Year: 2008

Another year has come and gone

I wish I had something deeply meaningful and profound to say on this last day of 2008, but that would require thought and effort.

Last night I saw an interview with a psychologist on the local news and he suggested that the best way to keep New Year’s Resolutions is to set short-term, specific goals. So, with that in mind, my goal for the New Year is to take down my Christmas decorations at some point over the upcoming weekend.

I’ll let you know how that goes and if you happen to see a Christmas tree in the background of some of my pictures come March, you’ll know it didn’t work out for me.

In the meantime, let’s do a quick look back at 2008 because it’s not a cliche at all to pull out a year-end top ten list. It’s fresh and original.

1. My only child started Kindergarten and I survived, although I did spend a few days walking the aisles of HEB crying a few tears.

2. We learned that acupuncture doesn’t necessarily work for everyone.

3. If you start your New Year with a raging case of the flu, you have nowhere to go but up and a year later you’ll forget how horrible you felt and instead remember it as a lovely week of vacation from all responsibility.

4. The internet is never more supportive than when you share the history of your hair. There isn’t a woman alive who hasn’t experience deep hair remorse at some point in her life.

5. Your own child can often be your biggest fashion critic and even offer up prayers on your behalf.

6. I learned that God doesn’t just generically know me, He really knows me. He knows my name.

7. After ten years of marriage, I discovered P’s deep dark secret. He likes to hoard car wash supplies.

8. I worried that we might have to perform plastic surgery on a homemade puppet.

9. There was a lot of time spent looking for red boots for a Wonder Woman costume.

10. Six days in the Dominican Republic with Compassion International changed my life and my perspective forever. And one little girl in particular just broke my heart and is in my prayers every day.

I believe that’s what those in the industry would call a wrap.

Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by here during the last year. It wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun without y’all.

Happy New Year!
Coyotes, hyenas, and elliptical machines: Things that might kill you

On Saturday, P took Caroline to the ranch for the entire day. That’s right. The entire day.

I stayed in my pajamas until about noon and then decided I should treat myself to a pedicure courtesy of a gift certificate that Gulley gave me for keeping her boys last week. My toes are happy to report that they are now sporting a very sassy coat of OPI’s “I’m Not Really A Waitress”.

Seriously, I would request it just for the name even if it wasn’t a great color.

So I had myself a wonderful, relaxing day filled intermittently with escorting Christmas toys to their new home in the playroom and doing some laundry.

The mighty hunters came home to report that they had managed to shoot two ducks and a coyote. Except Caroline gets coyotes confused with hyenas and told me she’d shot a hyena, which really would have been a feat considering that, last I checked, hyenas are not indigenous to South Texas.

They told the story in great detail and it involved crawling on their tummies in an attempt to sneak up on a pack of wild hogs. Let me pause for a moment to reassure myself that I vividly remember giving birth to this child even though I cannot believe I have a daughter who will crawl through the South Texas dust and mesquite in the quest for a hog.

Anyway, as they snuck up on the hogs, Caroline saw something out of the corner of her eye and whispered, “Daddy? I think I see a baby deer or maybe it’s a fox or a hyena.” It turns out it wasn’t any of those things, but rather two coyotes standing no more than twenty yards from them, staring intently.

You just know those coyotes were thinking, “That little one will be a piece of cake, but if we can pull down the big guy we’ll eat like kings.”

Needless to say, one of the coyotes went to be with Jesus and the other one practiced good common sense and got the heck out of there.

They had so much fun on their little ranch adventure that they went back again yesterday. I decided to be slightly more productive, mainly because I had to go to the grocery store since according to P we were out of “all kinds of things”, even though all he could name was Lubriderm lotion and Vaseline lip therapy.

It’s a wonder we made it through Christmas.

I decided that I’d go over to Mimi and Bops’ house to work out on the elliptical before I went to HEB because, let’s face it, the holidays haven’t been kind to my hips. I was doing so well with my workout regime prior to the week of Christmas but fell off the bandwagon and straight into a plate of sugar cookies.

