The Volunteer

I've been thinking about sacrifice this week for a couple of reasons. First of all, Lent began this week.  Second of all, my brother Tim had a pretty exciting moment when he released a song he wrote about volunteer firemen.

Most of my life, I've never been willing to give up my own safety, let alone life for someone else.  I was single until I was 32.  Although I always wanted kids, I was pretty well self-insulated until about 13 years ago.  That's when I got married and had kids.  This, of course, is a game changer for most of us.    You don't know how much you can love another person until you become a parent.

Then another revelation comes along that this is how much Jesus loves you. He loved you enough to give up his life for you. I'm not sure how anyone really understand that love, but I do think God gave us children so we could understand it better.  He did it, knowing that some would never say so much as thank you.  He did it anyway. Lent gives us a yearly reminder of that.  We try to focus on becoming more open to sacrifice as we remember the sacrifice he made for us.


I'm a firm believer that things merge together in life to show us how everything is connected. We get the same lessons over and over again in different forms.  As I mentioned, my brother released a song he wrote this week called "The Volunteer".  It is a tribute to volunteer firemen who take this concept of sacrifice very seriously.  They put themselves in danger for people they don't even know. Tim was a volunteer fireman himself for many years and wrote this song from his experience. Check out his song here on YouTube for a sample.  You can purchase this song as a download as well from CDBaby.

It's important to remind ourselves there are people in the world like this.  It can seem impossible at times to live up to Jesus's example until we remember there are people like volunteer firemen who do it on a daily basis.  They want to do it for people they've never even met, whether or not they ever get a thank you.  They do it anyway.  Isn't that just what Jesus did?  He volunteered for us, for our lives.  Wouldn't it be a better deal for all of us if we could embrace this notion?

Thank a volunteer fireman if you get a chance.  And download "The Volunteer".

Kim

The "Bill" Jar

Last year, my New Year's Resolution was to save more money.  I don't know about you, but for me money has always been an elusive concept to truly master.  I've always just tried to live by the edict, "Don't spend more than you have coming in." This is a good rule of thumb, but it's not as highly effective as I'd like it to be.  If there's one thing I can tell you that I've learned for sure about money, it's that it's all about adjusting.  Adjustments I've had to make in the past include but are not limited to: being a full time graduate student and living on $5000 for a year, being single and learning to live on my first "professional" salary, living with my husband and managing two incomes, not working for 12 weeks after the birth of my daughter, stepping up to a bigger mortgage and two children.  Alterations had to be made along the way. It's a constant balancing act.  And although I've never found myself in serious debt or trouble, I've always found consistently saving for extras a little tricky. 
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Enter this 52 week savings plan found on Pinterest.  I liked this idea because it was so concrete.  Increase the amount you save by $1 every week.  Have $1378 saved by the end of the year.

I did it!  Yay me!

I'm happy to report, I kept my resolution.  It started out very painlessly.  Then it got a little tricky until I had enough in there to make change because there were weeks when I didn't have exactly $13 or $37 on hand in cash.  There were some weeks I got behind, but I liked the way the paper kept me on track.  I could cross off the weeks.  If I got behind on weeks 23 and 24, I knew I owed the jar $47.  I could catch up by checking the paper. 

And yes, I did save it as CASH.  This probably wasn't the safest thing to do since it was just stored in a jar in my house, but it did go into the bank at the end of the year. There were times I considered putting it in our existing savings account, but I didn't because I really wanted to keep track of it as a separate amount. I didn't want it to be part of the regular savings.  I wanted to have it for something special.  It would be too easy for me not to be accountable for it if it were lumped in with the other, regular savings. There were also times when I considered opening a separate account for it.  I don't really have a good reason for why I didn't do that, other than I just never got around to it.  It definitely would have been easier to transfer the odd $17 online and safer than having the actual cash in my house.  But I do think using actual money was a constant reminder to me to keep up with the plan.

