December is Beginning

I always go on record for how much I hate winter, but I have to say that I do love December with all its lights and plans and fun and secrets. As I type this, it is late afternoon and we are gathered in the cozy living room. The girls are wearing pajamas and are bundled up in blankets, watching Kipper the Dog. (Oh, how we love Kipper, that cheerful little British dog!) I've been to the grocery store because they tell us a blizzard is coming in a matter of hours.

First I have to show you this from this weekend though...


Elaine came home and told me, "There was a girl who sat on Santa's lap and cried; it was SO rude. I sat on his lap and didn't cry. I told him I be'd a good girl, and I want a dolly and a dolly and a dolly and Polly Pockets and everything in the Bat Cave." Lucy said, "I didn't sit on his lap, but I stood by him and told him that I want doll clothes." "Oh yeah, me too, I want doll clothes," said Elaine.

Today it began snowing early, so they couldn't wait to get out this afternoon in this...


In a little while, we'll all sit around the table and have homemade vegetable beef soup, rosemary-olive oil bread, and Door County cherry crisp (with a dab of Cool Whip on it) for supper.

We always check on the girls a couple of hours after bedtime. Lately, we've been finding this:


Between now and Saturday we have about four different celebrations, so I feel a little like they do there, but in a good way...

Our Favorites

Anyone who knows me knows I'm a nut for tradition. And there's no better time of year for traditions than the month of December. Music plays a big part of that. Talk to just about anyone, and they've got a favorite Christmas album--something their parents played while they all decorated the tree or what they listened to in the car while driving around looking at the lights or what they sang while baking cookies.

I won't argue with anyone about what's the best album because musical preference is subjective, especially for Christmas, when it seems as though the very notes have the scent of pine or sugar cookies clinging to them. But here our some of our family's favorites, in no particular order.

The classic...


I don't know if this is available anymore, but it's an all-instrumental album by one of my all-time favorite musicians along with the London Festival Orchestra.


Well, obviously...
My brother brought this home from college in 1986. It remains not only one of my favorite Christmas albums but all-around favorite albums ever. I've also seen George Winston in concert twice. He plays the piano in his sock feet.

This is one of my nostalgia picks. We had this on vinyl LP at home that we played on our record player housed in a wooden cabinet with a lid that lifted up. I can taste cookies whenever I hear it.

Here's my other nostalgia pick. Amy Grant is practically synonymous with Christmas music. My personal favorite is her first one, released in 1983.


Here are three of our new favorites, especially now that we go in for the more mellow stuff. We keep feeling this need to relax. Not sure what that's about. This one is so good that I forgive it for having "The Christmas Song" on it even though I loathe that song. It's Chris Botti also, so I pretty much forgive him anything.


Of course you gotta have JT. I also forgive him for having "The Christmas Song" on this CD. I forgive him anything too. Just look at his cheerful, impish, JT face. It just makes you want to sing "Winter Wonderland," which, by the way, Chris Botti guest-plays on.


Here is my absolute favorite, which I covered at some length last summer. I love this album so much I could play it all the time. Oh wait, I do play it all the time. And it does NOT have "The Christmas Song" on it. Oh, and both James Taylor AND Chris Botti play on this. I guess they're all pals and swan around playing songs on each other's CDs. Everyone should really own this. In my opinion. Which I wasn't going to give.


And lastly, Christmas wouldn't be Christmas if we didn't put this on and dance around at least once. Or seven or eight times. I dare you to play it and remain still. It's impossible. So...what are some of your favorites?

We Went, We Saw, We Purchased

On this Tuesday morning, I am sitting here listening to soothing music while the girls are at school, just trying to catch my breath from the extended weekend. After our mad baking marathon on Wednesday night, we arrived at Chuck and Rome's on Saturday and of course proceeded to stuff ourselves, then fall asleep.

On Friday morning, my dad took all the guys out to breakfast. We ladies were all supposed to shop at fancy shops and eat lunch at a tea room. Now of course we love shopping at fancy shops and eating at tea rooms--it's our life's breath. However, something felt not quite right. We weren't getting enthused about shopping at fancy shops and eating in a tea room. And my mom didn't seem to be feeling up to it.

"Why don't I just stay home, and you three girls [Rome, my cousin Joy, and me] go?"

Of course we didn't want to do that either.

"I have a better idea," I said. "Why don't we hit St. Vincent DePaul resale and do real shopping?"

And the crowd went wild. My mom, Rome, and I live for bargain shopping. We love style but hate to pay for it. We love the hunt and the thrill of victory. Plus, there are always lots of couches where Mom can rest if she needs to. We didn't know about Joy, but she was along for the ride. We all piled in the car, Mom included, and headed out. All four of us were soon gleefully whipping through the racks. An hour later, we all left with full bags (even Joy) and headed back home to eat leftovers. A perfect day.

