Hamantaschen

I'd never heard of Hamantaschen before. Do traditions usually have to stem from strange ideas of eating cookies that look like an evil villain's pockets in order to last thousands of years?

Perhaps it has more to do with an excuse for delicious, buttery cookies with honey fig fillings, in which case, folks should be celebrating Purim more often than once a year. I googled Purim to find out when it will be. Alas, we just missed it and will have to wait another year.

But I did run across an interesting fact about Esther. She didn't reveal to anyone near the king that she was jewish. Since kosher foods weren't available to her in the palace, she primarily ate nuts and seeds there. I was glad to hear that at least the fillings for Hamantaschen had something to do with the good Esther rather than only the vile Haman.

Now, what was that scripture about if the fruit of the tree is good....?? Yum.

Friendly Lions

Want to guess what tonight's Family Home Evening lesson is about?

To Moms (an dads) of girls:

Please let your daughters be friends with my sons. They don't want to kiss them any more than they want to kiss the other little boys on the playground. They just envy the friendships that girls are seen having with each other and want to have fun and play, too.

Please teach your daughters to like boys. This is not the time to talk about "my body is my own." Two unrelated lessons!!

I'm heartbroken by my sons simply wanting to play with a girl only to hear that she runs away from him or thinks he's chasing after her all the time to do something weird to her. Teaching girls that boys only want to kiss or that boys are made of snakes and snails or that boys are nothing but trouble is going to backfire on us later, because it's not right! Is it a parenting cop-out to help teen girls to appreciate abstinence? Aren't there better ways parents can get that message across than depriving girls (not even teenaged) of years of an entire gender of meaningful friends?

I'm doing double duty to instill a sense of self worth into them that will help them succeed in the world. I don't need grownups making life harder for them.

Extended Family

So, last night's FHE went OK.

It might have started off bumpy. The kids were a bit grumpy and uncooperative going into dinner, so I was considering aborting the whole thing. They really wanted FHE, so they got themselves into a better mood, and I willingly decided to give it a try.

I was looking forward to doing a project together that didn't involve foam cutout monkeys or hot glueing teepees together. I had found a little pack of papers and stickers that all matched at the craft store that were already close to the size I'd need for the photo book, and that got me excited, too. (It's the little things!)

So, don't rush over to my house to see our end result. I made some pictures of it for you:

It's interesting to note that Harlan has a gift for scrapbooking. He did Keni's page, which is the best one (it's hard to tell from this picture), imho.

There were a few disappointing parenting moments when someone randomly stuck stickers on pages that didn't make any sense, and I told them to stop. I'm sure that they felt they couldn't please me and I engrained that into their little psyches forever. And the boys kept pushing the photos into the carpet with their little knees and elbows and got scolded for wrinkling up the photos. So, it was a bit tense going.

But it's done and Joel seemed really proud of it. And I won't have to do another one anytime soon.

I'll be too busy repairing everyone's self-esteem.

My problem with craft stores...

For me, going to the craft store (I won't name names) is a nightmare. I finally realized why tonight. It's all about choices. There are too many. Whenever I think of how great it would be if I would just do scrapbooks and be creative and make memory books of all the great times we're having as a family while the kids are young and would benefit from knowing how special they are and memorable our times together are, I go to the craft store to pick up a few pretty papers to glue all my photos onto. My intentions are right. My desire is genuine. But as soon as I walk in the doors of the store, I'm flooded with anxiety. Why do I have to feel like I'm going to need to buy this:

in order to get a simple little project done? (feel free to buy this off of eBay for $450!)

Have you seen how many aisles are dedicated to scrapbooking supplies? I'm remembering at least 6, not counting the little islands in the middle of the big aisles and the sale aisles at various strategic points throughout the rest of the store with stamps and papers and stickers and machine cutting things....

It's completely overwhelming. I feel like my little project is going to cost too much, make too much of a mess, take too long, and won't look right anyway, because I didn't buy the right colors or the right doo-dahs.

Bah Humbug!

A Year of Family Home Evenings

My friend Shay gave me the idea to follow this blog this year as a resource for our Family Home Evenings. One might be inclined to call this my New Year's resolution to get through it. I've already missed one week because I was too tired from horn playing... go figure. But I'm not ready to give up, yet.

Thus far we've done the first and third weeks (I didn't get all the pictures rounded up in time to do the 2nd week in order), and I'm really looking forward to tonight's activity of making a little family photo book. I love how organized the lessons are. I even got the assignment chart laminated with our photos. It's very pretty.

Her downloads are just crafty enough for me to like but not be too involved for me to handle. I'll post pictures of our photo book, perhaps, if it turns out nicely.

Christmas 2009

Christmas this year was not marred by ungrateful kids or sneaking downstairs in the night to snatch a brother's gifts. It was the year of fear.

As Joel said Christmas eve as he was going to bed, "I'm afraid Santa's going to bring me coal, and I don't really like coal. Because I've been pretty bad this year."

Even Jamie wasn't sure what Joel would be getting for Christmas:

But Santa really loves to give gifts much more than coal. Although he learned last year to make sure they're wrapped!

Even so, before Jamie was awake, Joel announced that one of the gifts in his stocking sounded like coal. He opened it first to find a lego jet. What a relief and joy that good gifts were to come!

Two very different guys. This one likes to unwrap everything as quickly as possible and plays once all his presents are opened.

While the other child opens one gift completely, figures out how to put it together and plays with it before he opens another one. (Note: it is still dark outside.)

And when it's all over (Joel did get around to opening that last gift), and no one's looking, the beagle gets her turn at the candy.

Merry Christmas to all!