Here's the other thing I didn't do.  I didn't earmark this money for a particular purpose.  But guess what?  I had the perfect thing come up just as I finished the plan.  Several weeks before Christmas, I tried to get tickets to a concert in Nashville for my husband and I as a Christmas gift to him.  The website the tickets were selling on crashed due to an overwhelming response, and I wasn't able to get them using my phone.  But then an e-mail came the week before Christmas saying there were tickets still available. I had gone on the waitlist and could still get them if I wanted to!  I secretively did so and surprised him with a two day getaway between Christmas and New Year's.  I knew we could afford it (especially important right around the holidays when money is going out right and left) because I had twice the amount of money saved in the jar for the travel, tickets, and accommodations!  Half of it is saved for some other purpose that has yet to present itself.

On our way to a little vacay!

So this year, I'm trying something different. No more jar or trying to make change - just $50 a week into a separate account.  I made up a similar sheet to keep myself on track. If that works, I should have $2600 by 2016.  And I'm not sure what I'm saving for, but I know it will have to wait until 2017 to figure it out.  That is a lovely feeling.

Kim

15 Books in 2015

Last year as everyone was making New Year's Resolutions, I decided to do something that was loosely along the lines of a resolution.  I set up a book group on Facebook called "14 Books in 2014".  The idea was to try to read at least 14 books during the year and to keep track of each one while sharing the books I read with members and getting suggestions from them.  You can read the original post for this here.

A birthday gift from my sister-in-law!



This was an excellent challenge for me.  There were times when I actually said to myself, "Turn the t.v. off/put the iPad down and pick up your book."  So I did.  And I think I'm better for it.

This group ended up with more members than I imagined.  Some of you I know very well, and some of you I've never met.  I'm glad I got to spend some of 2014 with you!  I enjoyed sharing my thoughts with you and hearing your suggestions and thoughts on the books you read.

I'm proud to say I read 27 books this year.  I was hoping to get to 28 (double the number 14), but things were busy around the holidays and it just didn't happen.


Here's my list:


#1 Black Heels to Tractor Wheels by Ree Drummond
#2 What The Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell
#3 Notorious Nineteen by Janet Evanovich
#4 This Is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper
#5 Dark Places by Gillian Flynn
#6 A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby
#7 The Monuments Men by Robert M. Edsel and Bret Witter
#8 Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
#9 Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
#10 Wonder by R.J. Palacio
#11 You Should Have Known by Jean Hanff Korelitz
#12 The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin
#13 The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
#14 Shotgun Lovesongs by Nickolas Butler
#15 Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
#16 Happier At Home Gretchen Rubin
#17 The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
#18 Horns by Joe Hill
#19 The Switch by Elmore Leonard
#20 Heart Shaped Box by Joe Hill
#21 Kinsey & Me by Sue Grafton
#22 Frindle by Andrew Clements
#23 I Never Met a Story I Didn't Like: Mostly True Tall Tales by Todd Snider
#24 I Can't Complain: All Too Personal Essays by Elinor Lipman
#25 The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty
#26 What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty
#27 The View From Penthouse B by Elinor Lipman


 I'm proud of the number 27.  One way to look at that number is that it averages out to one book every two weeks for the year.  Of course, it didn't actually work out that way.  I'm sure I read more over the summer when I wasn't working.


Here are some other ways to look at that number:

8 Non-Fiction Books
19 Fiction Books


2 Children's Literature Books : Wonder and Frindle (I actually could have included two others I read aloud to my class this year, but neither of them was worth mention.)


Six Books that Were Made Into Movies: This is Where I Leave You, A Long Way Down, The Monuments Men, The Fault in Our Stars, Horns, The Switch (Life of Crime was the name of the movie).  I 've only seen one of them, The Fault in Our Stars.


6 Authors That I Read Multiple Books Of: Malcolm Gladwell, Gillian Flynn, Gretchen Rubin, Joe Hill, Elinor Lipman, and Liane Moriarty


13 Never-Before-Read-Authors: Jonathan Tropper, Robert M. Edsel and Bret Witter (counting them as one since they collaborated on the same book), Gretchen Rubin, John Green, Nickolas Butler, Margaret Atwood, Donna Tartt, Joe Hill, Andrew Clements, Todd Snider, Jean Hanff Korelitz, R.J. Palacio, and Liane Moriarty


And then because I can't pick a favorite, I made up a few special awards...

