Random Observations

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It is a sad state of affairs that on the very first day of Christmas break I was glad to have my children misbehave often enough that they could spend a good part of the day in their rooms being punished. Nice mother, eh?


Winter Cabin candle by Bath and Body Works smells, to me, like church incense. That's a good thing.


The cell phone, I have found, is good for lying in bed texting the younguns to shush in the family room below after the old folks have gone to bed for the night.


It is not good, however, for being texted at 1:30 a.m. by above-mentioned young adult child stating that the dog threw up. Give me a break.


All Christmas shopping should be done in a span of two weeks, otherwise one rogue gift will be placed in "a perfect spot that I'm sure to remember" and will likely have to be repurchased.


If siblings want to buy each other gifts, a "food only" rule keeps the spending to a minimum and prevents another trip to the mall or bullseye store. I highly recommend bottled soda pop (root beer and orange soda are big at our house), and highly-sought-after snack foods or sugar cereal that mom doesn't buy at any other time.


I have decided to shoot for a homemade gift for each child next year. I'm going to have to get creative, but I would love to get to one homemade gift, one used gift and one new gift. My oldest son actually suggested a Christmas with no gifts (yeah!). Coincidentally that comment corresponds to the first Christmas in which he has spent his own money.


And with that last random observation, I leave you with this quote from our dear John Paul the Great, that my mother-in-law sent me this morning:

"We must not transform and debase Christmas into a festivity of useless wastefulness, in a manifestation of facile consumerism.  Christmas is the feast of the humility, of the poverty, of the nakedness, of the lowliness of the Son of God, who came to give us His infinite love."
     --Pope John Paul II
 

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