Christmas Pixies

As we enter December and the Christmas season, let us remember the true meaning for this holiday. That has become sort of a trite little phrase that is easy to say, but not always easy to implement amidst the hussle and bussle of life. I am trying especially hard this year to make this a memorable Christmas, and not because of the magical gifts that were received. I took step one by committing to a three gift Christmas. Rob and I will give each of the children and ourselves: Something to read, something to wear, and something to do. We’ll let Santa take care of the toy. 🙂

I have such happy memories from my childhood when we would leave gifts for a family on their doorstep, ring the doorbell and run. It is one of my fondest memories of the spirit of Christmas and was so much fun for my family. I still vividly remember laughing quietly with my Dad as we hid behind a parked car when the kids came running out their front door to try and catch us. We called it “Pixies.” It was done ward-wide then and we would all meet at the ward Christmas party to discover who our “Pixie” family was. I decided to organize this on a smaller level with some of the families in our ward. I sent out an email message, and there was a great response. There will be 19 families participating and I am so excited! I have several ideas already, but can’t share them here because I happen to know that many of them read this blog (even if they don’t comment 😉 ).

If you’d like to start up Pixies in your area, here’s the information:

Pixie 2007

1. You fill out my questionnaire and send it back to me by November 30th. Then I will put all families in a hat and draw names to assign each family to another family (from those who gave me a questionnaire) to pixie. I will send you the information for your family to pixie by December 4th.

2. You will be the pixies to this family for two weeks (December 7 – 21). You can leave homemade goodies, crafts, decorations, notes, flowers… anything fun and festive.

These are the rules:
*You must leave at least 2 pixie surprises each week. More if you like… You can either doorbell ditch or wait until you’ve made a safe getaway and call with a pixie message (although with caller ID this is a bit tricky), or even mail a package etc.
*There is a $20.00 spending limit (total for all gifts). Please don’t go over, it will just make the family feel awkward if the gifts are too expensive. Homemade is best and the more creative the better!
*The goal isn’t really to catch your pixies, so the family inside the home must count to ten before answering the door.

3. On your very last pixie you can either choose to remain anonymous or reveal your identity!

—As a side note, if you’re feeling ambitious, you can also do a pixie on your own for someone who would not be participating, but could use some special attention this season!

Pixie Questionnaire

Participating Family Name:
Parents or Head of Household:
Children (name, age, and gender):
Pets (name and type of animal):
Any allergies:
Days you are planning to be away or on vacation:
Your address and phone number (and gate code if required):

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I hope this will help build the joy in giving and serving, and don’t forget to read the scripture story of Christ’s birth:

Luke, Chapter Two
And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:) To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, “Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”

Living Vicariously Through My Sister

Erica sent me an email with this story, and I laughed so hard. She said it would be ok to share it here. Those crazy kids!!…

Do any of you remember the Christmas light “war” we had with our neighbors two years ago (last year they went to Hawaii, so things were calm on the battle front)? As a brief summary, we went back and forth stealing lights off the other’s house and adding them to our own. Well, we are at it again (I know, I know, we are like 15 years old at heart!). We took this old nasty couch that was left here in our out building (where we park our lawn mower and that’s about it), wrapped it in Christmas lights and put it in front of their house. When they came home from their Thanksgiving in Arizona it was there to greet them.

Then this morning when I left to take the boys to story time this is what I found….

That’s right, that is the roof of our house!!!!!!!!!!

Gotta love good neighbors!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Nana’s Cool Machine

It’s 10:30 on Friday night and Rob just got home. It has been one of those long weeks. Rob billed over 60 hours this week so far (tomorrow he will add a few more). Rob is missing the kids because he has worked so much this week that he hasn’t really seen them. I am missing Rob because I’ve been around the kids so much…

I thought I’d try to do some catching up. My mom came down before Thanksgiving and we had a Totally Ready Open House for her products. (By the way, the site was just redesigned, very chic.) She also brought with her a brand new dreamy sewing machine and we all had to try it out, including the kids. It has all kinds of bells and whistles, a self threading needle, thread cutting feature, a zillion decorative stitches, etc. etc. She is so into quilting now, and I have never seen her this excited about any machine in my life! She taught me how to do “paper piecing“, her newest favorite that simplifies the patterns, but makes things look so complicated and impressive. I’ll show you what I made another time… It’s so fun. We all were amazed and look forward to seeing the projects Nana comes up with next.

Nana shows the girls how to program a fancy stitch into the machine.

Hunter had fun trying it out too!

Hunter took this picture and I just thought it was a great one.

