Our ADVENTures: Days 2 - 5
December 6, 2021
By Jen Stanbro
Remember when I wrote that little note about how I hold my plans loosely cuz life happens? Yeah, that’s a good precursor to this post about our last bunch of days. We’re pluggin’ along joyfully on our ADVENTures but we’re not always able to do what I planned on the day I planned it, and we’re just rollin’ with it!
December 2nd, we all went to Walmart <<insert ‘flustered woman herding cats’ meme here>>. It was super fun, but we all got through it and, per our tradition, each kid got to pick out a box of their favorite flavored candy canes. When we got home from Walmart, I actually snuck their boxes away and hid them! I’m a dork, I know. Anything to add a little more intrigue. Worth noting here, how very imperfect all of this is. For the rest of the day, I gratefully deferred to our homeschool group to make the day special for my olders. They had a blast at their middle school Christmas party! For our younger kids, a friend brought some Minute-To-Win-It Holiday themed games she had leftover from a previous party, and the littles enjoyed those. ADVENTures for the day – CHECK!
December 3rd, I was a little bit grumpy pants at the beginning of the morning because my younger son came downstairs complaining about the Christmas music and my older son came downstairs and got right on a video game, then made a face when I asked him to turn it off. Not a great start. Most days, I’m more resilient but I think their attitudes, coupled with a lack of sleep and chemical imbalances due to the ‘time of the month’ had me more sensitive. Needless to say, I was grumbly and unpleasant until the Lord gently convicted my heart through my daughters. They were so excited for the activities and I could tell my attitude was dampening the fun. Isn’t that an interesting part of momming? One kid can do something that ruins it for us, but then ooops, we ruin it for the rest of our kids. The emotional temperature of the family is a burden and privilege that is uniquely ours.
Enter: God. I retreated to my bedroom for about 20 seconds, laid on my bed, closed my eyes, whispered a prayer and trusted. I stayed my spiritual feet and resolved to get the morning back. The whole thing lasted about 10 minutes, from the boys coming down, to me submitting it all to the Lord, but it felt crappy to have allowed a cloud to darken this sacred experience I’d worked to create. God redeemed. I apologized to my girls. My sweet boys apologized to me and I, too, apologized for overreacting. The cloud lifted and this precious family of mine recovered quickly. They had a grand old time putting their candy canes on the tree and then we had hot chocolate w/candy cane stirrers with breakfast.
NOTE: We didn’t get to the paper snowflakes and chains.
December 4th was Saturday so I baked for breakfast. I was craving a Christmassy scone, so I pulled out my scone recipe along with gingersnap and gingerbread cookie recipes and created a friggin’ delicious Gingerbread Christmas Scone recipe! Woot! I get excited about this kind of thing. Anyway, Saturday was filled with errands and housework so we didn’t get to our ADVENTure from the day before, NOR the one from that day. BUT in the evening, we attended our neighborhood Christmas Tree Lighting and enjoyed some hot chocolate at home before evening cuddles. Low key. Nice.
December 5th Phew! We finally got to the business of creating paper chains and snowflakes to decorate bedrooms. That is always a favorite activity! I prefer to do this activity when Jason is home because my youngers need a fair amount of assistance. After I distributed all the paper, I read one of our beloved Christmas books to everyone as they worked: “The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey.” Afterward, my 7 year-old girl was a wonderful helper, vacuuming up all the scraps that had fallen on the floor (most of which were hers), we had a family game time with Uno Attack (a new favorite) and then cuddled before bed. Since the paper snowflakes and chains were supposed to be on the 3rd, looks like we’re a couple days behind.
Popcorn balls were yesterday and baking Christmas cookies was planned for today. We didn’t get to them, so we’ll fit those in sometime soon. But it was Aunt Chris’ birthday so we sent her a birthday wish!
I’ll also mention that we’ve been eating dinner with candlelight these days too. It is so simple and yet creates such a sense of cozy!
And there it is. Nothing particularly difficult or impressive, but I share in hopes that it will inspire parents to remember how powerful it is to simply spend time with your people. It doesn’t have to be perfect or particularly pretty. You just have to be there, making eye contact, listening, and enjoying alongside. It fills them up, molds and shapes them in ways that nothing else can.
Much Love and Happy ADVENTuring!