Behold, my glorious bargains:

One shirt, Ann Taylor, $3.99.

One shirt of unknown origin, $3.99:


One sweater, Express, $2.00:


One sweater, Ann Taylor, read it and weep, people, $0.99:


One top of unknown origin, $3.99:


Unpictured, one pair of adorable brown "cloppy" shoes that my daughters snatched up immediately upon arrival, $5.00.

And...the grand finale...one pair of jeans....originally marked at $3.99, but now with a half-price ticket, so $2.00:


Wait, do you see the label on these jeans?


If you are ignorant of 7 for All Mankind jeans, here is what this pair retails for. Yes, you read it correctly. And I got them for $2.00. (On an even more shallow note if there could possibly be one, I want that stomach for Christmas.) Now, I don't sit in judgment on anyone who pays full price for their clothes, even if you pay that kind of money for your jeans, which by the way are amazing and fit better than any other pair I own. However, I have a pre-schooler. One who has been known to blow her nose on my pants. I can't imagine having to worry about someone possibly blowing their nose on my $155.00 jeans.

Oh, St. Vincent DePaul, how I love you. First, for being my alma mater. Now for these incredible bargains. In fact, I might love you more for the bargains than for being my alma mater. That actually cost me a lot more. But I will be back. Soon and often.

OK, on to the next. Friday afternoon we left the girls with my family and headed back because we were invited out to dinner with friends, where we again stuffed ourselves, then came home and fell asleep.

Saturday we went back to the suburbs because Rome and Chuck had gotten us theater tickets to see Sleeping Beauty as a pre-Christmas present. It was a Noble Fool production at Pheasant Run Theatre in St. Charles. Those kids did a great job, and we will certainly come back again. Elaine decided that she would like to be a fairy on the stage, too.

When we got back Saturday afternoon, Darren and the girls headed out for their annual Christmas tree-buying excursion.

A little too small...


This one is just right...


When they got home, they discovered that their best friends, Andrew and Isabella, were here. Lucho was at a medical conference, and Sarah was staying with her sister in the hospital who was having a baby.

They spent the night and most of Sunday with us, and I got the unparalleled experience of getting four kids ready in the morning. All those kids are great, but it's double what I'm used to. Whoa.

So now you know why I'm sitting here listening to soft Christmas music and drinking tea. But my heart is racing because I just found out that I'll be doing a feature article on Beth Moore and her new book So Long, Insecurity: You've Been a Bad Friend to Us for the Jan/Feb issue of the magazine. Not to mention, I've got loads to blog about this week, including our family wishlist and our favorite holiday music, because you know you're interested.

Stay tuned.

Our Contribution

Tomorrow we will be heading to the suburbs to spend Thanksgiving with my brother, his wife, my cousin and her husband, and my parents. My dad is the master of the turkey, so he'll be doing that. My sis-in-law will be doing most of the rest, my mom is bringing the pies, and we got assigned the sweet potatoes.

The girls and I decided to make Pioneer Woman's sweet potato casserole. If you haven't visited her site or made any of her recipes, you are missing out. My favorites are her crash hot potatoes and her orange mini-muffins. But everything she makes looks good. AND she has a new cookbook out, which my friend Toby went to her book-signing in Chicago last week and brought me back a Pioneer Woman t-shirt. How cool is that? Thanks, Tob!

Here are my babies and their sweet potatoes. "Do we like sweet potatoes?" they asked. "They smell kind of yucky, Mom."


Then we added the sugar, milk, vanilla, and eggs and smoothed everything out in the baking dish. I'm not sure why a raincoat is necessary attire for this step, but apparently it is.

They ran off with Daddy to go over to baby Derek's house, so I finished with the brown sugar, butter, pecan topping. I took a picture of the finished product (well, pre-baking...we'll do that part tomorrow), but honestly it did look kind of yucky. I'm assuming it'll taste great though because how can you go wrong with those ingredients?

Then I made banana nut bread and pumpkin scones since we'll be staying overnight, and I thought we should bring some breakfast goods. Our house smells pret-ty good right now if I do say so.

Happy Thanksgiving from our family to you!

Feast Day

Today was the big Thanksgiving feast for the first graders. I responded to the ancient call of motherly guilt and volunteered to help. This is when I really miss my old job when I was busy at work all day. I don't think I'm cut out to work with large groups of first graders. Lucy's teacher roped me into helping on the applesauce team. I was encouraged to see another older looking mom there--until I realized she was actually a grandma.

