My Family Christmas Traditions Part 3

Christmas Morning Breakfast



Growing up most holidays were spent going back and forth between both sides of my family, Christmas was different. It was the rare holiday that was spent primarily at home, not running back and forth between granparents' homes. The first part of Christmas morning was spent with me getting to see what Santa Claus had brought me and then opening presents between my Mom, my Dad, and me. After we had time together as a family we got started on Christmas morning breakfast. My maternal grandparents, Mimi and Bubba, would come over to celebrate Christmas with us and eat breakfast. It was a festive affair. My Mom and I would carefully set the table with her good china and use her silver serving pieces. The table always looked so pretty and grand, after all we were celebrating the birth of Christ. Even after I moved out we still had Christmas morning breakfast together as a family. As time has gone on we have changed a few things about our tradition. Now my Mom and I go to Waffle House and eat breakfast together before we go back to one of our apartments and open gifts. We even bring a gift to our waitress since she has to work on Christmas day. We also leave a tip of course!



I hope you have enjoyed the past 3 posts on my Family Christmas Traditions. Do you have any that you want to share?

My Family Christmas Traditions Part 2

The Nativity Scene





I was in the 3rd or 4th grade when my family moved to the house I mainly grew up in on Crabtree Road. It was a split foyer with 3 bedrooms and 2 1/2 baths with a large den downstairs. After we first moved in we built a custom bookcase in the den beside the fire place. It was a floor to ceiling bookcase that was at least 10 to 12 feet wide. It really made the large room more balanced. The bookcase would always be my first and favorite place to decorate for Christmas. My Mom would cover the bookcase with velvet material to hide the books. We would alternate what color we would use each year. I think my favorite was the blue velvet she put up as a backdrop over the books, it was the perfect backdrop to represent the night sky. Over the years we would add a piece or two to the scene, but I can still vividly remember our unique Nativity Scene. We would place sheep and shepherds along the bottom of the bookcase. The next shelf up we placed camels and the 3 wise men. On up we put Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus lying in a manger. The shelves above them we had angels. At the very top of the bookcase we had one large star. It was a beautiful Nativity scene, from the bottom shelf up it looked like the path that Mary, Joseph, and the wise men traveled to get to Bethlehem. It was the most beautiful decorations of all, even if I helped to decorate it.

To be continued...

My Family Christmas Traditions Part 1

All families have traditions, the two that mean the most to me happen to be right around the corner. Christmas Eve and Christmas Morning Breakfast have been two family traditions that have continued to evolve from my childhood into my adulthood with a few changes. It's so wonderful that the traditions I loved and looked forward to as a child would be able to continue to grow and still be with me even as an adult.

Christmas Eve

For as far back as I can remember every Christmas Eve has been about the Christmas Story. As a child, my Mom, my Dad and I would sit around the Christmas tree and my Dad would read to us the true Christmas Story, the birth of Christ, right before I was put to bed. It was our family tradition. Every year we did this up until I moved out. Later my Mom and Dad divorced when I was an adult, so my Dad and I have kept Christmas Eve as our time to get together and celebrate Christmas. We would exchange gifts and spend time together as family and from time to time my Dad has still read the Christmas Story to me before he would leave. I remember one year we even went to a candle light Christmas Eve church service. For the past three years or so we would go out and eat together, exchange presents, and simply enjoy our time together. We don't always read the Christmas Story together every year, but I always try to sit down and read it myself by my tree right before I go to bed. I can't think of anything better than to spend Christmas Eve with my Dad and reading from my Bible the true Christmas Story.

To be continued...

Facebook

"A single rose can be my garden...a single friend, my world."

Leo Buscaglia

There are times when I feel like I'll never catch up with the current networking sites. I missed out on My Space and I haven't started Twittering, but I broke down and set up a Facebook profile and am reaping its rewards. Facebook has connected me with friends, family, business contacts and former coworkers that I haven't seen or talked to in years. I even got in touch with someone that I went to Elementary School with! It is so cool to find your best friend from high school whom you've tried to stay in touch with but lost contact years ago. I'm able to find out what's going on in people's lives, see pictures of them now, see pictures of their kids whether they are two legged or four. It's nice to get online and see that Nichole, who now lives in Chicago, is getting ready for a block party, or that Brad finally got out of retail and is a now bank manager.