When I got to their house, Bops was home from work early and suggested I might want to try his pre-programmed workout because I think he is plotting my untimely demise. I knew it was a bad idea, made even worse when I realized my iPod was dead.

There’s no way I’m going to get through a serious workout without Beyonce cheering me on with some “Single Ladies” because it motivates me to remember that P already put a ring on it and the least I can do is make sure he still likes it.

I lasted all of ten minutes on my daddy’s workout regimen. I spent the first five minutes thinking I might die and the last five minutes wishing I would. Finally, I admitted defeat and switched the machine to my regular program which is a decent workout and won’t cause me to drop over dead.

My goal for the New Year is to be able to do the same workout routine as my 63-year-old father.

It might kill me.

But if I had to choose, I’d rather die by elliptical than by coyote attack.
We felt connected

Before I even begin to attempt to sum up our Christmas in a concise, interesting way (like that will happen) that won’t cause this post to become the reason you were finally able to throw out the Ambien, I feel that I need to let you know that the picture of Caroline in the Merry Christmas post was the picture taken by AJ that we sent out on our Christmas cards.

I would never be so cruel as to subject my poor child to wearing all manner of winter fashion festiveness on a Christmas day where the temperature reached 80 degrees.

Although I’ll admit I was tempted.

And if she’d had her way, she’d have shown up at my mother-in-law’s house wearing a navy sundress from Gap that’s about two sizes too small, which is really irrelevant because IT’S A SUNDRESS and it’s Christmas day.

I only had to say that fifty-nine different times on Christmas morning.

Anyway, we started our Christmas festivities by attending church on Christmas Eve. Caroline has been looking forward to her opportunity to hold her very own candle since last Christmas and I drank enough wine before the service to ensure I wouldn’t be too nervous about it. You all know I’m kidding. There isn’t enough wine to make you feel good about your five-year-old holding a candle.

After the service, we went to Mimi and Bops’ house to have our Christmas celebration with them.

This is Caroline with her cousin Sarah. My sister and I both have one daughter so we have a master plan to make them dress alike for the next 4-5 years. It was what our mother did to us and there is no reason why they should be spared just because they don’t have a sibling.

This is what Caroline had waiting for her over there.

To say she was thrilled is an understatement. I knew that’s what she was getting and when we were in Bryan last week, I told Nena that Caroline was getting a pink Barbie Mustang and Nena said, “Honey, listen, who wouldn’t want a pink car?”

I believe the entire Mary Kay sales force has proved that point.

My sister and her husband bought Caroline the board game “Sorry” at my suggestion. It was one of my favorite games when I was little and I just knew Caroline would love it. And I was right; she does love it. However, I now know that the reason it’s called “Sorry” is because whoever invented it was “Sorry” that they had to play it with a five-year-old who likes to make up her own rules as the game goes on.

Later on, we finally managed to get her out of the car with the time-honored threat of Santa passing us by because she wasn’t asleep. When she got home, I let her open her new Christmas pajamas, courtesy of my mom.

The next morning, P and I were awakened with the news that she’d heard the dogs barking at Santa in the middle of the night and could we please GET UP RIGHT NOW.

She was thrilled to see that Santa brought the roller skates she wanted along with the Barbie Diamond Castle, Diamond Castle Barbie, and Diamond Ken, who we like to call Elvis, although judging by the sparkles on his jacket, Liberace might be the better moniker.

When you squeeze Barbie’s hand, she sings some song about how she feels connected and I’m not exactly sure what she feels connected to, but it’s a sure bet it’s not this metrosexual Diamond Castle Ken.

Although I did catch him doing some push-ups on the living room floor.

Santa also brought some incredibly cheap makeup that he found at Walmart and I got quite the Christmas morning makeover.

I haven’t worn that much blue glitter eye makeup since my 9th grade Homecoming dance when I hoped to channel Madonna.

After spending the rest of the morning playing Jenga (HELLO, new obsession), and attempting to permanently sever P’s toes with Caroline’s new roller skates, we headed over to my mother-in-law’s house for Christmas lunch.

Not in a navy sundress.