Most Inspirational To Read More Historical Non-Fiction goes to... The Monuments Men


The "Stayed With Me For The Longest in an Unsettling but Fascinating Way" Award goes to... Oryx and Crake


Most Overrated and Beat-A-Dead-Horse Award goes to... The Goldfinch (I'm sorry.  She's obviously a very gifted writer.  But the painting! My gosh, the painting!  Enough!  This did have one of my favorite characters of the year, though, in the form of Boris.)


Mentioned the Most in Anecdotal Way Award... Blink


Best Love Story Award... Black Heels to Tractor Wheels


Made Me Cry Award... Wonder


Fastest Read Award...The Switch by the incomparable Elmore Leonard.  RIP, my friend.


The Never Before Read Author I'm Most Glad to Have Checked Out Award... A tie between Joe Hill and Liane Moriarty


So, are you ready?  15 Books in 2015 is just beginning.  I hope you'll all stay on board and invite some new friends.  First up for me is Little Big Lies by Liane Moriarty.  Enjoy and please share what you're reading and your thoughts!

Kim

Chain

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens is one of my favorite stories of all times. Because it's a classic, it's been retold in all kinds of different ways via books, television, movies, and on the stage.   Then there's the fact that the main character's name has become a part of our everyday language.  Everyone knows what it means to be a "Scrooge". 


When I was young, we would go to midnight mass on Christmas Eve.  While we were waiting for midnight to roll around, A Christmas Carol starring Alistair Sim would be on and we would watch it until it was time to go to mass.  That version is, of course, a classic in its own right, but I think my very favorite version when I was younger was Rich Little's A Christmas Carol.  It was on HBO nonstop in December.  And I watched it nonstop.  Little played nearly every character in the story as a different actor: W.C. Fields as Scrooge, Paul Lynde as Bob Cratchit, Peter Sellers as the Ghost of Christmas Future - you get the idea.  It was delightful.  I haven't seen it since I was young, but I would love to sit and watch it again.


Which brings me to the fact that I recently read an excellent book entitled What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty.  The title character hits her head and wakes up thinking she is thirty years old, happily married, and about to become a mother.  The problem is she's forty, about to be divorced, and the mother of three children she can't remember.  It hit me about a week after finishing it that this story reminded me of A Christmas Carol.  The present day Alice with amnesia is seeing what she thinks of as her future, but she is in fact stuck in her past because of her memory loss.  I loved the way this book explored how people change so gradually, they can wake up one day and not even recognize who they have become.  It's a great read that I highly recommend.


But back to A Christmas Carol.  Two things about this story come to mind for me during every Christmas season.  One is this:

This is probably what a lot of people take away from this story and certainly what I took away from it when I was younger.  Goodwill should be year round, not just honored at Christmas.  A great moral to the story and one we all need to remember.


But as a I grow older, this one comes to mind more and more:

We all have a chain we carry around with us.  Am I feeling tired?  Sometimes it's because I've been dragging a chain of grudges around all day.  I get better about letting things go as I get older, but it's still so hard not to keep adding to my chain as I drop other links of it.  It's a daily challenge for me to refrain from lengthening my chain with the annoyances and conflicts of day to day life.  It will never get lighter if I let some things go but constantly replace them with new links. There are five important words in this quote I need to remember, "of my own free will".  I decide what I link on that chain but also what I can take off.  Links can always be taken disconnected and left behind.


The image of the chain Marley carries is one of the things I love about this story.  It makes a bad habit into a very concrete, unappealing image.  When I think of these grudges as literal links of a chain, it shifts my thinking about it.  It reminds me to drop some of those links, but it also helps me pause and reflect before I add another link of my own free will. 

Kim

A Few More Favorite Things...

Last year before Christmas, I wrote a few posts about "Favorite Things" after the famed Sound of Music song.  Two of those posts were about Christmas ornaments.  You can find those posts here and here if you're so inclined.  This year, I wanted to update the new residents on our tree in a post.  I find that as the year comes to a close, it's an excellent way to remember the some of the highlights.


