Of Family, Traditions, and Christmas by Konnie Enos

My oldest son (next to youngest child) drove home from where he is living and working to celebrate Christmas with us. Yeah, for me. Three of my five kids are here, at least for a few days.

Today, being Christmas Eve, is packed with our traditional activities.

My oldest son, I believe mostly because of his ADHD, cannot even start Christmas shopping until Christmas Eve, so he’ll be spending several hours in search of gifts for the rest of us. A sharp contrast to me having all my shopping and wrapping done before Thanksgiving. It even contrasts with my other two kids, who were done with even the wrapping by last week. But there is only four other family members here, so it isn’t as if he has to get a lot of gifts.

While he is doing that, my daughter will be directing the rest of us in the kitchen. My daughter and I cooking while my husband and son fetch and carry for us, and maybe even wash a few dishes. We are not only making Christmas dinner but preparing Christmas morning breakfast so it’ll be something quick and easy for people to get as they want in the morning.

After our dinner is ready, we’ll set the table. Hopefully, by the time we are ready to dish up my older son will have returned from his shopping expedition so that we can have a family dinner.

After dinner we’ll probably get my husband and one or more sons to do the dishes (relax, most of them will fit in the dishwasher), while my daughter and I make sure all the leftovers get properly stored.

Once the house is back in order I’ll make every effort to gather my family around the Christmas tree and read Luke 2, and also “Twas the Night Before Christmas”. Both are tradition in our family.

After that my husband will probably retire for the night, while my oldest son secrets himself into a bedroom (whichever one he can get us to vacate for him) to wrap his gifts.

While he is doing that, my son, daughter and I will gather our stockings and work on filling each one with treats and surprises. Then, of course, we have to clean up any mess we made and make sure the stockings are all nice and ready for morning. By then my oldest son should be able to add what he got to the stack of presents already waiting under the tree and we can all retire for the evening.

Though, traditionally, my oldest son does not sleep Christmas Eve. I have my doubts that my oldest daughter sleeps Christmas Eve.

When they were all much younger we had to tell our oldest we were not getting up before six. As in, I point blank refused to get out of bed before 6 a.m. no matter how much she begged. She started making sure she woke us up promptly at six because she wasn’t waiting any longer. Since she’s the mother now, I’m fairly certain she has to work with the desires of her own children.

Once she was out of the house, and all my kids were adults anyway, we moved our gift unwrapping time to a much more reasonable time. While middle daughter was still in the house, it was 8 a.m. Now, since at least half of us have to get up at 7 a.m. to feed fur family members, we open presents after that. So, by 7:30.

And since breakfast just needs reheated, we can do that as we feel we need to eat. Though I sincerely doubt it’ll take us more than an hour to unwrap what’s bound to be less than 40 gifts divided between 5 people.

Plans are already in place to call my oldest sometime that morning. Plus, I’ll call Bonnie at some point. Probably even the oldest of my remaining brothers. My husband might call at least one of his sisters, if not both. Maybe even his baby brother. (The man will be 50 next year so he isn’t little anymore.)

The rest of the day is a bit less structured. Though I’m sure my son (youngest) and daughter will try to get as many of us as possible to play a game or two. Plus, my daughter has already prepared things for a massive cookie baking session with all hands-on-deck. Though I’m not exactly sure what the guys will be doing beyond possibly washing dishes as needed.

Hopefully, all that will go smoothly so that we can have a pleasant couple of days. I’m assuming my son will have to leave sometime Friday, so he doesn’t miss any work.

How is your holiday shaping up?

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

 

Merry Christmas! by Bonnie Le Hamilton

 

Christmas Eve is a week away, and I could go into a long-winded reason why Christmas is important, but this isn’t a forum for preaching, and I’m not a preacher. And I could go into all my Nativities, but I’ve mentioned them before.

None of that really matters; what does matter is that it is Christmas!

So:

          We wish you a Merry Christmas!

          We wish you a Merry Christmas!

          And a Happy New Year!

I’m going to end my post here, because I don’t know about you, but I still have presents to wrap!

Happy writing, everyone, and Merry Christmas!

Of Hearing and Comprehension by Konnie Enos

Recently my husband has been annoying me with a habit of his.

As a rule, the man cannot hear me when I try to talk to him. Even when we are in the same room I often have to yell to get his attention. Either that or go right up to him and tap him on the shoulder. We already know he’s deaf.

No. His annoying habit is repeatedly asking me what I said.

Repeating myself is one thing. Being asked to repeat myself when I hadn’t said anything is another altogether.

I’ll be sitting here quietly minding my own business. Then out of nowhere he’ll get up from his desk and ask me what I needed, or why I called to him, or just what I said.

I seriously hadn’t uttered a peep.

I suppose I find this so annoying simply because he generally can’t hear me the rest of the time. Either he doesn’t answer or his response makes it obvious he didn’t actually hear what I said.