We ate way too much turkey and dressing, brought home leftovers while vowing we’d never manage to eat them all, and continued to eat ourselves into a stupor over the next few days.

And I can’t even discuss the mass consumption of sugar cookies. It just makes me feel shameful.

Especially when I see Ken/Elvis mocking me with his commitment to physical fitness even during the holiday season.

Hope y’alls was merry.
Merry Christmas!
The eve of Christmas

We got home from our road trip on Tuesday afternoon. After I unpacked our bags and started a few loads of laundry, Caroline and I snuggled up on the couch and I turned on “Polar Express”.

P came in a few minutes later and joined us. Our little family of three spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying the movie while a fire roared in the fireplace and the lights twinkled on the Christmas tree. It was one of those sweet, unplanned moments that takes you by surprise, yet is now etched in my mind as one of my favorite memories of the year.

I kind of dozed off as we watched the movie because I’ve seen it a million times, plus I was a little tired from all the travel and festivities. But when the part came on where the kids arrive at the North Pole, I made myself stay awake and watch it because it’s one of my favorite scenes. In my imagination, if a North Pole full of elves and Santa were to exist, it would look exactly like it does in the movie.

At one point the little boy is standing in the midst of all the elves who are overcome with excitement at the prospect of Santa Claus’s appearance. Everyone is cheering, the reindeer are jumping up and down, and the elves come out with these huge reins of solid jingle bells. The little boy begins to look puzzled, he can tell he’s missing something that the rest of the crowd is hearing and experiencing.

About that time, the little girl next to him whispers, “Aren’t those bells the most beautiful sound?” It confirms what he already knows, something is lacking.

When I watched that scene yesterday it made me wonder how many people are out there this Christmas who know something is missing. They have the beautifully decorated tree. They have the wrapped packages tied up with pretty bows. They have a turkey thawing in the refrigerator and family that will gather around a table.

They may even go to church on Christmas Eve and listen as the people around them sing and celebrate the birth of a baby born over 2000 years ago. And they’ll sit there and wonder what’s missing.

I know how that feels because I spent a lot of years feeling that same way. I grew up in church. I was there every time the doors were open, but something was missing. I’d hear people talk about what God had done for them and the difference He’d made in their life and I just didn’t feel it. And it wasn’t because of lack of desire, I wanted to know Him but I just didn’t know how.

Years of listening to sermons and going to church camp gave me glimpses, but I wanted more.

In “The Polar Express” the little boy watches the bells that he can’t hear, he hears the crowd roar as Santa appears, and he stands there and says, “I can’t see him! I can’t see him!”

That’s how I felt for so long. I couldn’t see Him.

Finally, in desperation, the little boy closes his eyes, grabs the jingle bell that has fallen to the ground at his feet and says, “I believe. I believe. I believe.” And at that moment, he hears the bell ring and Santa appears right behind him.

Sometimes it takes a leap of faith.

Because no matter how much everyone around that little boy believed in Santa and saw him clearly, he had to see him for himself. He had to believe even when there was a part of him that wanted to hold on to logic and reason.

Logic and reason don’t require much faith. They may keep you from looking foolish, but they can also keep you from going on the greatest adventure of your life.

Fifteen years ago, I reached a point of desperation. After all those years in church, I had to see Him for myself. It didn’t matter what my preacher said or what my friends experienced, I needed to take a leap and let Him pour out His grace and mercy on my life. Then one night, in the middle of a Bible study surrounded by people who were experiencing something I wanted, I closed my eyes as tears fell down my cheeks and whispered, “I believe. I believe. I believe.”

And life has never been the same.

A virgin birth. Angels appearing to a field full of shepherds. Wise men following a star from the east. The son of God sent to save us from our sins.

“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” Isaiah 9:6

It doesn’t make sense until you see Him for yourself.

My prayer is that we all see Him this Christmas. In the midst of family drama, bad fruitcake, and attempts to get Barbie dolls out of boxes that have been welded shut, He is there.

Waiting for those who will take the leap and believe.