Just today I got on Facebook and saw pictures of my cousin's newborn baby, her in her Halloween costume, and of course pictures of Mom and Dad. They live 2 hours from me, but this way I can keep up with them and see all the pictures of the baby as if I was right next door. I'm finding that this is also a good way to keep in touch with relatives that do live near me too. Everyone has busy lives these days and just seeing some family only on holidays doesn't always fulfill you, but reading what their up to makes you feel closer to them.

I feel like I'm back in touch with my family and friends thanks to Facebook. In fact I have a whole bunch of friends now!

Do you use Facebook? What do you think about these networking sites?

My Most Memorable Halloween Costumes

Halloween is approaching and I have been reminiscing about my favorite Halloween costumes when I was a kid. Growing up my Mom wouldn't just ask me what I wanted to be and go buy it at the store. We would brainstorm together and make my costumes. This was always special to me. My Mom laughs at me now and says she tried to make it fun, but money was simply tight: "It wasn't that I was trying to make wonderful childhood memories, we just didn't have the money to throw away on something for you to use for one night." Boy did she have me fooled!

Here are some of my favorite costumes in no particular order:

1. A Bookworm - my Mom made most all of my outfits so that they could be used as pajamas later. I remember the material had horizontal stripes all around. With help I cut out of cardboard my over sized book and wrote on the cover the title and author. At that time I loved all the Ramona stories by Beverly Clearly, so I used one of my favorites for the title.


2. Wonder Woman - my Mom made the pj's white with Wonder Woman's costume in blue & red on the top and bottoms. My favorite piece was the cape she made me. It was blue with white stars on it. It had to be the coolest Wonder Woman costume I'd ever seen.


3. A Flower Pot - We used a round laundry basket and cut out the bottom of it. Of course I had pj's on my body and Mom made a headband with flower petals all around it to frame my face. The last piece was a pair of my Dad's suspenders that attached to the pot and me. I would sit down at the doorstep and when they answered the door I stood up like a flower growing from the pot. It was very cute.


4. A Skeleton - My Mom made the pj's black and appliqued the bones onto the pj's.


5. A Spaceman - This was one of my earliest costumes. Mom cut part of a milk carton and spray painted it silver for my head and then wrapped me from head to toe in aluminum foil. She did makeup on my face using silver eyeshadow and made my face silver.


6. Police Officer / Executioner - In 6th grade we had a haunted house in our gym. One of my best friends Stacy Helton was the prisoner I was executing. For once I didn't wear pj's! I had on jeans and a long sleeve button down shirt with a blue puffy vest. A relative gave me their sheriff's badge to put on the vest. I used my Dad's dress fireman's hat for my police hat. My Mom was a Mary Kay Cosmetics Consultant at the time and she did the coolest makeup for both me and Stacy. We had a great time that night!


7. A Geisha Girl - My Dad fought in the Vietnam War. When he was in Japan he found this beautiful silk dress that he sent home to my Mom. The only problem was he didn't know that the sizes were so different in Japan and the USA. She never got to wear it, but I did around 5th grade. That's how small the dress was. I wore a black wig and Mom did my makeup. She made my face white and did some beautiful eye makeup. I went over to my Mimi's (my Mom's Mom) and she had no clue that it was me under all that. Sadly that was the only time the dress was worn, but Mom always kept it in the hope chest in front of my parents' bed.

I hope you enjoyed my walk down Halloween memory lane. I told my Mom what I was writing in my blog today and after I read it to her she said "We had so much fun, it was worth all of the work. What do you want to be this year?"

NFL Overtime System Needs A Renovation

On September 10, 2009 the National Football League (NFL) opened its season opening game with the Super Bowl Champions the Pittsburgh's Steelers vs. the Tennessee Titans. It was a great game well played by both sides, a really tough, hard fought game that ended in overtime. For most sports overtime is an exciting, nail biting time. Sadly this isn't always the case in the NFL. The nail biting time is during the coin toss when the game is almost always won by whoever wins the coin toss. Not the actual overtime period.

Due to the rules of the NFL, whoever wins the coin toss gets the first possession of the ball. The game is won by the first team to put points on the scoreboard. So whoever wins the coin toss just needs a field goal to win the game. The problem I have is the other team doesn't get an equal opportunity to score. So the winner is almost always decided by the coin toss.