His favorite stunt is I’ll call the name of one of our children and he’ll respond claiming I called his name. Which actually irritates me because when I do call his name I have to yell it at the top of my lungs at least three times for him to hear me, yet I can call my kids in a normal voice, and he not only hears me but hears his name.

Then there is situations like at the dinner table last night. The kids and I were talking, and he commented that he was completely lost. He couldn’t follow the conversation going on around him at the dinner table.

Of course, we weren’t yelling.

My daughter especially is very sensitive to noise and gets headaches if we raise our voices.

Seriously.

I can be in my room at the back of the house and talk in a perfectly normal voice, no yelling, and she’ll hear every word from the front of the house. Then she has to either yell her answer or come to my room because I can’t pick out what she is saying otherwise.

Sometimes I don’t hear her when we were in the same room but only when there is background noise, like a fan going nearby.

I know my hearing is perfectly normal. It’s been tested.

So, the volume we use in this house to communicate is always fluctuating between yelling and whispering. But it also means it’s extra irritating when my husband hears me talking when I absolutely wasn’t talking.

Though actually talking to him can be just as frustrating because his not comprehending what is being said is far more common then him not hear us in the first place.

A recent example is a couple of weeks ago we were at church, and they announced a Christmas party for last Saturday night. Now, two Saturdays a month we go serve in the temple.

At the time he said something about us not being able to go because it was on Saturday. I pointed out to him that we had nothing scheduled.

He did not hear me. Not then or when I repeated it apparently.

I learned he hadn’t heard me last Saturday.

He’d ask me earlier in the day if I was going that day and I told him no because I had a cold. I thought he was talking about the party. He was assuming we were going to the temple.

I found this out when our son asked him when he was leaving.

It was too early in the day to go to the party, so I asked where he was going.

Apparently he was completely prepared to go to the temple. Even the kids thought he was going so I had to explain our schedule yet again.

We go the second and fourth Saturday of the month. So basically, every other week. However, sometimes there is a fifth Saturday. Rather than go every other week all the time and throw people off that way, we go the second and fourth Saturday of every month, and every other fifth Saturday. The other group does first and third, plus the fifth Saturdays we don’t. It evens out to we’re going about the same number of times each year.

Because the last Saturday of November was the fifth Saturday that we didn’t cover he was thinking we did cover last Saturday even though it was the first Saturday.

As for our kids, they just never paid attention to our schedule. They saw his stuff hanging by the door ready for him to go to the temple and thought it was perfectly normal.

So, I’ve been irritated.

On another tack. Happy birthday to my older son, just a bit early. It’s on Sunday.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

 

Gift Lists and New Products by Bonnie Le Hamilton

 

I don’t normally do product endorsements, then again, this isn’t an endorsement.

In the last couple of weeks, I’ve seen an ad for an app named “Go Wish.” The concept of this app is to aid people in finding just the right gift for another person. Perfect timing for a product launch with Christmas just around the corner, right?

The ad I saw made it look like the greatest invention ever.

The problems start with that the app doesn’t have any means to put in things like interests and hobbies. All you can enter is gender and age.

Can you see the issue?

I entered female, sixty-three, and was presently shown a nice long list of suggested gift ideas such as beauty products (all of which had some sort of floral scent), jewelry, and of all things a tan pencil skirt!

A pencil skirt? For a sixty-three-year-old woman? Not just this particular sixty-three-year-old woman but any woman of that age and maturity. Well, maybe, if she were rail thin and way into fashion, but I sincerely doubt a woman of my age would choose such a tight fit over something a lot more comfortable.

I honestly wouldn’t wear a pencil skirt when I was twenty-three and of a healthy weight, simply because pencils skirts are not built for anyone over a size of about eight. A young woman of size fourteen/sixteen would have unflattering bulges all over the place, no matter how flat her stomach, trying to wear a pencil skirt.

And I personally could never see myself trying to walk in something that tight.

And then there is the beauty products the site suggested. When I buy lotion, I look for diabetic care and unscented. I completely avoid bath bombs and lotions with any kind of sent. I barely tolerate scents in my body wash. And I would never buy any of those highly scented products simply because I can’t use them around my niece (even if I haven’t been around her in years).

The site also suggested makeup kits, makeup brush sets, and perfume.

The only perfumes I’ve ever liked the scent of was one meant for children (when I was a child) and one called, “Orchid” which I had received as a gift as a young adult. The only problem is I don’t think the stuff from my childhood is made anymore, because I haven’t seen in stores since then, and the other stuff is Hawaiian and expensive. Let alone that I do have niece who is highly allergic to the smell of most perfumes and lotions.

Okay, maybe she wouldn’t be to “Orchid” because that is vanilla, since the Orchid is where the vanilla seed comes from, but still, the perfume is ultra expensive. And why bother? It’s not like I want to attract a man.

