7 Quick Takes about Needing Elder Care, a One-of-a-Kind Gingerbread Village, and Why I Love Being the Heart of the Home

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! Happy New Year!

—1—

This week between Christmas and New Year's is the happiest week of the year, in my opinion. It would be a little better if Phillip had any vacation time left, but he used it all on our transcontinental spectacular. 

(Phillip claims that he still feels like he's on vacation, though, because when he comes home after work we're just laughing and decorating gingerbread houses instead of running around with our hair on fire trying to get everyone fed and off to their after-school activities.)

—2—

How was your Christmas? This year we continued our no-gift Christmas and only gave experience gifts to the kids. 

Last year we printed out certificates for each one and thought of a creative way to package it; this year, we decided to print out a picture describing each one, cut it up, and hide the pieces around the house like a puzzle they needed to put together. (Everyone's was mounted on a different color construction paper so they could tell whose was whose.)

Now we're busy fitting as many experience gifts in as we can to the next two weeks. Monday was an escape room for the older kids, and today is indoor skydiving for the younger ones.  Tomorrow the teenagers are going with Phillip to Avatar in Imax 3D, Monday is pizza and candlepin bowling (New Englanders will know what this means), and on Tuesday the two oldest girls are taking a glassblowing class. 

The only thing we won't be able to do with the 18-year-old before she goes back to college is a family-friendly improv comedy show, which didn't have any showtimes available until later in January.

—3—

I was the one who got to go with my teenagers to the escape room. It's a fun place, with multiple hallways lined with mini-escape rooms. You can pick which ones you want to do, and you can do as many as you want before your time is up. 

In the car on the way home, my 16-year-old asked me "When does that switch happen where instead of the parent taking care of the kids, the kids take care of the parents?"

Thinking about people I know who are caregivers for their parents, I answered, "I guess it all depends on their health, but I'd say in their 70s or 80s?" Then I looked down and realized I was still wearing her sweatshirt, which she'd given me earlier at the escape room when I said I was cold. "Or maybe right now," I amended.

—4—

We committed to Christmas dinner at a friend's house, and even though it was a rush to get over there and it meant we didn't have time to clean up our own trashed house until the next day, I'm glad we went.

They invited a few other people, including an acquaintance one of their sons knew from work who only spoke Spanish. (I overhead heard Matías telling someone else in English that he was trying to learn and he sounded good to me, but based on my experience with my language exchange app, most non-English speakers who claim to be "beginners" actually speak English that is easily 5-10 times better than my Spanish. But I digress and am certainly not jealous.) Anyway, it was a lot of fun to speak with Matías and understand a solid 50% of what he said.

We had dinner, played some games, and enjoyed Christmas music. Our family brought over a set of handheld chimes we got that morning from my brother (the set we have is here, although there are free instructions online to make your own, too.) You pass out the chimes to different people in the group and try to follow along playing a Christmas carol from the attached songbook—it's harder than it sounds. 

The only problem was that our set only came with two mallets. Luckily, the dad of the family is a drummer and brought in over a dozen drumsticks for us to use as makeshift ones. I'm pretty sure I saw him exchange a look with his wife that said, "See? I told you I need this many drumsticks."

I know because I've seen that exact look from Phillip, but about tools.

—5—

The Christmas tradition my kids look forward to most is building gingerbread houses. It's evolved over the years, from pre-made kits into designing our own out of graham crackers (I realize you can bake your own gingerbread for houses, but I'm not that kind of mom. I impress myself enough by making the icing.)

The 11-year-old.

The 8-year-old.

The 18-year-old.

The 6-year-old.

The 14-year-old decided to model his house after Gru's house from Despicable Me, although with Santa on top (I love the hat.)

The 14-year-old.

The 16-year-old.

The kids always enjoy the building portion, but their real favorite part comes on New Year's Day, when we go around the table and smash them with a meat tenderizer.

—6—

My 11-year-old has been doing a lot of baking during the break. After watching her, I came up with a great idea for a YouTube channel: it's called "ADHD Cooking" and every episode starts with a recipe but ends up in a completely unrelated random project. 

I think it could be pretty funny.

—7—

I saw this meme online and immediately loved it:

People sometimes (read: all the time) ask me if I'm going to go get a job now that my kids are all in school. The answer is no, I'm perfectly content doing what I'm doing, but I've never been able to sum it up this perfectly. 

