimate moments with the person I love most in the world that turn into treasured memories.

A few days ago, I stumbled onto Mimi on the Breach, another Mommy Blog and I read this post. Mimi describes beautiful, shining moments from her Christmas with her family – moments with her husband and daughter, with her husband's parents. She talks about cooking and listening to carols, and the picture she paints is so warm and bright and beautiful that as I read, I found myself transported. It was as if I were there in the kitchen with her and her husband. I could feel the warmth off the oven and smell the sage and rosemary. And I could feel the love and joy she was experiencing. I was moved to tears of joy for this complete stranger and intensely impressed by her ability to describe her experience in such vivid detail.

Mimi on the Breach wins my vote for December's Perfect Post with her post, Christmas Goodies. Beautiful, heartfelt writing.

You can check out the entire list of Perfect Post winners either at Suburban Turmoil or Petroville.

Awesome/Not Awesome

I didn't get much sleep last night and feel rather grumpy and spacey as a result. All morning, as I attended Brendan's preschool end-of-year musical performance, I found myself rather bitchily thinking, "This is not awesome," much like the Geico Tiny House commercial. Not about the musical performance or the kids. No, that part was adorable. The only way I can sum up my day is with a list so, in no particular order, here are how the various experiences of my day stacked up:

Awesome: Everyone in my house eating, getting dressed, and out the door in under one hour.

Not Awesome: You (Whoever you are!) parking your fucking Honda Odyssey horizontally across three parking spaces in the preschool parking lot the morning of the spring musical and 4-year old graduation. Rude.

Awesome: My kid hamming it up on the front row, singing loudly and animatedly as he made up his own tap dance routine that none! of the other kids were doing!

Awesomer: Our friend Chris recording video of my kid the ham and promising to put it on a disc, just because he thought it was so funny.

Not Awesome: Only getting about two hours of sleep last night.

Not Awesome: Taking forever to pull your minivan straight into a parallel spot with no obstacles and making me wait, even though we're all going to be late.

Awesome: The angry little girl who stood on the front row with arms folded, scowling, through the entire musical performance. That's commitment.

Really Brilliantly Awesome: Sky Blue Sky. Either Way, Impossible Germany, and Hate It Here are instant favorites. Hate It Here is very Beatlesesque. I think Jeremy may have mentioned that, too.

Awesome: Making plans to hang out and grill at the neighborhood pool with two other couples and their kids on Saturday night.

Not Awesome: Wearing a bathing suit five months after having a baby. (Even though I have lost all but about 3 lbs. of the baby weight!)

Awesome, Baby!: Having a minute or two to read stories about good people doing good things.

Not Awesome: Teething.

Not Awesome: Temper tantrums.

Not Awesome: Being woken up 15 minutes into a perfectly lovely nap to clean up spilled milk (and wanting to cry about it).

Awesome: Scott's being booked to play at Swallow at the Hollow.

Also Awesome: Meeting new friends.

Really Not Awesome: A second night with less than three hours of sleep.

Awesome: Two sweet boys both starting the day with smiles on their faces.

Awesome: Feeling loved even when I think I'm unlovable.