The NFL has brought all kinds of changes to the game over the years. One huge example that covers everything from a referee's bad call, to a catch or no catch, inbounds or out, and many more would be the coaches team challenges that introduces video replay to the game. If we can improve and change the game to make it more fair, so please tell me why they won't do something about our overtime rules? Other team sports give each team a chance to score. Think about it. College Football, Basketball, Hockey, and Baseball all give each team a chance to score in overtime. The NFL doesn't and I think it is time to sit down and make a change to the rules for overtime play.

Motherhood Part 3

On May 12, 2007 I became the wife to Tim, the Step-Mother to Josh and the Mother-In-Law to Christina. I was so excited by all the possibilities that came with all of those titles. My Mom thought it was hilarious that I was becoming a mother-in-law. The title made me feel old at first, but knowing I was going to be the Mother-In-Law to Christina made me feel good. It made me want to be the best mother-in-law ever. I was also very excited to be a step-mother. When people would ask me if I had any kids, I could finally say "YES!"

There were only ten years difference in my age and "the kids" as I would often refer to them. Josh & Christina accepted me immediately. They would come over at least once every 4 to 6 weeks to hang out at our house. We would all watch some movies together and "the kids" had a Nintendo Wii that they would bring for us to play sometimes. Tim & Josh had a way of disappearing to the office to get on the computer, which always left plenty of time for me and Christina to talk.

In between visits there were phone calls and emails. I always looked forward to emails from Josh. He would always get sent the funniest emails I had ever seen and he would forward them on to me. We were a happy family of 4. I often thought about the possibility of becoming a grandmother down the road, when they were ready of course. It was an exciting possibility.

My greatest treasure came during Mother's Day weekend of 2008. Josh had to work on Sundays, so they called and asked if they could come by the Saturday before Mother's Day. I honestly didn't think much about it. I figured they were stopping by to see their mothers and they must be trying to squeeze in a visit to us as well. They lived somewhere between 45 minutes to an hour away. So it wasn't unusual for them to come by if they were in town to see their other parents all on the same day. However, this day would be different. Not long after getting in the house they handed me a bag and a card and said "Happy Mother's Day." I was absolutely shocked. I didn't expect anything from them for Mother's Day. As I read the card I teared up. Inside they had written that there was plenty of room in their lives for another Mother and they were happy to have me in their lives. I was absolutely speechless! Inside the bag I found the most beautiful fairy. I was a Mother on Mother's Day 2008. No one told them to write the loving note in the card. No one told them to buy me a gift. That day was just a way for them to show me how they felt about me.

Sadly on May 20, 2009 my marriage to Tim was officially over. So far I have been able to stay in contact with Christina through phone calls and text messages. I know that losing them is to be expected. However, I don't think I'll ever lose their friendship. Twelve years ago in 1997 I thought I was taking away all my chances of motherhood when I had my surgery. In the space of ten years I became an aunt, a mother to a basset hound, and then I was actually called Mom. Right now I don't know what my future holds. I guess I'll just sit back and see what God has in store for me in the future because He sure has given me the most amazing gifts in the form of nieces, nephews, a stepson, and a daughter- in-law.

Motherhood Part 2

"When one door closes, another opens..."

Motherhood Part 2


My next stage to motherhood came when I got married a year later to Barry in late fall, who was 9 years older than me. I married into a family. Barry was the youngest of 4 children. He was 9 years older than me. I married into a family. Barry not only made me his wife on the day we married, he also made me the proud aunt to 8 nieces and nephews.

When Barry and I got married we first lived with his Dad. Papa John, as he was called by the kids. He would pick up 4 of the grand kids after school and bring them to the house until they could be picked up. Unable to work at that time I would be home and helped out when they came over after school. I would help make snacks, help with homework, play Old Maid and get to hear all about their day at school. I loved every minute of it.

As I've mentioned in my profile, I am a sports fanatic and luckily for me I married into a very athletic and sports oriented family. All the brothers and their sister were star athletes in their day and now their kids were too. During the fall, we would gather on Saturdays to watch Tennessee Vols college football games. It was great! We would yell and cheer at the game and have such a great time together.

Due to everyone's schedules, we didn't have a big Thanksgiving, so Christmas was going to be our first big family holiday. Barry and I were so excited about our first Christmas together. As we were trying to decide what to get the kids for Christmas, we finally decided on board games. The games were a real hit. I can still remember all the fun we had, playing games all day Christmas. Barry kept his "cool uncle" title and I became the "cool Aunt Elizabeth." We loved those kids and were proud to do things with them every chance we got.