Unless earning a paycheck was a matter of financial necessity, I just wouldn't consider it an investment of my time or energy that makes sense.

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7 Quick Takes about Clean Bathrooms, Replacing the Nutcracker, and How to Save a Closet from Disaster

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

—1—

Our 18-year-old is home for Christmas!

On her first day here, she noticed that the bathroom was quite dirty and without comment or fanfare, she emptied the trash and cleaned the sink without anyone even suggesting that it needed to be done.

Have I died? Is this heaven? Is this what having adult children is like?? 

—2—

Having a kid go to college isn't at all like I thought it would be. Day to day, it's honestly not all that different: during their last few years of high school they're so busy you just don't see them a ton. But at the same time, when they actually leave it causes a pervasive shift in the household dynamic. Everything seems a little less fun.

So we are loving having her home for the next few weeks. She's been practicing a Christmas violin-piano duet to play at church on Sunday with the 16-year-old, reading bedtime stories for the 6- and 8-year-old, and giving pointers to the 11-year-old on how to play the flute.

Our first order of business when she arrived, though, was to decorate the Christmas tree:

Second consecutive year that I've forgotten we need to get a new tree topper.

The only bad part is that my younger kids have school all this week, and it's physically painful to send them every day when we all just want to stay home and bake cookies and watch Christmas movies and be on vacaaaaaationnnnnn!

—3—

The kids are growing out of The Nutcracker, which we've seen every year since forever, so this year we did something different and went to see a stage play of A Christmas Carol.

The night before, we watched A Muppet Christmas Carol so the little kids would understand what was going on. 

And it worked, because the whole time the 6-year-old was leaning over and asking me while pointing at an actor, "Is that the frog? Are they the pigs? Is that the guy with the long nose?" So to him, the original story has muppets, and this was just a nice adaptation.

—4—

Speaking of Christmas, we are a little behind. And by a little, I mean a lot.

The cookie plates we deliver to the neighbors still aren't finished and the Christmas cards are definitely going to get there on New Years, but for some reason it's not bothering me. I feel like it'll get done when it gets done and there's no point in stressing about it. 

I think it's because I'm 40 this year. I've heard this about being 40. I'm excited.

—5—

Another reason I'm not stressed about Christmas prep is probably that I'm absorbed in something new I'm doing at church. I was asked to be the Young Women president, which means I'm going to be leading the teenage girls' organization for the next few years.

It's a time-consuming endeavor, and even more importantly it requires a lot of empathy and prayer. Anyone who's ever been between the ages of 12 and 17 knows what a critical time of your life that is, and I want to facilitate these girls developing a relationship with God that will carry them through the best and the worst of it. That feels like a really tall order.

—6—

One of my first duties was cleaning out the closet in the Young Women's room at church, which was no joke. Think about how messy the closets in your home get: now imagine how much worse it would be if multiple families were using them, and every few years a new person took over but the old one left all their stuff behind, and anything leftover always got stashed in there "just in case," and no one ever wanted to throw anything out because they weren't sure if it was being used by someone else. 

That's the Young Women closet.

To make matters worse, the previous president told me she just found out after 4 years that the right half of the closet didn't belong to another organization like she'd assumed. So there was some old, old stuff in there. (When I cleaned it out, I found a poster from 2015.)

My 18-year-old, bless her heart, volunteered to come and help me. When we looked inside the stuffed closet, she turned to me and murmured, "Mom, I think this is why God called you to be the Young Women president."

Which might be true. As horrible as this looks, I actually love tackling stuff like this, and I think I'm pretty good at it.

Me, in the middle of a two-hour archaeological dig through the contents.

"I can't believe this all fit in one closet," my daughter mused once we had everything out where we could see it. "It barely fits in one room."

Several days and a few trips to the dump later, it looked like this:

All I have to do now is label the bins so everyone knows what goes where.

Is an organized closet the most important part of being Young Women president? No. But I can't concentrate in the middle of chaos, and I want to devote my full attention to the girls and to Jesus Christ. This is just what I need to do first.

—7—

My 6-year-old competed in his first gymnastics meet. I don't stay and watch his practices too often because I usually have to be home for the other kids, so it was pretty cool to see everything he's been learning. He's really starting to move like a gymnast, with a degree of control over his body that is weird to see in a little kid. 

