Holiday Wishes

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I picture kids running downstairs and opening up the perfect present when I think about wishes.  Like last year, when my son received a set of lockpicks from Santa and then went around trying to unlock every door in his grandparents' house.  Or when my daughter received a soldering gun from Santa and started to build circuits.

(By the way, we are such a geeky family, you might actually find our pictures on m-w.com under the word "geek".)

But I also think about people who have very little and only wish for clean clothes with no holes in them, or a nice, hot meal that doesn't come out of a can.

As I've grown older, the term "wish" takes on new meaning.  I stopped wishing for presents for me a long time ago, and started wishing for presents for other people.  Sometimes I wish I had enough money to buy something big for a friend of mine, or to help one of my kids' friends.  Other times, I wish I were Queen of the World For a Day, so that I could mandate a lot of common sense everywhere to bring about real peace and prosperity.

This year, though, I wished to turn our back bedroom into an office space for me.  Previously, the back bedroom has been the "I don't know where to put this" storage room of the house; everything from our Bowflex machine to holiday decorations to random art supplies ended up in the room.  Well, last weekend the entire family pitched in and cleaned out the room.  Three car trips to Goodwill and over 12 bags of trash later, we have an empty room.  Then, my dear husband went out and bought three new desks - one for me, one for him, and one for our daughter (who needed a new one).  This past week, he spent every night building new desks and rearranging the back bedroom and the upstairs.  Today, he's installing an overhead light and running Ethernet to the back bedroom as now it becomes.... a new office!!!

I will be sharing the office with my dear husband, who works from home on Fridays.  But I will have my own space to write blog posts, write novels, edit my work (ugh!!), and generally do business.    The best part is - I don't have to wait for Christmas to get my holiday wish!

A Thanksgiving Gift - Grandpa's Corn Casserole

While I still feel a bit cynical about Thanksgiving, I want to share a Thanksgiving gift with you.  It's the recipe my father makes every Thanksgiving for an easy, delicious corn casserole.  By "easy" I mean that kids old enough to use the oven can make it.  Or, kids not only enough to use the oven but old enough to open and stir - say, 5-6 years old - can make it.

From The Daily Gazette

Grandpa Yoder's Corn Casserole

Ingredients:
1 16 oz. can of creamed corn
1 16 oz. can of whole kernel corn
1 8 oz. container of sour cream
1 box of Jiffy Corn Bread Mix
1/4 c. of melted butter.

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Grease a casserole dish (or use non-stick spray).
3. Mix all ingredients together in a bowl.
4. Pour into the casserole dish.
5. Bake 45 - 60 minutes, or until lightly brown on top.

This is a family favorite - my daughter loves Grandpa's corn casserole.  I hope that you and your family enjoy this.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Lost Art of Gift Giving

As we approach the holiday season, I wonder how many people will be doing true gift giving.  I’m not talking about buying the latest toy or the coolest electronic gadget available.  What I am talking about is something more along the like of the story “The Gift of the Magi”.

What are you willing to sacrifice in order to obtain the perfect gift for someone else?

Our family has a tradition of events and activities as gifts, instead of merely physical possessions.  We have taken our children to see three different Cirque du Soleil shows, the Blue Man Group locally and in Nashvile, TN, and three different  Jonathan Coulton shows (two of them with Paul and Storm!).  Over the years, we have gone on the Christmas train on the Blue Ridge Railroad and given the kids monthly pony rides for a year.  One year, my husband spent umpteen evenings recording an audio book for the children to listen to as we take trips. He sacrificed his free time in the evenings for that gift.

Our philosophy is that the kids will treasure the time together that we spend as a family more than another toy.

So far, this philosophy seems to work.  Both of the children not only loved the concerts, but they appreciate the family time.  We have photographs and memories to talk about all year long.  They listened to “Rabbit Hill” (the book recorded by my dear husband) several times, and they still own the programs from the Cirque du Soleil shows.  

I want to stress that we don’t just give gifts during the month of December, or at birthdays.  If a good concert comes up in the middle of the year, we buy tickets to it for the family.  The latest Jonathan Coulton show occurred the Friday night of Dragon Con.  We got tickets for the family because we all enjoy his concerts.

By the way, both of the kids are audiophiles.  Music is quite important to them, which is why the concert tickets mean so much to them.

But we don’t just give the children expensive concert tickets.  Earlier this week, my husband sat abandoned while I wrote my daily word quota for NaNoWriMo.  So he looked online and found out how to make heart shaped origami bookmarks.  Then my wonderful husband made two bookmarks for me and one for our daughter (our son would not be interested in a heart shaped bookmark).  He did this on a random weeknight, with no event to celebrate and nothing in particular going on.  But those bookmarks are valuable to both me and our daughter.

We try to give time gifts as much as purchased gifts.  Because in the end, the thought behind the gift means so much more than the price tag.

Does anyone else have gift giving traditions to share?