When spring came, as soon as Barry would get home from work, we were out the door and headed straight to the ball fields night after night. We watched softball games and baseball games all spring and summer. All the parents had these shirts with the team logo on the front and on the back they said "Mom of # _" or "Dad of # _" but they didn't have any for aunts or uncles. I found this really discriminating and made it known. I told them that it wasn't fair that there weren't shirts for the aunts and uncles that were there supporting the kids just as much as the parents. Everyone knew I was teasing, but to my great surprise, the very next year I was presented with a specially made shirt that looked just like the ones for the parents but mine said "Harrison Lady Titans " on front and on the back it said "Aunt of #12." I was absolutely thrilled! I still have that shirt to this day.

Being an aunt was so fulfilling. I have lots of tales I may share on later posts about being an aunt, but my main point is I might not be able to be a "mother," but as an aunt I sometimes had to fill in as one, which was very rewarding. I dedicate this post to my nieces and nephews, in no particular order: Ryan, Justin, Josh, Justis, Lauren, Lacey, D.J. and Chase.

Motherhood to be continued...

EJ

Motherhood

Motherhood - noun

1 the state of being a mother; maternity

2 the character or qualities of a mother

3 mothers collectively

Webster's New World Dictionary



The hardest decision I ever made has to be the decision to have a tubal ligation (tie my tubes) before I could ever have a child. I was a very sick child and since the summer of my senior year of high school I was extremely sick and many years later would find out that I had fibromyalgia. My mother had a rough time getting me here. She had 4 miscarriages before me and 1 miscarriage after me. Needless to say I was her miracle baby. So with my background of illness and this new fibromyalgia that claimed a vibrant life to one that could barely function before I turned 18 and knowing how hard it may be for my body to even carry a child to full term, I prayed. I had always wanted children and always saw children in my future. I wanted to be the cool parent's house where all the kids would hang out. I didn't just want a child I wanted a family with a mother, a father and children. After high school I struggled but I was able to work, but due to fatigue and comprehension problems college would have to wait. I dated and still thought about the children that I wanted, but I didn't see how I could make it all work and still be the mother and the wife that I wanted to be. It took everything out of me just to work, come home and go to bed just so I could do it all over again. I was barely surviving how would I be able to be that multi-tasking woman? What kind of wife or mother would I make? This fibromyalgia was so confusing and the thoughts of passing it on to my children and then being too sick myself to take care of my family seemed very selfish to me. I prayed for well over a year and then a month before I turned 25, I went for my annual gynecological visit and talked to my doctor. I explained all my reasons of why I wanted to have my tubes tied. For me an abortion would never have been an answer to birth control, and yes abstinence was an option, but not very practical for my whole life. So I guess my most selfless act was to never have a baby.



It has not been the easiest decision I have ever had to live with, but by far has been one of the best. The past 6 years I have had cousins having babies all around me. I see how happy they are but they are also a family in each situation and no medical issues to deal with. I never planned on talking about my health on my blog, but I wanted to write about "motherhood," its definitions and how it has affected my life. Surprisingly I do have my own tales of motherhood and they will follow this post. My fear of passing my fibromyalgia is starting to show in the medical field as a possibility. They now have a diagnosis of Juvenile Fibromyalgia. Medically speaking they still don't know much about fibromyalgia or even if it is genetic. I truly hope I'm wrong. I wasn't wrong about my medical condition; it has gotten much worse since then, and much more complicated than just having fibromyalgia, however since July of 2008 there have been changes in the medical community that help my day to day well being. It has given me a new lease on life and who's to say what my future holds. For you to truly understand how precious my next few blogs mean to me you needed to have this back story. I promise this will probably be my last post about my medical condition.

EJ

Apartment Etiquette

I need your advice! I’m sooo mad, tired and infuriated!!!!!!! Are my feelings justified? You tell me:


