"It Would Be Like a Fake Christmas"

For the first year in 13 years of wedded Christmas bliss, I was contemplating buying an artificial tree this year.

There are obviously different kinds of folks in the Christmas tree world. We're not the 'cut your own tree down' folks. Or the 'buy one in a burlap sack' folks. Or 'go the Christmas tree farm on Christmas Eve wearing matching scarves' folks. Before moving here, and let me just draw you a map showing exactly where here is, X will mark the spot.

no X where

(Right in the middle. But it's actually really fun to be here. Come on around some time!)

Anyway, when we lived in an area that had a Home Depot we used to buy our tree at Home Depot.

We'd go as a family, I'd insist Mark bring along his own razor knife, because who wants a tree other people have already looked at and rejected. No. That does not work. I don't want somebody else's rejected Christmas tree.Instead, we (the Mark part of we) cut the ties on the still-wrapped up trees then we (again, the Mark part) shake them out then we (the Me part of we) judge shape to find the one that has been properly pruned for the last 9 years making a beautifully shaped Christmas tree.
Repeat. 9-21 times. This is not Mark's favorite part about Christmas.

I had the thought that perhaps we could buy an artificial tree this year. Mark's still getting the crop out of the field, so he's not very available to go tree shopping with us. And as you can discern from the description, he is an integral, albeit, begrudging member of the tree buying scenario. I can't hold the tree and visually measure up the tree by myself. This is just another reason God gave me a husband. But when I spoke aloud this idea at breakfast this morning, the kids went ballistic. No! No-ooooo! Why?! No! And my melo-dramatic firstborn, "It would be like a fake Christmas!"

One thing we cannot have is a fake Christmas. It must be a real Christmas. We'll continue to suspend our disbelief about certain other aspects about Christmas like:

• Jesus was probably not born in December, most likely more like September
• Saint Nick's day is actually December 6, not December 25
• Santa Claus (spoiler alert!!!) is not real

Sorry, Mark. I tried. I really tried. But the resounding verdict is that we'll wait for you to go tree shopping. Betcha can't wait! (giggle) Hurry home!

Subtopic: How Not to Be A Stupid Maniac about Gifts

Hello friends. Welcome to this blog post almost entitled "Because You Need Help, Even if You Don't Want It." I'm thinking it'll be a new label on the blog. That way, I'm giving full disclosure and disclaimer that I realize I'm telling people who didn't ask for help, what to do. Which, I'm finding is what a lot of the blog world does. I just wanted to be a little more overt about my intentions. And by the way, no one is paying me to write this or to review Christmas gift giving in general.

Topic: Christmas

Subtopic: How Not to Be A Stupid Maniac about Gifts (and I don't use Stupid very often)

As previously posted, I love presents. I love to get them and give them and look for them and wrap them and watch people open them and open them myself! The WHOLE PACKAGE (hee,hee, ok...not really funny) of gifts is right up there with my top 10 favorite things to do in life.

Did I mention I like a LOT of presents. Tons. It doesn't matter how big or how much they cost, but I love the idea that someone thought of me many times when picking out many presents. Because that's why I give multiple presents for a person because I saw something and thought of them.

Anyway, this present issue can quickly become a present problem. Because we attend 5 Christmas celebrations each year, and I have 4 children and 1 husband.

For a while, I just went overboard finding lots of fun stuff that everybody would love and then stayed up way too late trying to locate all my hiding places so I could stay up even later doing the wrapping.

And then somewhere during the Christmas season last year I found this concept. 4 presents for each person.

Something You Want
Something You Need
Something to Wear and
Something to Read

AhhhhhhHaaaaa. Bliss in present land. And it even Rhymes!!!

So here's how it works. 4 presents for each person. That's still multiple gifts, it's still many thoughts about the person, but puts the whole "gimmee, gimmee, gimmee" part of Christmas morning in it's rightful place: Nowhere.










We did have to start prepping our kids along about Halloween that we're doing this 'cool new thing' for presents. Then we'd quote the little rhyme and explain what it meant. And you know what? Our kids started doing it right back to us. "What kind of book do you want, Mommy?" and "Since you don't need anything, can I have your Need present?"

Now, because the Something you Want gift is obviously going to be the highlight of Christmas morning, we open the gifts in reverse order. Read.Wear.Need.Want. Keeps everybody happy with anticipation.

If you were a mouse in the house last Christmas at the Robinson's, here's what you would have seen.

First, everyone opened their Something to Read.

Then came Something to Wear.

My boys don't get very excited about clothes, but when you put light-up shoes under the jeans and sweaters, they think Something to Wear becomes a pretty decent gift!

Then Something You Need. Here's where we're not talking about the basic human needs: food,clothing, shelter.

But I think every boy needs a baseball glove. So the twins each got ball gloves for Christmas. If you're wondering why that one already looks broken in, it's because it was! I got it at the thrift store for $1.99. Every boy does not need a $29.99 baseball glove when he's 5 years old and is going to leave it out in the rain 18 times in the first year.

And finally, the Something You Want.

Talk about anticipation, this is what my dear daughter did upon pulling the box top off of this Samantha doll on Christmas morning:

She folded her hands, and stared at it with joy. For like 2 minutes! Enthusiasm was bursting from her, but she wanted to enjoy every little ounce of that gift and soaked in the moment.

Oh, the things we can learn from the little people in our lives.


So, friends, don't be stupid. Don't go in debt this Christmas. Try to pry your mind away from the notion that you're out to impress, spoil, dote upon, buy love or fulfill dreams for Christmas or otherwise propagate the Christmas Gift Marketing Machine. If your kids know you love them every other day of the year, they will know you love them Christmas Day.