My usual tool for working with apples is my Chicago Cutlery knife that my mom bought me for my first apartment in 1991. I haven't sharpened it since, and it works great. Today there was some amazing contraption that could, when working correctly, peel, core, and slice apples. The key phrase there is "when working correctly." My job was to secure the apple to this lethal-looking three-pronged spear, position the core ring correctly and keep it in place, and hold down the entire instrument while each uncoordinated first grader took a turn turning the crank, simultaneously spraying all of us with apple juice. I'm surprised none of us lost any of our digits, and I really want to be off the roads when some of these first graders are old enough to get their license. I did discover that the key to getting boys to help in the kitchen is to have some deadly tool at their disposal with which to work.

We completed that task while another team helped the kids make cornbread. In between they decorated their pilgrim and Indian costumes while dancing around and doing politically incorrect war whoops.

Finally, we were ready:



There was turkey; cornbread; corn; the aforementioned applesauce, fortunately sans blood and any fingertips as least as far as I could tell; and pumpkin pie with whipped cream.



Here is Lucy's first grade class...



I may be slightly biased, but here is the cutest little pilgrim ever...



As they were finishing their feast, the Thanksgiving Turkey came to visit...



I also took the time to observe the art and writing projects hanging up outside of Lucy's classroom. They had all made pilgrims and then written about them. My favorite pilgrim woman had foundation, blush, lipstick, and mascara because you know we would have been nowhere in the New World without those.

It appeared that the writing assignment was to describe the pilgrims. I read everyone's essay, and each one was a sentence or two about what color clothes the pilgrims wore. The kids did a nice job.

Then I saw this one:



The spelling needs a little work, so I will translate: "I like Pilgrims! They are very nice. Pilgrims are sensible and they put their special things in the box and they did not complain like the Israelites but they did work a lot." Lucy

All I can say, my girl has got stuff on her mind, and she needs to put it down on paper. She might need some help with run-on sentences, but fortunately she has an editor.

So concludes Feast Day 2009--everyone's full of great food, no first graders were harmed in the process, and the Pilgrims were sensible enough to work hard and wear lipstick--all things to be thankful for.

Orchard House

Edited to add: OK--I have fiddled around with this a million times, trying to get this post to be below the previous one but nothing works. So read that one first, and these random pictures will hopefully make sense.

Here are photos from my trip to Orchard House. The first is from the four girls' gardens.



Here's me knocking on the door (dorky, but true). Forgive the glaring flash--it's a picture of a picture. We'll pretend it's Louisa's spirit. Or something.

Lucy and Mom

This weekend was the opening weekend of deer season (why oh why do I know that?), so Darren went downstate to his parents' to hunt. Elaine went with him. Though she is on constant squirrel watch around our house, she doesn't hunt. She went to spend the weekend with her MiMi and PaPa so she could get thoroughly spoiled and have a diet consisting entirely of doughnuts and chocolate milk.

That meant Lucy and I were on our own. I picked her up after school on Friday, and that night we went to her swim meet. She came in second in almost every heat, plus her relay team. I was so proud of her. On the way home, we stopped by the store to pick up cake slices of her choice (Italian cream) so we could climb in my bed and eat them while watching movies.

We watched Little Women, which I've been wanting for ages to show her, but I wanted to make sure she'd be old enough to like it. I figured since she watches Pride & Prejudice now she'd be ready, and she was. She loved it--especially the part where Jo burned Meg's hair.

I know there are several versions of the movie; we chose the 1995 one, which is my favorite. It's not a flawless version, but it's still excellent, plus they actually filmed in Concord at Orchard House. I told Lucy how I had been there, and she wanted to know all about it.

We went to Boston for vacation when she was about 18 months old. I absolutely had to go see Orchard House of course. We went on the tour of it and had a grad student as our guide. The people in our group (we didn't know them)--well, I couldn't figure out why they were there. They didn't seem to have any knowledge of Louisa May Alcott or be interested in any way. I could tell the guide was discouraged, so while we were in the living room I broke out of my shell and raised my hand and asked, "Is it OK if I throw myself down in front of the fireplace and say, 'Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents?'"

After that, he pretty much conducted the tour personally for Darren and me, and we had a blast. I got to see the props and costumes the sisters used for their plays and, even though we technically weren't allowed to touch anything, he actually let me touch Louisa's desk where she wrote. I touched it. I touched it! So cool. (I've also touched C.S. Lewis's desk AND chair and Charles Williams' bookcase, but that's another post.)

Next dor to Orchard House (which is the Laurence's house in the movie) is Nathaniel Hawthorne's house, and down the street is Ralph Waldo Emerson's. Anyway, after telling Lucy all that, she made me promise to take her there someday.

