Happy Holidays!

Hello, December! It’s my absolute favorite month of the year, beginning with my birthday and ending with Christmas and New Year’s Eve. I can’t get enough of the lights, the music, the eggnog, and, yes, even the cold! (See? I really am a December baby!) Give me a cozy sweater, the smell of burning fireplaces in the air, and a large mug of peppermint hot chocolate, and I’ll be a happy girl.

If I had to pick one favorite thing about December (besides spending time with family and friends, of course!), I would have to choose the Christmas lights. It’s a miracle I haven’t caused an accident — I always want to see people’s lights as I drive by! There’s something magical about the soft glow of the Christmas tree greeting you as you open the front door. I always hate taking them down after New Year’s Day. One year I even left my tree up until I moved in July and redecorated it for different holidays and seasons!


I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season!

— Lisa (12/27/11)

Traditions

Welcome November… It is fall at last – Here’s to cooler days (hopefully) and crisp nights, to falling leaves (and lots of raking), past the ghosts and on to the turkey. This is the time of homecoming, feasts, football and sharing. Thanksgiving is the holiday that crosses states and cultures, a day that is celebrated by so many in a variety of ways. It is a day when most people do not have to work and we all pause to enjoy. Whether you have the traditional turkey or whatever tasty delights you prefer, it is the holiday season.

It is in this pause that we can remember, share and make special memories. A favorite of mine took place a few years ago. We were looking at some old photographs, (black and white – antiques I think), of my family. My husband asked “Is that you?”, while looking at a picture of my Mother and Aunt hovering over something on the counter. Expecting to see a very young version of myself, I looked closely at the photo and said, “No Sweetheart, I think that’s the turkey.”

Memories are funny. It is not always the perfect events that are the most memorable and many of the most special ones are created when things don’t go just quite like you expect.


I am fortunate this year to have all my family coming home. (At least that is the plan.) I know many of you with loved ones in the military or with blended or extended families can appreciate that it is not always easy to arrange schedules. But whether you have your Thanksgiving on the traditional fourth Thursday or if it has to be put off a day, or a week or so, this is still a very special season.


So my family and I will take time to give thanks for this wonderful time and season and plan the giving for next month. Enjoy.

— Donna Canales

Holiday Baking, Haystacks & Party Pumpkins

Ahhhhh…Fall is in the air! While some people are generally galvanized into action by the coming of Spring – Spring Cleaning, Spring Break, Spring has Sprung and all that – I love nothing more than the turning of the leaves, the nutmeg scent of holiday baking in the kitchen, pumpkins and haystacks and scarecrows in neighborhood yards, and last but not least…THE PUMPKIN PARTY!

Yes, every year my house is jam-packed with friends and family about a week prior to Halloween for my annual Pumpkin Carving Party. The house gets decked out in its Halloween best. We all get dressed up in our costumes, have a friendly fire in the backyard pit, listen to great music, and of course, carve our jack-o-lanterns before the night is over.

I remember days gone by when all I had was a big spoon, a marker and a knife. These days all sorts of contraptions exist to enable even the least coordinated person to successfully carve a pumpkin without loss of limb. This year, my husband bought the drill attachment for gutting the pumpkins. Any excuse to buy a new tool, right? You just gotta love human invention! When our guests feel like carving, they can design their own or use templates that I provide to create any kind of pumpkin they want. Afterward, we line them all up and take pictures. They look so amazing all together, lit up and glowing…it’s like our own little Pumpkin Shine…awesome!

Naturally, we also have food; what party would be complete without it? But, being a Halloween party, the snacks can’t just be garden-variety you know! The year we bought our house I went all-out and became a regular Martha Stewart (minus the insider trading) and made all kinds of ghostly goodies. These included a 15-inch-tall witch hat made of chocolate rice-krispy treat, and a cookie-and-frosting centipede with licorice for legs! But the budget doesn’t always allow for that kind of thing to happen on my own dime, and so last year I decided to go potluck – in the form of a “Spooky Food Contest”. It was such a big hit we almost didn’t have enough room for all the food!

Entries included such delicacies as Graveyard Dirt (a crushed-oreo and pudding concoction), Skeleton Ribs (spicy chicken filling inside French bread and sliced like ribs), Candy Spiders and Mini-Mummies (pigs in blankets). Prizes were given for Most Popular, Spookiest, Creepiest, and “Gross”-est!

That contest was, hands-down, the best party idea ever! It made for an amazing display of heretofore-unknown creepy culinary skills – people who didn’t even usually cook or bake came up with wonderful ideas and had a great time with it. I can’t wait to see what everyone comes up with this year!

~Michelle

Football Mom

It was the night of the first scrimmage. My oldest son, an 18-year-old senior at Benton High School and a first-string linebacker, was warming up on the field. I, sitting in the stands and in the direct sun, felt for sure that I was going to melt right off that metal bleacher. The sweat pouring from my face was in a race with the bottled water I was pouring down my throat.

I thought to myself, “How in the world can those kids stand to be under all those pads and helmets and still hop around like spring-loaded panthers?”

I could feel the energy on the field sizzle through the stadium. Those boys’ adrenaline was going off like fireworks with every tackle, sprint and block. My own pride and excitement was fueled by the hope that the upcoming months of games would gradually become cooler, eventually and hopefully ending with a freezing cold state championship game sometime in December.

Truthfully, I know nothing about football except that we want to get the ball in the end zone without any flags hitting the field. That’s it! My knowledge beyond that point depends on my other son, a tenth grader, to let me know what is going on. I perk up if I see the coach yelling at my kid, and feel assured he’s done well if the coach gives him a slap on the back.

There is no doubt this time of year brings a sense of nostalgia to everyone. To the football moms, lots of loving emotions mixed with pride well up as we see those babies we raised become men. We remember all the little league pizza parties, cupcakes for the soccer team, and early Saturday games as they began preparing for the future that has now arrived.

So, forgive us crazy women with our jeans, jerseys, cushioned seats, sunscreen, and foam fingers. We will be the loudest ones in the stadium. We will still kiss our kids on the cheek, embarrass them in front of their friends, and might even bake cupcakes for the team, but know that we are the biggest fans under those Friday night lights.

— Crickett Oldenburg

It All Ends Now

For many of you, July 15, 2011, had absolutely no significance other than the fact that it was Friday. But for many people worldwide, myself included, it was the end of an era.

Eight years ago, my high school friends forced me to watch a children’s movie about a young boy who finds out he’s a wizard. Seven books, seven movies, and five midnight releases, not to mention two graduations, two cities, three apartments, and two jobs later, I found myself anxiously awaiting the final Harry Potter movie, the end of it all.

Rachel and I changed into Gryffindor shirts and went straight to Tinseltown after work on the 14th to wait in line for the double feature — a showing of Deathly Hallows Part 1 at 9:00 with the midnight premiere of Part 2 in 3D. We received our special 3D glasses, in the shape of Harry’s glasses (which we, of course, totally geeked out over), and snagged the best seats in the theater — back row center.

Even knowing what would happen, I was on the edge of my seat the entire movie. I laughed, cried (a lot), and everything in between. There were even a few surprises along the way. It was the perfect finale to the story I’ve loved for so long.

So while I had to work on a whopping four hours of sleep, it was totally worth it. There’s nothing quite like the magic of a midnight premiere, with excitement and emotions running high across the theater, and this one, the final, and greatest, movie of the series, was particularly special.

And even though I’ll never experience the magic of a Harry Potter midnight premiere again, the magic will live on in the pages of the books, the scenes of the movies, and all of the memories wrapped up in both.

All of this from a children’s movie I didn’t want to watch in the first place.

— Lisa