I mentioned in my previous posts how I like to find a Christmas ornament for the tree whenever we take a trip or vacation.  On our first trip to Michigan in 2013, I failed to get something for the tree.  I found one that was kind of "meh" and thought I'd go back to get it.  Didn't.  I made up for it on our next trip in the summer of 2014. 


We visited New Holland this year.  I became very fond of windmills during this trip.  I wrote about why that is in this post.  We later visited the Delftware factory in Holland.  I was hoping to find something cute for the tree here.  Man, did I hit the motherload.  They had so many, it was hard to decide.  I finally settled on this little number to represent my new affinity for windmills:

And then because there were so many, I had to take this guy home too.

But I wasn't done there.  We also went to the John Ball Zoo in Grand Rapids while in Michigan.  I picked this up at the gift shop. They sell these at lots of zoos.  They are made in third world countries with recycled materials.  We have a tiger from the St. Louis Zoo too.  But I have a special, albeit unlikely, connection to flamingos.  My class, along with my sister-in-law's class, raised money several years ago to get an aviary for the flamingos at our local zoo.  The hope was that they would lay eggs if they had an aviary.  They haven't yet, but this year they actually "adopted" some eggs from another zoo.  So baby flamingos did hatch at our local zoo this year!  And that is how this Midwesterner is linked to flamingos besides seeing them at the John Ball Zoo.  Of course, I didn't know there would be babies this fall when we were visiting Michigan this summer.  But I love it when things work out like that.

I also got some new handmade ornaments from my students this year.  Love these.  Love that some of the ornaments on my tree are from kids who are now adults.  This little bottle cap snowman is adorable and will always remind me of the child who gave it to me.

I'm always on the lookout for ornaments that mean something to our family.  Every year we go to a hot air balloon festival in my husband's hometown.  I found this little charmer that was handmade by a local artist.  Not sure if it was meant to be a Christmas ornament, but it is now.

Another tradition we have is Grinch night.  I think I've mentioned before, The Grinch is my favorite.  We designate a special night to watch it for the first time. We also hang a Grinch ornament on the tree that night.  Here's this year's Grinch:

Another new addition is my son's blown glass ornament that he made at Cub Scouts this year.  I wasn't prepared for this to be as beautiful as it is.  It came with its own stainless steel, free standing hanger, and it may just stay out all year on its own.

And finally, proving that you don't always need to get a "traditional" ornament from a store, I saved this wine cork from a vineyard my husband and I visited on our trip to the Southern Illinois Wine Trail.  That is a very fond memory from this year.  Not an ornament? No problem. I just stuck a ornament hook in it. 
I think this might be my new "favorite thing".   ;)

Kim

Make Believe...or In This House We Do What The Elf Says

My kids still both believe in Santa and the Easter Bunny.  They are 11 and 9.  Judge if you like.  I firmly believed until I was at least 12.  I never asked my parents.  They never volunteered the information. It was more like a gradual understanding that we came to that we were all pretending.   My mom still put the Christmas presents out after we went to bed like "Santa" did until we left home.  And I turned out okay.  I'm happily married, have a Master's degree, and am firmly rooted in reality today - probably more so than a lot of people I deal with on a daily basis.  I would definitely call myself neither a optimist or a pessimist, but a realist.  Except - and this is huge - when I read or watch t.v. or go to a movie.  Then I find myself totally immersed in the "let's pretend" world of whatever book or show I'm watching. Suspension of disbelief is necessary for even superior fiction.  And make believe is still the best fun there is.

Pretending is great.  As long as you know that's what it is.  As in "I'm going to read this book about this world that's completely made up.  Some of the things in this book don't even exist in real life.  But while the author is writing it and while I'm reading it, we're all going to pretend it's real.  If we all pretend and we all know it, but we totally commit, it will be the best fun there is." It's the people who don't realize they're pretending that have problems, in my opinion. As in, "Everything is fine in my relationship.  It doesn't mean anything that we scream at each other and someone ends up in tears every night."  Pretending about what is real is much more dangerous than when everyone is pretending about what we all know is make believe.