The next day, Lucy got out her paints and spent most of the morning painting in blissful solitude without any little sister to get in and mess up her stuff or re-paint over her pictures. We also went to the mall to do a little Christmas shopping and then to Camille's Sidewalk Cafe for lunch. We shared a wrap sandwich and cookies and made our own mixed drinks of lemonade, iced tea, and Sprite.

Not too long after that, it was time for the other half of our family to come home. When I went to unbuckle Elaine from her seatbelt, I could see she was encrusted with chocolate frosting (from a doughnut of course). She had had a great time with her MiMi. They went together to buy stuff for Operation Christmas Child and apparently had a good talk about being a missionary. MiMi told Elaine that maybe she could be a missionary when she grew up, and Elaine said, "No, I don't want to be a missionary. But you should talk to Lucy about it--she really loves Jesus."

Lucy and Elaine were thrilled to see each other and began to bicker right away. The last time I tuned in to them, they were arguing about whether or not the ladybug on the car window was indeed Nellie, the ladybug who resides on our bathroom sink, or an altogether different ladybug named Millie.

Then at night when I went to check on them, they were curled up together, both asleep in Lucy's bed.

All is well.

The Answers

Well, it took me some time, let me tell you, to wade through the hundreds of comments on the book title post, but I know you can't contain yourselves any longer, waiting for the answers, so without further ado:

1. Passage to India by E.M. Forster

2. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

3. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

4. The View from Saturday by E. L. Konigsburg. If you haven't read any of her work, you so should. She's the only author to win a Newbery Medal and Newbery Honor in the same year. She also won the Newbery Medal for this one. And her name is Elaine, so how could you not like her?

5. An Episode of Sparrows by Rumer Godden. My mom would be mad if I didn't include this book. That is, if my mom read my blog, which she doesn't. She doesn't really "get" blogs. Then she calls me after she goes to church and asks, "Why does everyone know about my life?"

6. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis. Lucy and Elaine trade off every night who gets to pick which audiobook they're going to listen to while they go to sleep. Lately, each night that it's Lucy's turn, she picks this one.

7. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh. (The "e" is long instead short like we pronounce it in the U.S.) He was a man. Married to a woman also named Evelyn. Their friends called them He-Evelyn and She-Evelyn. That's kind of funny. Until they got divorced. But it's a great book. And mini-series with Jeremy Irons, so...

8. The End of the Affair by Graham Greene. I love The End of the Affair, but my real Greene favorite is The Quiet American. However, that one starts, "After dinner I sat and waited for Pyle in my room..." so--maybe not as compelling.

9. The Brimstone Wedding by Barbara Vine. I knew no one would get that one. I just want someone, anyone out there to read that book and talk about it with me. My dad read it. He thought it was weird. I'm gonna need more than that.

10. Ordinary People by Judith Guest. This is one of those rare times in which the movie almost lives up to the greatness of the book: Donald Sutherland, Mary Tyler Moore, Timothy Hutton, Judd Hirsch...

11. Charlotte's Web by E.B. White

12. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

13. Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier. I really thought everyone would get that one. Huh.

14. A Wind in the Door by Madeleine L'Engle (sequel to A Wrinkle in Time)

15. From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler also by E.L. Konigsburg. Ask a bunch of people my age what book they remember from grade school, and a lot of them will say this one. It's awesome. It's about a brother and sister who run away and live in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

16. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce. Darren never reads fiction, only non-fiction. I read almost exclusively fiction. One day, he said he wanted to try some fiction. Instead of listening to my recommendations, he said, "No, I want to read what you're reading," which happened to be Portrait of the Artist right then. He grabbed it up and read that first line about the moocow and baby tuckoo and said (while tossing the book over his shoulder), "That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard." He's not alone--even Joyce's wife asked him, "Why don't you write books people can read?" I still like him, though (Joyce, that is. Oh, and Darren too.)

17. Sleeping Murder by Agatha Christie

18. The Witch Family by Eleanor Estes. Most people know Estes from Ginger Pye or The Moffats or The Hundred Dresses (though we LOVE that one), but this is another one with which Lucy is obsessed. It's about two little girls who sit upstairs in their playroom in a house on Garden Lane with a gingko tree outside their window, drawing pictures of witches. Up on Glass Hill, all the things the girls draw come true. I'm going to get her the audiobook for Christmas. Shhh, don't tell her.

19. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

20. The Diary of Anne Frank

21. (I knew no one would get this one either)--Glittering Images by Susan Howatch. Great book though, about espionage in the Church of England.

So there you go. What are some of your favorite first lines?