It makes sense, though, because his practices are intense. Case in point: their coach is giving them a "break" for the week between Christmas and New Years, which means only 5½  hours of practice instead of 7½. It's a good thing (1) my son loves gymnastics and (2) I love his coach Mr. Chris, who is the best role model a little boy could have.

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7 Quick Takes about Auto Schools, Dilemmas with Ricotta Cheese, and Nativity Plays that Aren't Wholly Appropriate

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you buy something from those links, I get a small referral commission at no extra cost to you.

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

—1—

We knew it was coming sooner or later, but our pet rat Scout passed away on Monday. Rats don't have a very long life span on average, and it was time. Scout has actually been on the decline for a while, so it definitely wasn't a surprise and actually came as a little bit of a relief.

Scout (the gray one) and Piper (the brown one) cuddling in their cage.

We're not really sure how to gauge how much her cagemate Piper misses her. They did fight over food a lot, but I'm sure they were buddies, too. Piper refused to come out of her house for about two days after Scout died, so she must've been grieving in her own rat way. My son and I just read Where the Red Fern Grows so let's hope that situation isn't going to happen. 

—2—

My 16-year-old is learning to drive and she's using a different auto school for her road lessons than her older sister did. And this one is WAAAAAAAAYYYY better.

I say that because when she has a road lesson, they will pick her up at the house. That's right. I don't have to take her to the driver's ed place or anything. It's so convenient!

Unfortunately it's also more awkward when she forgets she had a lesson and they pull up in the driveway waiting for her, which also happened this week.

—3—

I was cleaning out my fridge and I made a small pile on the counter of things I needed to use up. The hardest was the ricotta cheese, which I bought for a recipe my daughter was making, and she only used half the carton. I've eaten ricotta about twice in my life so I had no idea what to do with it.

After some Googling, I ended up with a recipe for orange cranberry muffins with ricotta that was just perfect, because my pile also included a partial bag of fresh cranberries left over from Thanksgiving.

Put these in my face.

These muffins were so delicious, I think I have no choice but to make them again. But I used up the last of the ricotta, so I would have to buy more, and most likely I'd use up the cranberries but then have leftover ricotta again... 

So does anyone have tips on what to do with half a bag of fresh cranberries before I get myself into this vicious cycle?

—4—

Usually our winters are pretty quiet when it comes to kids' sports and after-school activities, but this year a few of them said they wanted to be in stuff. It's only a few weeks into the season and I'm already regretting signing them up. Turns out, I need that time to hibernate.

How do other parents of large families coordinate this problem? I feel like no one child is overscheduled, but since I'm the taxi driver for everything I personally am ridiculously overscheduled. 

Speaking of which, I recently read an article called I Spend 24 Hours a Week Driving My Kids Around and my first thought was "Twenty-four? That doesn't sound too bad." I'd kind of like to time myself for a week in the name of curiosity, but I'm also kind of scared to find out. 

—5—

Without warning, a YouTube video from a channel called Foster Parent Partner showed up in my feed one afternoon, and you know how the rabbit hole goes. When I looked up from my phone, it was dinnertime and I'd cooked nothing for my kids. 

Which was ironic, since the reason I didn't feed them is that I was binge watching videos on caring for hypothetical foster children I don't currently have.

(Before you get excited, I should say that we're not thinking about fostering right now although it's a possibility in the future. It's just YouTube. The YouTube algorithm thinks I should be thinking about fostering, so now I am.)

—6—

My first-graders class asks volunteers to come in and share their family's holiday traditions. Other parents have come in to share about Diwali and Hannukah, and today I went in to share our Christmas tradition: decorating with nativity sets. I did the same thing in my oldest daughter's first grade class a million years ago (well, twelve) and it was really fun.

I brought in our Fisher Price nativity to show the kids, and after talking about it we let them play with the pieces. As always, it took about 2 seconds for it to transform into an action set: "AAAAAHHHHH! Baby Jesus is falling off the cliff!! Let's save him! Quick, get the wise men!"

It reminds me of last night, when I saw my kids pushing Jesus around in a makeshift car seat:

The creativity never ceases to amaze.

—7—

After all that, I feel like sharing a slightly more reverent nativity scene, so here's a beautiful one I saw on Wednesday as I was leaving the temple for my church:

I've been volunteering there twice a month and I'm absolutely loving it. My post-writing game is kind of weak right now, but should I attempt to write one on the temple and what I do there? Would you be interested in reading about that?