I live in an apartment building with laundry facilities on site. At 12:00 am I went to do my laundry because I spilled water all over my bed, and hadn’t had a chance to wash my spare set of sheets. So I decided to do all my laundry, not just the sheets. Nobody was in the laundry room and all 6 washers were empty and no dryers were operating. However I did see a basket on top of one of the dryers. 25 minutes later I go to put my laundry in the dryers, but there is a problem. Out of 5 dryers only two were available. Whoever had washed and dried their clothes still had not gotten them out of the dryers. It’s 12:30 am by now. I put the most important clothes into the 2 empty dryers, and then I sat down on the bench for 5 more minutes. The clothes in the other 3 dryers were dry and had obviously been dry for quite some time. I know that they had been done for at least 30 minutes. I kept asking myself if I should just put the clothes out of one of the dryers and lay them on top of the dryer. I debated for a few minutes, but I gave in. I stood there and emptied one of the dryers, but I couldn’t just put the clothes on top of the dryer and leave them. I stood there and folded all of the clothes that I took out of the dryer and placed them neatly on top of the dryer and then proceeded to use the dryer. It was a good thing that I did go ahead and use the dryer, because by the time I was finished roughly a 1 & ½ later nobody had come back to get their clothes out of the dryer! Was I wrong? Did I have to be so nice and fold a dryer packed with jeans and shorts? It has been a long time since I lived in an apartment that I didn’t have washer/dryer hookups in the apartment. So did I use proper Laundry Facility Etiquette? What would you have done?

The Bonfire

"There are no mistakes or failures, only lessons."

Dennis Waitley

In August of 1992, I was safely home with my parents after one of the biggest mistakes I had ever made. June of that year I got married to someone I went to high school with, someone I thought I knew. We moved to California, where he was in the Air Force. Everything went bad to worse immediately. I was being used as a punching bag and if that wasn't bad enough, the morning I was trying to leave him, he pointed a gun at me and told me "if I can't have you no one will." I barely escaped on our one month wedding anniversary and after quiet an ordeal I made it safely home back to Georgia. I was just a couple of months shy of turning 20. Licking my wounds and feeling like a complete idiot for going through with the whole ordeal. I was so embarrassed to be back home so soon with such a war story to tell. It wasn't the happily ever after it was supposed to be and I was very ashamed to be back home, when I was supposed to be living some terrific new life in California. I was very depressed and kept to myself, completely withdrawing myself from friends and family. I literally dropped off the face of the Earth as far as most people knew. My Mother, in particular had no idea what to do to help me. It didn't even matter to me that I had done the right thing escaping an abusive situation. I just felt stupid and often wondered if I had missed any red flags.

On a particularly down day, the "wedding photos" arrived from the photographer. There I was with two sets of wedding photos that cost my family around $1000, reminding me of what was supposed to represent one of the happiest days of my life. My Mom and I sat down and started going through the pictures. The more I looked, the more depressed I became. Then my Mom did one of the craziest things. She ripped one of the pictures into two. I was horrified. What was she thinking? As she sat there grinning, I asked her: "How did that feel?" "Great! she said. "you should try it." So I did, I ripped up one of the pictures into two and it felt SO empowering. I didn't have to live with pictures to remind me of my mistake for the rest of my life, I had a brain for that! Before I knew it we were surrounded by a pile of ripped up pictures. Then we came up with the perfect way to totally destroy them. We raced out to the back of the house and put all the ripped pictures in our grill, lit a match and burned $1000 worth of wedding pictures. My Dad didn't quite understand as well when he first found out, but he finally said "if that made her happy I guess it was worth it." My Mom still says she can remember the horrified look on my face when she tore up the first picture. She said it was "priceless."

These days Taylor Swift is a very popular singer/song writer. Liz Rose and she wrote a song titled "Picture to Burn." My favorite lyrics are:

so watch me strike a match

to all my wasted time

as far as I'm concerned you're

just another picture to burn

Every time I hear her song I think back to the best bonfire I ever had!

The Year My Mom Brought the Beach to Me

I've always loved the beach and ocean. Just listening to the rhythm of the waves as they crash upon one another, the warm feeling of the sun on my skin, the sand in my toes, the breeze through my hair and the smell of the sea easily transports me into my own utopia.

One summer I desperately needed to be at the beach where no sickness existed and I was invincible. Due to financial reasons, going to the beach was out of the question, so my Mom brought the beach to me.

We lived in a quite subdivision with lots of space between houses and people. Our backyard was quite and shaded by trees. There were two trees that were the perfect width apart for a hammock. My Mom used some wood and made a sand box underneath my hammock. She put sand and sea shells that were gathered from vacations past.

It became my personal beach that spring and summer. I would lie in the hammock for hours listening to ocean sounds or music from my Walkman, read and sometimes gently rock myself to sleep for a nap. I could feel the sun on my skin and feel my own beach sand between my toes.

My beach was my sanctuary. I hope my Mom still knows today how much "my beach" meant to me, and that I think of it often.