All and all, the app showed me a master list of what not to get me for a present and, as I already said, afforded me no means to put in interests or hobbies, ergo, the list was useless.

I mean that list wouldn’t even have worked for Konnie because while it did have some jewelry on it, all of it was glittery and gaudy. Chunky gold stuff that might be all the rage but hardly correct for someone like Konnie. I’m fairly sure Konnie would say, “No thank you,” to that kind of attention catching attire as much as I would.

I just cannot fathom how anyone could think they can categorize the entire human race by only age and gender and still produce the perfect gift idea for every individual! I mean Konnie and I are identical twins, but what would be perfect gift for her, might just bomb with me.

Actually, that has happened.

Way back in college, my roommate, knowing my birthday was coming up wanted me to go window shopping with her. I didn’t know it at the time, but she wanted to see what I liked to get an idea of what to buy me as a gift.

At one point during that spree, I came upon a display of cameo jewelry, which I stopped to inspect, thinking I needed to return on my next payday to buy one for Konnie for our birthday. My roommate gifted me one of those things.

Yeah, that didn’t go over so well. I have never cared for those things. Konnie, at least back then, adored them.

And that’s because no two people are exactly alike, even if they are the same age and gender, even if they are twins. To even assume all you need to find the perfect gift is age and gender, is ridiculous to umpteenth power!

Anyway, happy writing, everyone!

Of Celebrations, Decorations, and Holidays by Konnie Enos

A week or so ago my daughter was helping me set up my nativity and Christmas Village. Because of space constraints both are generally set up in the same area. Most recently this has been the top of a dresser in our living room with a desk back-to-back with it. (One end against the wall so that it somewhat divides the room in two.)

The first issue is the desk isn’t as tall as the dresser. So, we put the two crates back there to give more height on that side.

Then we began pulling out the pieces for my village and nativity. In the process we found a few pieces that could use a bit of glue. Only one of them was from my nativity.

(Don’t worry. We knew about the issues, and I’d gotten my glue out before we started unpacking anything.)

Anyway, after I’d glued the one piece from the nativity my daughter commented on being surprised it wasn’t more since, “This this is older than I am.”

I countered with, “Clearly, since I’ve had it longer than I’ve been married.”

It is a story my children know well.

In November of 1989 my stepmother and I had been invited to one of those home parties companies that sold knickknacks and other home decorations. In their catalogue they had several items that were parts of a nativity. The creche, the holy family, the animals and shepherd, and the wisemen. All told they came to about $100. In other words, not a small bit of money.

I was working but only working part-time. I’d also already decided how much of my income I could spare for Christmas presents. With that and what I needed for regular expenses, there simply wasn’t that much to spare for the whole set unless I revised my gift budget.

I mentioned to my stepmother how much I liked that set and wanted all the pieces but wasn’t sure I should spend that much money on it. And was trying to decide if I should just get one or two pieces and hope I could afford the rest the next year. And if I did that, which pieces should I get now.

She asked me just one question. “Can you afford it all?”

I told her something about getting some pieces because it didn’t fit into my planned budget.

She asked me the same question again.

This time I told her it would cut into my gift budget.

She asked me the same question again.

I finally said, “Well, technically, but I’d have to spend less on Christmas presents.”

She finally told me. “You might not have the money to buy something this nice next year. If you really want it, then buy it all now.”

I took her advice and bought the whole set.

Less than a year later I started dating my husband and we were married literally the day after Thanksgiving. Since I was living with a roommate and he was in base housing, we had to spend a good amount of our income that month on securing an apartment for the two of us.

We had very little to spare for Christmas presents let alone an expensive decoration.

And yes, because it is ceramic, it has been battered about a bit over the years. The ox has a good chunk of one of his horns missing. One of the wisemen, and Joseph have lost their heads a few times each. And the most recent mishap was the camel losing part of one leg. And though the creche is wood, it’s also had to be re-glued together at least once.

Of course, after getting married we spent the next 10 having kids and another 3 or so years being completely broke.

I have bought several nativities since. One each for my three daughters. (Two of those really nice set that I got inexpensively from the thrift store.) (My son’s also got a small set of their own but I didn’t buy those.) And one really nice set that required multiple years to purchase all the pieces because of the cost. I know I spent more than $500 altogether.

No. I do not have that set either. But Bonnie could show you a picture of it in her living room. (I thought she should have a big, nice set since she collects nativities.)

So, If you followed my story of the nativity, you’ll figure out that this week I celebrated my 35^th wedding anniversary. (And don’t tell me how long that is because I have an aunt and uncle who have been happily married since 1959.)

And I could have just told the story of how I finally got another little brother way back in 1975, on the day after Thanksgiving. So, happy 50^th little brother.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.