Merry Christmas, y’all.
We’re making Christmas bright

Well, we have lived a million life times since I last checked in. Honestly, I have no idea where to start so I’ll start from the beginning.

Our weekend fun and festivities really began on Thursday afternoon when I picked up Caroline and her friend S. from school and took them directly to HEB to pick up two dozen plain cake-like donuts that I had ordered on Tuesday for her class party on Friday. We walked over to the bakery section and I told each girl they could pick one treat from the bakery case. S. picked a sugar cookie. Caroline picked the largest eclair I have ever seen.

It was an ambitious choice.

Anyway, I told the lady behind the counter that I was there to pick up my order and handed her my receipt. She searched all over for my order and finally came back to report that they didn’t have my order because they don’t make plain, cake-like donuts.

Okay.

She then asked if I actually meant plain, cake-like donut holes. I said, “Why? Do you make those?”

No. No they don’t. I guess she was just making pastry conversation to distract from the awkwardness of me waiting for donuts that were never going to happen.

Dear HEB,

Please do not take my custom order for a product that you do not, in fact, make. That information would have been solid gold on Tuesday but, alas, on Thursday afternoon at 3:00 p.m. merely sends me into a frenzy of non-holiday emotions and feelings towards the entire HEB chain of stores.

My blind love for you has already been on the fence ever since you placed the sushi-making station right next to the produce and dimmed the lights in an ill-conceived notion of grocery store ambience and this bad turn of events has pushed me closer to the edge.

Sincerely,
Melanie

The good news is I was able to find the aforementioned donuts at Shipley’s, thereby avoiding a Kindergarten Christmas party tragedy. And my efforts were totally worth it when I was able to watch those little five-year-olds try to catch those donuts with only their teeth while they hung down from a string.

On Friday night, Gulley and her husband had plans to go see Kelly Willis and Bruce Robison at Gruene Dance Hall and I offered to let their boys spend the night with Caroline and me. Caroline was so excited and on the way to pick them up she said, “I don’t even know what to think about this. I AM FREAKING OUT.”

Are you also fifteen? Because last I checked, you were five.

I took the kids to E.Z.’s where they all ordered cheese pizza with a side of curly fries. When their fries arrived, I asked if they wanted ketchup. Jackson said he wanted gravy. Caroline wanted ketchup. Will said he would like some polynesian sauce.

When your kid knows to ask for polynesian sauce at age three it’s a sure sign he’s had his share of Chick-Fil-A nuggets.

After they finished their light, healthy dinner they all started to run around and dance to the music. As I watched them, I began to get a little teary-eyed thinking about what a huge blessing it is that Gulley and I are getting to raise our kids together and watch this next generation of sweet friendship grow deeper all the time. Then they started playing “If You Think I’m Sexy” by Rod Stewart over the loud speaker and the moment was gone.

I took the kids to a girls’ basketball game after dinner to watch a friend’s daughter play. I told them they could all pick out some candy at the concession stand. Jackson picked Starbursts. Will picked Skittles. My delicate flower picked a giant dill pickle.

P and I have always looked at the large jars of giant dill pickles with disdain, wondering who really wants to eat a giant pickle. I’ll tell you who. Our daughter.

I managed to get them all home and in their pajamas, then I turned on “Rudolph” in the hopes that they would all start to settle down while I went to put on my pajamas. It was a good thought even though it was completely unsuccessful. So, I grabbed a book and told them it was time for bedtime stories.

Here they all are, listening intently to my every word.

On Friday night, I saw my daughter’s future. She will be that kid at every slumber party who will only go to sleep after all her efforts to keep everyone else awake have completely failed.

I know that kid. I was that kid.

The next morning, Gulley picked us up and we all headed for Bryan/College Station to go to Santa’s Wonderland. A great time was had by all and I’ll get to that at some point.

But, for now, I’ll leave you with one of the highlights of the trip for Gulley and me, seen on the way to Bryan.

In case you can’t read it, it says, “I wish my wife was as dirty as this truck”.

I wonder if that’s what he asked Santa for this year because that is a treasure.