The thing is, my daughter who is 11, has never asked me if Santa is real.  I'm sure other kids have told her he's not.  I know she didn't believe the other kids when she was younger.  But I think she has made the conscious decision at this point to play along now because she loves the idea that magic could be real.  It's the best fun if we all commit.  Her younger brother still believes and she doesn't want to ruin it for him.  And if we all believe in the little universe of our family, it will be the best fun if we all pretend.
When I was a kid, I didn't get along well with kids who couldn't pretend very well. When I had friends over to play, I was always the last one to abandon playing house or with dolls or the mystery detective game we were playing.  Everyone tired of it before me.  I remember wanting to play with my dolls one night when I was about 14 and knowing I really was too old for that, but still...

So we'll continue with Santa and the Easter Bunny.  The Elf on the Shelf came back this year as well. I know there are lots of haters out there for the Elf.  Save it.  My kids like it.  We've never used it as the standard elf tattling on the kids to Santa.  It's always been more about the surprise of the different scenario each morning.   And I think that even after neither believe anymore, I'll continue to haul out the old make-believe and hold with tradition.  And a part of them will still love it.  

That being said, our elf came back the day after Thanksgiving.  "She" left us a special little breakfast that morning.  It's amazing what a clearance tablecloth and some decorations from last year's after Christmas sale can do.

The next day we found her like this with a note:

So that's what we did.  In this house we do what the elf says.

Kim

Thanksgiving and The Calm During The Storm

No, I have not abandoned my blog.  Life and computer problems have kept me from posting.  I'm still working on the computer problems, but life isn't going to slow down anytime soon.  So I decided no more stalling.




We had a wonderful Thanksgiving this year.  It snowed this year on both the day before Thanksgiving and the day of Thanksgiving.  Dan and I started to talk about the last time it snowed on Thanksgiving and we had a whole discussion down memory lane trying to recall. At the end of the conversation we still weren't sure when (or if) it had snowed on Thanksgiving before. This made me realize I wanted to make sure I posted about Thanksgiving because no matter how hard you try to remember each holiday, they start running together like watercolors over the year.  And while watercolors can be beautiful, sometimes you want a more exact portrait to look at and remember what something looked like.




The day before Thanksgiving we hadn't cooked anything and had a whole houseful of people coming the next day.  When school was over, I stepped out into the swirling snow in the parking lot, dusted off my car in the biting cold, and left with a renewed energy that somewhat surprised me.  I think it was in anticipation of the upcoming break.  I stopped at Walgreen's to pick up some last minute things for the breakfast we have the day after Thanksgiving.  This breakfast is when our elf returns.  I'm pretty sure my daughter has figured out the whole elf thing isn't for real, but she hasn't asked the actual question.  I don't think she will anytime soon either.  She still loves to play along with a great amount of enthusiasm, and I am thankful for this.  Kids grow up too fast, especially in today's world.  I think she still wants to believe magic can be real and knows it's fun to pretend it is.  I know this feeling only too well myself.  I still have it when I watch Game of Thrones.  Why can't dragons be real?





When I got home, the house was empty (save our dogs and cats).  I remembered Dan had made an appointment for himself and the kids for haircuts.  I put away the elf goodies, changed into my yoga pants and sneakers, and set to work peeling a mountain of potatoes.  As I was standing at the sink, looking out the window at the snow, the quiet settled in around me.  I could have turned on the television or fired up my iPod, but I didn't.   I was happy. Content.  I was anticipating my family coming home and my extended family arriving the next day.  There is no better anticipation in the world.  But the quiet was awesome too.  I reveled in peeling those potatoes in the silence, watching the snow fall.

Thanksgiving went off with only a few hiccups (No wood chips for the smoker - thank goodness for Kroger being open. No turkey-sized oven bag for the turkey - again thanks, Kroger) as it does every year.  I enjoyed the whole day. 

After we'd cleaned up and I stretched out on the couch to look at the ads for the sales the next day, I remembered that quiet moment as it all began - the calm during the storm.  And I was thankful.

Kim