Preschool Friends

Ryan, Hannah, Krista, Lindsey, Joey

Hannah has preschool every Tuesday morning. The mothers of the kids participating teach the lessons, and it was my turn yesterday. Because it was Veterans Day, we talked about our country. We had a brief talk about why it’s great to live in a free country and did this fun flag craft. This group is still pretty young, so there isn’t a strong structure to the class, but we played freeze dance to some patriotic songs, played outside some of those classic kids games like Duck duck goose and London Bridges, marched around with the flags they made and had plenty of play time. We talked about the different colors on the flag as they ate their snack of jello (red), banana (white), and sprinkles (blue). This is a fun group and I always enjoy teaching them!

Making a Commitment

This year will be a different one for us on Christmas day. Rob and I have decided to give each of our children just three gifts. This will be symbolic of the gifts brought to baby Jesus by the three wisemen. At this time of year I usually spend a lot of time shopping and preparing for the big holiday. I hope that by simplifying the gifts, I will have more time and energy for building faith and participating in service with my children. It’s so easy to get through the Christmas holiday and realize too late that there were very few opportunities to really celebrate the true meaning of the day. I was hesitant to do it because I worried that the kids would be disappointed on Christmas morning. Especially since this year we will not have any visitors and there will be a lot of the day left to fill with less gift opening to fill it up. I have mentioned it to Hunter and Emma, and they seem surprisingly happy with the idea. I did hear Hunter say to Emma, “They can be better if we have less of them.” Rob and I had decided to do this last week, and then today I went to a meeting at church that really convinced me that this is a good decision for us.

In my enrichment meeting I was reminded of the counsel given by Sister Julie Beck, our Relief Society General President: “We must stand strong and immovable in faith, strong and immovable in family, and strong and immovable in relief… as you focus on essentials (you) will be given the courage to forego the frivolous.” I’m looking forward to a holiday season with a focus on faith, family, and service (relief)!

Out With The Old…

And in with the new! After spending $1,800.00 to fix our 96 Galant, it still came back from the mechanic with some serious problems and a list of things that still needed to be done. The car sounded more like a motorcycle, and when sitting at a stop light you felt like you just might crack the street with all of the vibrating going on. (In our community, the lights are annoyingly long anyway and this only made it worse!) The only solution was to put the car in neutral when it was idling.

Then on Halloween night, Rob called me from his parking structure at work and said, “Amy, we need a new car. I think we have hit the ground.” He was referring to the philosophy we have always had to drive our cars “into the ground” before we get a new one. So the last straw was that now, on top of everything else the mechanic suggested we fix, the battery had just died and Rob was stranded in the parking structure. Luckily a friend from work came along and gave him a jump, but the Galant has been parked in our driveway ever since. So it’s time to say farewell to a good car. It was a faithful, reliable car from the time we bought it eight years ago until that fateful night returning home from the hockey game. We are considering donating it for a tax write-off since the trade in and resale value isn’t much for a car that won’t start! Right now our charity will likely be Mothers Against Drunk Drivers. At least it’s nice to know we can help out a good cause.

We did our research through Consumer Reports and decided that the Honda Civic seemed like the best fit for us. And by us, I guess I mean mostly Rob since he will drive it the most. It has great gas mileage, crash test ratings, and reliability ratings so the only test left was to drive it and see if we liked it. Rob called around to several dealerships getting quotes and we settled on the place with the best deal. We went in on Saturday afternoon, and the process seemed to drag on forever. In fact, it did take up the whole day. We didn’t leave the dealer until 6:15 pm. The kids behaved well overall especially since I wasn’t prepared with snacks or anything to be there for almost 6 hours! We have heard that 6 hours is the national average for buying a car from start to finish. Can that really be true? Even looking back I can’t figure out exactly why it took so long, but by the end it was excruciating and we were all so exhausted that it was hard to be excited at all. Most of the people we dealt with were pleasant and nice, but the one dark cloud was their “closer.” Luckily, Rob had a copy of the e-mail we received with the quoted price because this guy wanted us to pay $1,500.00 more. Even after seeing the quote he immediately threw their internet sales guy under the bus explaining why he should never have given us this price and now he would agree to do that deal only if we financed through them. I was proud as Rob held firm and I even made a few comments myself about how ridiculous that was. So in the end, we came out with the deal promised us with our own lender, but unfortunately this hard-nose salesman sort of ruined the experience for us. Never go to a dealer cold! Do your research and get quotes in writing first!

So now our silver Civic is part of the family and we are having fun trying out all of the buttons and features. We plan to drive this car for at least twenty years, so it’s a good thing we like it so much!