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7 Quick Takes about Pieces of Pie, Discouraging Progress Reports, and Cashing in my Christmas Miracle

Disclaimer: This page contains affiliate links. If you buy something using them, I may receive a small referral commission at no extra cost to you.

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

—1—

One of my brothers-in-law who has little kids has been fielding ideas on how to talk to them about sex. I forwarded him the post I wrote on how we've done it at our house, but then I started thinking how we should revisit the topic in a different way with my teenagers now that they're older.

I started, as always, by searching the Internet for any relevant parenting books. (I love parenting books.) I entered a promising-looking title into the search bar at Amazon to see the reviews, and as I was scrolling through the list of related titles I started laughing out loud.

Boldly and proudly standing on the list, for some reason, was "The Totally Awesome Book of Useless Information." So there's that perspective, I guess.

—2—

In other funny Internet search news, later that same day I was reserving Christmas movies on the library's website. I typed the movie title Christmas Chronicles into the search bar. The library didn't have it (I think it's actually a Netflix movie), but it served up some related items it thought I might enjoy instead.

The first result was Interview with the Vampire. I guess both "chronicles" and "interview" sound vaguely newspaper-y, but I think that's about where the similarities end. I haven't seen either movie, though, so I guess I can't be too sure.

—3—

My teenagers were supposed to bring some cookies to their early-morning scripture study class before school, so we were in a hurry getting them made before everyone had to go to bed the night before.

The conscientious 16-year-old and the highly distractable 11-year-old were on the job. But in a rare role reversal, the 11-year old was the one keeping the project on the rails.

"What's going on?" the 16-year-old asked, flustered. "Why are you focused and I'm not? What's happening?"

In the end, they were able to finish the cookies, though. At class the next morning, they had a short devotional and then they traded with everyone else to make holiday cookie plates. My son dropped his off at the fire station on the way to school, and my daughter is taking hers to the library this afternoon.

—4—

Inspired by a talk at the most recent general conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we're doing a 6-week series of family home evenings on the names given to Christ in the Bible. For each one, we're focusing especially on how we can accept His invitation to "come follow me" by emulating whatever attribute a name highlights.

Last week, we talked about how Jesus is the bread of life (John 6), and set a goal to help someone be spiritually filled that week. For dessert afterward, we ate banana bread.

This week, we talked about how Jesus is the prince of peace (Isaiah 9:6) and set a goal to make peace when we find ourselves in a tense situation. And then the kids wanted another themed dessert... so what they came up with was prince of peace → prince of piece → piece of pie and there you go.

Their scheme worked. Chocolate cream.

They're already planning on ice cream sandwiches for when we talk about Jesus being "the mediator," (get it, the ice cream in the middle brings it together?) and a marshmallow cookie recipe they found for "light of the world" because they're light and fluffy. The connections get more tenuous after that.

Is this an exercise in irreverence? I'm not really sure. But the kids are into it and we're all at least trying in our own small way to become more like Jesus by concentrating on our goals, so I'll continue to allow it.

—5—

Duolingo sent me an end-of-year progress report. Since April, I've spent 15,423 minutes learning Spanish. 

And that's 257 hours of just Duolingo. I haven't kept track, but I've probably spent another 200 hours listening to Spanish podcasts, looking things up, watching moves/TV, reading books in Spanish, talking to friends on my language exchange app... and it's actually pretty demoralizing because I still struggle to express myself in an actual conversation. 

Languages are HARD, guys. Really hard.

—6—

I've never been to the eye doctor, except for an emergency visit for a scratched cornea. But I'm taking a medication for my lupus that may cause vision changes, so I need to start going for regular exams every year.

After going to my first eye exam on Wednesday, I want to know: why does no one complain about this?? I HATED going to the eye doctor. It was the worst. I would rather go to the dentist any day, hands down.

When they put drops in my eyes to dilate my pupils, my vision got so unfocused I couldn't even read the name tag of the receptionist on the way out. I could see cars and people so I still drove home, but I couldn't have read you a street sign to save my life, not even the big ones on the freeway. 

When I got home I just sat there for a while, unable to do much because basically every task I do during the day involves needing to see, and then I took a nap. (To check for damage specific to my medication, I'd also had to do a field vision test which the tech described as a "pretty intense test," and my brain was pretty tired from that, anyway.)