But, like I said, I did start mentioning the "You'll get 4 presents for Christmas" w-a-y in advance, because I had previously done all the no-no's in the aforementioned paragraph.

Want. Need. Wear. Read.

It rhymes. It works. Really.

That Day I Took 349 Photos...

...in 1 hour, 31 minutes, and 9 seconds. If the counter and timer on my camera can be trusted. That means I was snapping photos at the rate of one every 25 seconds, folks. And I've decided to show them all to you here on this blog.
Ok. Not really. I actually got bored looking through them all myself. And I'm the mother!

And really the event was much better suited for a video camera, as the following pictures will attest. But we did the best we could.

"Did you get that one, Mom?"

And I will admit, I was ever the encourager when it came to activities like these:



Because you're only a kid once. And some pictures are worth a broken leg. :) No, no legs were broken at all. Not that we didn't try.



And you know what they say, It's all fun and games until someone misjudges the beginning of the leaf pile and thoroughly drives a stick into their scalp.

So while I was waiting for the tears to dry up and the red eyes to return to normal color, I changed subjects. Thank goodness there's always another kid around these parts.

And this one was particularly fun to photograph.
Because she wasn't paying any attention to me and was having a blast.

If you want to know the truth, she was sick with that flu. Have you heard of it? H47Q956? Or something like that. Anyway, her fever was down below 101, and I thought the sunshine would do her some good. Come to find out, having a child play in the leaves when they don't feel well is not always the smartest thing to do. She had a relapse and slept for 3 hours that afternoon.

But, oh, did we get some good pictures!

Ever See a REAL Dead Mummy?

We did.

One of the very best things about homeschooling is that when you're only trying to teach 3 students, you have time to let them do really cool stuff to apply what they're learning into life-long knowledge.

(Psst. This is not one of those 'why everyone should homeschool' posts. Or an 'I think I'm cooler, because I homeschool' or a 'if you homeschooled, your kid could wear jeans that are too short and nobody would notice, too' post. It's just a 'this is what we did one day' post. I'm glad we got that covered.)

Because we were studying Ancient Egypt, and I heard a rumor we have mummies just an hour away from the Middle of Nowhere, I planned a field trip with the other moms here in the Middle of Nowhere who are also total freaks of nature who homeschool their kids. Yes, there are quite a few of us. Watch out.

And to be totally honest. I learned SO MUCH!!! I swear nobody ever told me this stuff!!

Did you know that many many of the tombs are empty? Like, I know there are movies about Tomb Raiders and stuff. And I know once all the Hebrew people left Egypt and the Egyptians didn't have as much slave labor, times got kind of tough for the Egyptians and they stole the loot out of the pyramids. But nobody ever told me that in the late 1800's a tomb was found with 30 mummies in it. Most of them royal. And that Ramses (you know, the one Moses was talking to) had red hair! Seriously. We saw it. In Imax, so it was like 15 feet tall! And it was red and curly. I really really really thought all the Egyptians had dark hair. Guess what?! They didn't. They wore wigs.


Perhaps, you all knew this stuff. But for me, homeschooling is giving me a whole new education!



We paid extra for the "Guided Tour", which meant this guy stood there and pointed around the room at the different parts of the Ancient Egypt display and told the kids what they were.

And believe it or not, they had two mummies. The one in the foreground is still wrapped and is a male, and over there on the far left, is a female mummy unwrapped. I didn't take any up close pictures of her, because I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

The whole concept of voyeur-izing (my own word) these mummies is definitely love/hate with me. It's so cool to learn about it, and see it, and try to grasp what life was like for them. But I hate that I wonder if they would like being on display for a bunch of homeschool yahoos to come look at them? But then I think, wait a minute, it's just a shell of a body. That person's spirit is not there, why would I care if yahoos were looking at the shell of my body when I'm already in eternity? And then I think about the super intelligence it took to be able to preserve bodies/skin/hair like this. It really is a wonder of the ancient world. Such that we still are not able to reproduce it like they did. And that some of them did it specifically to be remembered for all of time(the movie told us that). So if they wanted to be remembered are we actually honoring them, by taking care of their remains? But is that just justification? Love/hate.
So then the questions during Q&A went something like this:

Topic One
Kid: What do those hieroglyphs say?

Tour Guide: I'm not sure

Kid: How come you don't know what they say?

Tour Guide: Well, I know a couple sounds

Kid: But could you just read part of it to us?

Tour Guide: Umm, I'm pretty sure this wavy line means water, and it's pronounced, 'cuh'

Kid: I don't think that's how you say it


Topic Two
Kid: How did the mummy die?

Tour Guide: The mummy didn't die, the person died

Kid: How did the person die?

Tour Guide: We don't know for sure

hee hee


Then while we were there we, of course, visited the rest of the museum. The mummy stuff is actually just one room. In the basement. (Where else could it be?)

So we pretended to float down the Mighty Mississippi.



And I'll give you three guesses as to how long we had to stand in front of this exhibit.

a. 15 seconds
b. 5 minutes
c. 15 minutes

Do you realize how little some of that print is? I was going hoarse just reading it all!


Then there was this really fun puppet stage.
All the puppets were woodland animals and the kids had so much fun throwing them out the little windows to see which ones drop the fastest. I mean, they loved putting on puppet shows for their mommy.

And at the end, we even built our own pyramid just to bring the whole thing back around to repetitious education.

Belated Bunny

Because some things are just too cute not to post...

Bashful Bunny

Bye Bye Bunny

Do y'all see that wrinkled up nose?
Boisterous Bunny

Baby Bunny