Why I March

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This week is a historic week for our country as we install a new President. Don’t worry, this isn’t a political post. But, it is about standing up for what you believe and allowing your kids to witness that.

Last night, I told my youngest son that I would be participating in the Women’s March on Seattle on Saturday. This is the local version of the Women’s March taking place on the same day in our nation’s capital. He politely responded, “I get that you want to support your causes–and I’m fine with that–but how does it make any difference?”

That was a gutpunch from my own kid. But I’m okay with it. Here’s the truth… I’ve raised my kids to think and to question and now that they’re teenagers that means they are forming their own opinions. Sometimes we share political and religious views and sometimes we don’t. We definitely don’t share the same thoughts on how to respond to what we see. But we’re also nearly 30 years apart. So… here’s how I responded.

“Yes, it makes a difference. It makes a difference to me. I am not trying to change the outcome of the election, but I am uniting with other women so we can have a voice.”

I’ve thought about it longer now and have more to say. We all need to have a voice. Men and women, blacks and whites, Asians and Latinos, people with privilege and people with special needs. Uniting with others can strengthen your voice and your standing–even if you do it through a silent march. I am happy that I’ll be marching. I’m happy that my kids are watching me do it. Could they come along? Sure, it’s open to all, but that’s not where my kids are right now and that’s fine too.

Presents and Presence

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A local online community I’m part of recently featured a post by a woman with little financial resources asking for ideas on inexpensive gifts to get her 1 year old for Christmas. Knowing my own kids at that age, my first thought was an empty box and some wrapping paper! We all remember the stage when the child would rather play with (or in!) the box than  whatever toy came inside. It started me thinking about this season of giving and receiving and what’s really important.

If I ask you what you received for Christmas (or Hannukah, or birthdays, for that matter) as a child, how many presents do you really remember? My family has never had a specific limit or rule around gift-giving, but I’m sure my kids will tell you that they are not the ones to have the new XBox or latest iPhone on Christmas morning. I’ve heard of ideas like Something you Need, Something you Wear, Something to Read, and Something to Want, but I’ve never had quite that level of discipline. I’m a little more random, but you can count on books, Christmas PJs, and something fun.

Getting back to the one-year-old, wouldn’t the gift of a less financially stressed out mom be the best gift? What if the holidays were all about presence instead of presents. If you have some extra time these next two weeks, I highly recommend spending it at home vs. the shopping mall. I failed to take my own advice on that one a few days ago and ended up abandoning the whole shopping trip because the line at Target was nearly to the back wall of the store!

So what can you do to be present? With yourself? With your family? With your friends? A few thoughts…

  • Build a snowman. Okay, not possible in my neck of the woods right now, but maybe yours!
  • Play a card game (my family specializes in competitive quadruple solitaire – yes, that’s a thing).
  • Go for a drive to look at the lights.
  • Watch a classic Christmas TV show. Here’s a complete schedule. Charlie Brown Christmas anyone?
  • Make cookies. The more frosting the better!
  • Sit by the fireplace and read together.
  • Go sledding. (I’m clearly dreaming of a white Christmas).
  • Go for deeper conversations. Here was one from our conversation last night… If you could live anywhere, where would it be?
  • Invite friends over – for you and the kids.
  • Turn off the TV and play holiday music instead. In Seattle, we even have a Santa station.

Time for Tradition

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Regardless of what your family celebrates, holidays are  the perfect time to build family traditions which will stay with them for a lifetime. I love how my kids remember specific Christmas activities, books, and ornaments year to year. As you’ll see below, we have an eclectic list of traditions that ranges from religious to secular. But the first rule is: No decorations or music until the day after Thanksgiving!

