Beneath the Wraps

A few years before I met Roland,  I had gone into a Deseret Book Store in search of something.  Sharon Velluto was doing a book signing on her new book, “A Christ Centered Christmas”                      I remember picking up a book and thumbing through it.  It looked interesting.  It was on sale as I recall.  I took it home and started reading it. “How to Use this Book” – the very first words on the very first page.  “This book has been designed to satisfy the needs of all families {bold italics added} from those with small children to those whose children are grown, as well as singles and seniors .  . .             How many times have I heard or read that . . . “and to all of those that are single, we love you as well” (though you are really not our main focus – we don’t want to exclude ...

Anyone who knows me knows that gift cards ( for the most part) say, “I don’t care enough to be creative or to know you well enough to know what you really want.”  Anybody who truly knows me knows I loathe shopping.  I would rather have a useless gift that comes from the heart than a gift card. I am probably in the minority as not everybody feels that way. I know my sister-in-law would much rather have the gift card than an item that she’s just going to exchange anyway.  At least two of my boys love receiving gift cards and being able to get what they want (with pants and shoes it’s just as well; they can’t just be purchased as they have to be fitted to their bodies) For a while I refused to buy gift cards.  What does that say about me.  Giving someone a gift that I would never want for myself.  And yet how often do we buy or make things for people that we would never purchase or make for ourselves?   Sending a gift card to a newlywed ...

          Christmas is the season for miracles.  But miracles happen everyday.  Not just at Christmas time.              Often my mom and I would drive to Bakersfield to see my brother and watch him perform in whatever current play he was in.           One February when we happened to be on our way down, it was not the greatest of weather.  Snowing hard.  Blizzard almost.  It was ugly.           We had stopped off in Nephi to get something to eat.  Mom asked if we should check into a hotel and continue our journey the next day.  I left it totally up to her – for I was for getting off the freeway two exits passed our home town – which is less than ten miles.  I definetly wouldn’t be driving in that kind of weather.  But mom opted to go ...

            I recall one year it was announced in Relief Society that we had been given the opportunity for submitting a tree to the festival of trees  and were asked to save our frozen juice lids as we would be using them for making ornaments to decorate the tree.  We had an enrichment activity later on in the month making tin punch ornaments.           I continued saving juice lids long after the holidays.  What a cute idea.  I tried making tin punch ornaments several years later with Roland’s two oldest girls.  As I recall, they didn’t turn out too great.  Still I kept the lids.  My scouting calling was too short lived for tin punch introduction. Jenna found the lids when she was two or three. She’d play with them and count them and call it her money.  It was cute.  It definitely provided inexpensive entertainment.  S...

          I have absolutely LOVED eggnog since I was a kid.  Last year was actually the first year that I’ve not LOVED – it just isn’t as good as I remember.  Are the dairy product brands cheating us out of an ingredient perhaps?  Cutting costs in today’s economy?  I don’t see how.  The price of eggnog seems to be given the same value as gold.  I mean it’s always been more pricy than your milk or milk products – which also have increased in cost.  But I’m not even enjoying the “gold”           You would think with its ritzy price, I would savor every drop and make it count.  But the truth is I’m NOT enjoying it.  Or rather I did not enjoy it last year and have not even bothered with it this year. Could be my taste buds are warped?  I’ve always heard that smell a large percentage of what you taste and my smell has definitely gone.  ...

          He entered another house in a countless number of foster homes.  It was mid December and his new foster mom asked what he would like for Christmas.  His request was simple.  Never before had he been in any home long enough to even celebrate Christmas.  He wanted his own stocking – which Diane had planned on getting anyway.           They went out that night and allowed him to choose his very own stocking and made sure his name got written at the top.  He beamed for days and asked for permission to take his sock with him to school.  For him it represented a sense of belonging, something he hadn’t felt for almost ten years.           His biological mother had abused him and who knows how many others?  He had been recycled in the system so many times it wasn’t any wonder that he understood what it w...

          You can’t always control the outcome of what you’ve planned – but you can control your attitude towards the outcome.           Example:           You are driving your family to your in-laws to spend the holidays.  The car breaks down, or the weather prevents you from arriving to your destination at designated time.  What do you do? a.     Mope about it b.     Make the best of the situation I would hope that if it was my family that all of us would select the answer b.  Okay, so things didn’t work out to our expectations.  We can still create positive memories. We can stop off at the motel and learn more about the owners and/or staff that is working.  We can help them to have a more memorable Christmas.  We can sing Christmas carols.  We can tell stories...

          At the end of last month, Jenna (mentioned in this post ) decided that she and I would each write a story.  This is the one I came up with:           Once upon a time, in a land far away, there lived a colony of umbas.  Now “what is an umba?” you may ask. An umba was a creature so small that he was overlooked for many years. The umbas lived in an enchanted forest filled with candy canes and gumdrops. The candy canes, to them, were the size of trees.  And the gumdrops could be sat upon, the way a human might sit on a large rock.           One day an elf entered the forest where the umbas lived.  The elf had been sent on a mission by Santa Clause himself.  He had been given the field assignment of finding a treat that could be left in the stockings of good boys and girls. The umbas hid from the elf because he was so m...

          Many cultures, communities and families reenact the nativity story found in the Bible ( Luke 2 and Matt 1 and 2 )           My mom’s neighbor from across the street has always had a Christmas pageant from as far back as I can remember.  As she had four boys, I would always play Mary – until gradually other families were invited in and the role of Mary was passed off to other girls.           Over the years, my neighbors have been blessed with many grandsons – but not many granddaughters.  The role of Mary had gone to my niece – who (unlike me) quite frankly had become weary of the playing Mary every year.             The last year I remember when Ellen had played Mary was the year our neighbors got their first granddaughter.  There were four children born in the family that year...

          I LOVE music.  I love to sing – though I haven’t been blessed with a great singing voice nor have I done much to change that.  I’m certain that Corey has a much larger music collection than I.  And probably a larger variety of music.  Corey does have a gift.  And so does his partner.  Oh – the awesomeness!           I have instrumentals and vocals.  I have children’s music.  Pop music.  Oldies. Temporary Christian.  Even a few country songs (just a few though). But all of those put together don’t add up to the great number of music I have collected for the Christmas season.  I LOVE Christmas songs.  I love the familiar traditional songs.  I like the original ones that have not yet been popularized.  I love the ones about Santa.  About the festivities.  About the snow.  About celebrations.  An...

          Each of us has traditions.  Many are the same.  Some vary. Some get lost.  Some don’t work.  A tradition may be carried on for generations. Some may brush away.           One of my favorite Christmas books is “God’s Vitamin C for the Christmas Spirit”  which shares stories, ideas, traditions and reasons.  One of the thoughts I read was written by Christi Anne Shepeard in which she shares a tradition of “The Jesus Sock”           The story unfolds that there is an extra sock in her possession – one that doesn’t match the other socks selected for each family member that year.  She decided to make it a sock for the Savior in which her family would write letters and insert them into the sock – every year.            I thought that sounded like a cool tra...

          We had an awesome program at Relief Society earlier this month. The theme was on the origins of Christmas – why we use various icons in our holiday celebration.           The star, the angels, the nativity . . . those I could figure out.  But where did Santa Clause come from?  Or Christmas lights? Or the candy cane – though growing up I had always believed that it was to represent the crooks of the shepherds who were “abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night”  but there’s actually more to it – or so goes the legend.            Origins have become fabricated over the centuries.  Or else the decorative plant life was adapted from pagan celebration and reasons were made to fit the Christian holiday – which (unfortunately) often gets overlooked about why we have a Christmas and why we started celebrating it ...