—7—

When Phillip was working from home all the time due to COVID, we set up one of those Japanese Shoji screen-style room dividers behind his home office so it looked nice on Zoom calls.

But he's mostly back to the office now, so we're selling it on Facebook Marketplace. And as I was setting the divider up to take pictures of it to sell, it tipped over and one of the Shoji screen-style panels caught on something and RIPPED!

Luckily, I tried smoothing together the edges with some Fray Check and the fabric knit together so well I couldn't even tell it happened. And I was still able to sell it. Which is great, but I think I've used up my Christmas miracle now.

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7 Quick Takes about Dumb Times to Visit the Mall, Sunday Pie, and What Christmas Sounds Like in Latin America

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you buy something using them, I may earn a small referral commission at no extra cost to you.

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

—1—

I don't know what I was thinking, but I went to the mall on Black Friday. I know, I know. But I honestly didn't think it would be that crowded because (1) it was afternoon and (2) who goes to the mall anymore?

I get my kids' pictures taken at J.C. Penney every year around their birthdays, and it didn't even occur to me when I made the appointment that on Black Friday, everyone in the world would be in front of us in line wearing their Christmas pajamas to get a cute photo for their holiday cards.

—2—

I did actually do some shopping that weekend, though. My 14-year-old needed some clothes, and we had to visit a few separate stores, but found everything we needed. 

Since we'd been so successful, I told my son that we should go back and return one of the more expensive pairs of pants we'd bought him earlier.

"How much were they?" he wanted to know.

"$40."

"$40??" he exclaimed. "That's, like, ten chicken parm subs!"

I know he likes getting chicken parmesan sub sandwiches on his breaks at work, but I didn't know he likes them so much he uses them as a unit of measurement.

—3—

Originally, our plan for Thanksgiving had been to get together with some friends, but we cancelled when some people in our family got sick. Thankfully, we were all better by that weekend so we had them over for pie on Sunday.

I forgot to take pictures of the pie, but here's Phillip and the 8-year-old making the whipped cream.

It was really nice, considering that our actual Thanksgiving was so small without our two oldest kids there. (Our oldest is at college, and we decided to fly our 16-year-old out there to visit her and have Thanksgiving dinner with our family that lives in the area.)

—4—

The 16-year-old says she had a really good time. She learned to navigate the airport complete with a layover each way, and figured out how to use the city bus/train system there, too. 

She spent a few days staying at her aunt's house and visiting campus with her sister, and then they all took a road trip (along with their uncle, their other aunt, and the three dogs they share between them) to a third aunt's house for Thanksgiving dinner.

In the past, she's gotten nauseous on long car rides so I decided to try these motion sickness bands. Have you heard of them? Whether they actually worked or whether it was just a mind trick, I don't know. But she said she didn't feel sick, so I consider it $8 well spent.

—5—

The state has been doing some work on the power lines near our house. For several days last month, heavy machinery went back and forth building an enormous wooden walkway out to the middle of the field where the lines were. 

Then it sat quiet for a while, and recently they brought all the heavy machines back and removed all the wood planks. Other than building and taking down the walkway, I never saw them actually doing anything out there. 

And then a few days after that, the workers came back and inexplicably spread hay all over the area. 

"It's like an A.I. is generating tasks for them to do or something," my 14-year-old said. Which actually would explain a lot about why government organizations work the way they do.

—6—

Our library just recently started what it calls the Library of Things. You can check out stuff besides just books and movies. They don't have a ton because it's fairly new, but I just checked out a telescope.

Phillip and the 11-year-old tried it out briefly one night while I was gone (I think it was pants-shopping night with my son) but we really need to take it somewhere with no trees on a clear night for a better viewing experience.

In the meantime, it's sitting in a Rubbermaid tote in our hallway and I'm really hoping the kids don't break it first.

—7—

Well, it's December now so I guess that means it's time to start thinking about Christmas. I've been talking a lot to my Spanish language exchange partners about how they celebrate in their countries.

I guess it never really occurred to me before, but there is a whole other world of Latin Christmas music that I've never even heard. 

I can think of a few Christmas songs I hear on the radio every year (I'm looking at you, Wham!) that I wouldn't mind being replaced with a few good villancicos.

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