  • 2 trees  – 1 for my theme of white, gold, and natural wood. The other is anything goes! Except for the candy canes, which are limited to the top half of the tree so the pug doesn’t get them.
  • Gingerbread house decorating – We just buy the $10 kits – and maybe some extra candy decorations. By the end of the season, my younger son’s has usually been stripped of its gumdrop roof, but he at least owns up to the theft now!
  • The animated decorations – this includes a 3 foot tall singing Tigger, Yoda Santa, the Coca Cola Santa Snowglobe, and the inflatable Snoopy outside. Yes, it’s a religious holiday, but we love our characters and the joy they bring to the season as well! They used to all have assigned places that my kids remembered, but now that we’ve moved and moved the walls around in this house, everything had to find a new home this year.
  • One present to open on Christmas Eve. It is ALWAYS Christmas pajamas.
  • Making fudge and sugar cookies
  • Advent candles
  • Advent calendar – one with fabric hanging ornaments and a newer one with boxes that I try to remember to fill with candy for the day.
  • A German pyramid (see above). I’d never heard of this, but my son came home from preschool one day having learned about it from his German friend. Now we have our own!
  • Special outfit for the dog
  • Holiday music – We have everything from Johnny Cash to Kelly Clarkson to Twisted Sister. Yep – that’s a thing.
  • Celebrating the birth of Christ at church on Christmas Eve
  • Giving to a family in need. This year, we actually travelled to Neah Bay (the far Western tip of the United States) with a few Presbyterian churches and helped throw the annual Christmas party for the children of the Makah tribe. I loved that the party started with gingerbread houses and that we share many of the same traditions.
  • Personalized photo gifts for my kids – some years it’s a calendar, some years it’s a book I’ve written, but the theme is usually the same – our beloved dogs! I am a Foodist is their favorite – an irreverent look at Foodism which is our pug’s religion of choice.
  • Books – here are some of my favorites! We used to read a Christmas book aloud every night. Now I just leave them out and hope they get picked up.

What traditions does your family have? Any new ones you want to start this year?

Pure Gratitude

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November will definitely go down as a momentous part of 2016, but I’m here to talk about the most important Thursday this month, not that Tuesday that happened a few weeks back. On to Thanksgiving! What are you grateful for this year?? Here’s my list…

  • A husband who supports me every day
  • My kids who make me laugh, smile (and pull my hair out) every day
  • My health
  • The best Mom, Dad, and brother anyone could ask for
  • Elephant Mamas
  • Second chances
  • A roof over my head and hot showers
  • A warm fire
  • Vanilla almond tea every morning
  • Celebrating the holidays in my home this year after bouncing around most of last year
  • Amazing friends
  • The pug who sleeps/snores on my lap while I blog
  • The puppy who healed our family after we lost our last puppy to cancer
  • Laughter
  • Love
  • Books that teach, inspire, and entertain
  • Sunrise and sunset – the two most beautiful parts of every day
  • Mountains, oceans, forests and all the creatures who live there
  • America
  • YOU for visiting this page and contributing to the conversation

That’s an off the top of my head list, but I know there are hundreds of other things to add. Most importantly, there are millions of people who have very few of these. In honor of Thanksgiving, let’s all reach out to them in kindness and love.

Books to Inspire Wisdom: Everything that Remains

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everything that remainsRemember when I said I was going to play the #minsgame on this site? Focus on minimalism by giving away the same number of items that correlated to the date on the calendar for one full month. Yeah, me too. October did not end up being my most disciplined month, but sometimes life happens and I’m okay with that. I thought I should at least wrap up with a shout out to the book that inspired me.

Before the Elephant Mamas blog, there was another blog idea that bounced around in my head for a while. Anyone in the throws of moving can become enamored with minimalism–the concept of simple living and the possibility that everything we want in life may not be found at the mall or when the UPS man brings a brown box to your door. But I was in the midst or remodeling my house–hardly on the list of must-dos for authors Joshua Fields Milburn and Ryan Nicodemus who wrote Everything That Remains. That’s when I decided that my blog should be called Minimalist Hypocrite.

For many reasons, that blog never launched, but probably one of the biggest is that any title with the name Hypocrite in it may be doomed [Read more…]