Easter Monday

For at least a dozen and a half years, I've decorated an Egg Tree in our front yard during the Lenten season. I wrote a couple of blog posts about it. You can read a little bit about it here (including some easy how-to instructions). 

When Easter falls midway through the April calendar, like it did this year, I rush to get my plastic eggs up early enough that the tree leaves and blossoms don't arrive simultaneously to my decorating. Because of the Lunar calendar, Easter is always on the first Sunday after the first full moon of Spring. The earliest possible date for Easter is March 22nd (plenty of time for decorating and seeing the tree) and the latest possible date is April 25th.

Virginia 2018

Virginia 2019

This year I decided to move our Egg Tree to a new location in our yard, sharing a little Easter cheer from a new vantage point.  

Virginia 2020

By Easter, the dogwood tree is flowering and the eggs are harder to see. 

My goal is to bring a little joy and a reminder to passersby. Every year as I unbox my eggs (and create a few more), the meaning and message are the same. 

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2012 Christmas Card

Dear Friends and Family,

We hope that each of you had a great 2012 and are looking forward to 2013.  Our second Christmas (and first full year) in Texas has brought more of a sense of routine.  While it still does not feel like "home,” we at least know that Southlake is north and that there is no lake in Westlake.  We have come to love Texans more than we love Texas, but isn't that the way it is supposed to be? 

The pictures on the attached card chronicle much of our year, which began with the death of our sweet dog, Libby.  She lived a long and loved life.  A rescue dog with no documentation, we don’t have any way of knowing her real age, but she spent her last 10 years with us and was loved every minute. She is still greatly missed. Five-year-old Brownie, the Maltese poodle mix, continues to entertain.

Tate is in the 10th grade and doing well.  He is on the school's swim team, sings in the school choir, works as a lifeguard on the weekends, plays chess regularly, and is active at church. He and Robbie attended the Byron Nelson Golf Championship in May and had the good fortune to eat lunch with Byron’s delightful widow, Peggy Nelson. (Robbie’s cellphone inadequacy made evident in the Christmas card photo.) Tate has made a wonderful adjustment to Texas.  We appreciate his resiliency, adventurous spirit, and sense of humor.

After deciding that she is more of an East Coast girl, McKenzie transferred colleges this year.  She had a fun summer traveling to Europe with Julie’s sister, working at like a small, locally and family owned REI-type business and taking summer school classes.  She volunteers a few times a week at a local elementary school and was recently initiated into a sorority. In late September, Robbie traveled to Parents’ Weekend and they enjoyed attending the football game. We appreciate McKenzie's strong sense of justice, her excellence in her schoolwork, and her continued love of all things Disney (see her pictured this spring break with Tate and a statue of Walt at Disneyland).

We took a spring break trip in March to Southern California: Los Angeles, the Reagan and Nixon Presidential Libraries, and San Diego, and a July vacation to Northern California - San Francisco and then 4 days in spectacular Santa Barbara. Anything to escape the crazy Texas heat! 

For Robbie and Julie, life is much the same.  We were disappointed in the election results in November and are currently taking a break from watching the news.  We recommend the "news fast" and have been surprised at the entertainment value of Law & Order and Seinfeld reruns.  It's funny that we can go a week without watching the news but when we turn it back on, we haven't missed a thing (it's like missing a month of The Guiding Light).

Though for us the physically demanding parts of being a parent are coming to an end, what remain are the emotionally demanding parts.  We understand that this demand will exist for the rest of our lives. Some days we long to change a diaper and put a child down for a nap, comforted by the knowledge that everyone is safe and secure - knowledge seldom achieved with teenagers.

So, as we end one year and begin another, our prayer for our family and yours is this:  that God may bless you in 2013, that He will comfort those who are suffering and support and sustain those that are providing comfort, that He will bless our country and its leaders and give them the wisdom and courage to do the right thing, that He will safeguard those that are serving our country to protect our freedoms and way of life, and that we will have the insight to appreciate our blessings.

We wish you a Merry Christmas and a wonderful 2013.  We’d love to see you in the year ahead.

Love,

Julie & Robbie

Thanksgiving Plans

Our plans this year for Thanksgiving are a little less than traditional. Most significantly, we'll be missing one important family member.  

She's spending the holiday with my parents not far from the college she attends.  

That's not the only thing different about this year. I won't be cooking a turkey and all the side dishes and I won't be decorating the table. 

Last year's table for 4.

And, I won't be making these delicious homemade rolls (but I promise to share the recipe in the coming days, because they are perfect for the holidays).

Blessedly, this year I will not be forced to contemplate the merits of store-bought versus homemade gravy (since that seems to be my real culinary failing).

We will be, however, engaging, in one important time-honored holiday tradition and we'll be doing that here:

Cowboy Stadium

We aren't Cowboy fans though.   We'll be there to cheer for our beloved Redskins and, Texas-raised Baylor graduate and Heisman trophy winner, Robert Griffin III. 

 We're looking forward to it!

More Tradition

"I thought maybe we could make ginger bread houses, and eat cookie dough, 

and go ice skating, and maybe even hold hands."

~Buddy, the movie Elf

My children still enjoy decorating Gingerbread houses.  Mostly, they still enjoy eating candy, but nevertheless, we do it every year.  Generally our Gingerbread house day follows the last day of school before the Christmas holiday.  

Up On the Rooftop

No doubt, every family has a few strange holiday traditions. Chief among ours, is the ritual which follows our return from the annual tree buying excursion: we sit the children, plus the occasional toy or even a real dog or two on the roof of the car, and snap a photo. I'm not certain how this got to be a tradition, but without fail, we always pause long enough to engage in this little ceremony. Don't believe me? Here's the proof (from most years):

It's (Almost) Love Week!

In two days (yes, oddly, it will be a Friday) my family will mark the beginning of a 7 day celebration at our house. 


It's Love Week.  

As the About Me portion of my blog says, the week of February 11th through the 17th is our family's own 7-day celebration.   


It begins with the anniversary of the day my husband and I met (February 11th),  which was an unseasonably warm winter day in Washington, D.C. Halfway through the week is the all important St. Valentine’s Day.  Our celebration week culminates with the anniversary of our engagement  (February 17th in Williamsburg, Virginia), the year after we met.


So every day, for the next 7, we'll try to do something sweet or kind (sweeter and kinder, than usual, I mean), but not elaborate, for each other.  I especially enjoy leaving small tokens for my children each day of the week and sending my husband a card or two to his office.

Perhaps, like us, you'll invent your own day to celebrate. Or you'll decide that some things, like L-O-V-E, deserve not just a day, but a whole week of celebrating.

Groundhog Day

I have a friend who celebrates Groundhog Day every year.  She says it's her favorite holiday.  Me, not so much.


I have some good reasons for this:


1) This time of year, the weather is bleak and the landscape barren; 2) I have some sort of mental block about what the groundhog seeing his shadow is supposed to  predict.    Is it 6 more weeks of winter? A shorter winter?  Or perhaps, the Penguins will win the Stanley Cup?   3) A groundhog is not cute a rat on steroids (don't let the free clipart fool you).


Wikipedia, "the best thing ever" (according Michael Scott's character on The Office) and my go-to-source, says that Groundhog Day began as a custom in southeastern and central Pennsylvania in the 18th and 19th centuries, and has its origins in ancient European lore wherein a badger or sacred bear is the prognosticator as opposed to a groundhog.


And while I'm not a fan of the actual holiday, I am a huge fan of Groundhog Day, the 1993 movie.  If you haven't seen it, you should.  It's Bill Murray at his best (only Lost in Translation may be better) and a totally unique concept for a movie.  Besides, who doesn't want the chance at a do-over?


If you haven't seen the movie in a while, here's a reminder of just how much fun it is:

The Twelfth Day

When my mother was a young girl,  Santa brought and decorated the tree on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day marked, as is traditional, the First Day of Christmas.  You know, the same one when your true love is supposed to deliver your partridge?!  Continuing that tradition, the 12th day of Christmas, January 5th was the  day our holiday decorations were taken down when I was growing up.

Nowadays it's popular to begin the  Christmas decorating process the Friday following Thanksgiving. And even that might seem late to you if you set foot into a retail store any day after Halloween.

The early onset of Christmas decorating is as disconcerting to me as the early demise of the decorations.  I don't believe I am the only one who thinks that  seeing a tree curbside or a house unadorned of its wreaths and lights on December 26th or 27th is unreasonable.

Full disclosure, we took down our decorations on January 2nd this year.  And when I say "took down" I mean transitioned the decorations, from their previous places of honor, to our dining room table, where they are sure to rest until the end of the month.  Not the tree or the wreath of course, which made their way to the compost pile, but the candles, artificial garland, advent wreath, etc.

I guess that was my bowing to peer pressure and, no doubt, to convenience  since more hands were at home to help with the "un-decorating."

Perhaps someday I'll confidently leave our decorations up, inside and out, through January 5th.  And I won't anticipate or fear the suspect glances and retribution of my neighbors.

And drummers drumming?  I'll be waiting for them.

To Grandmother's House We Went