I am heading home for the holidays tomorrow morning. May not be on time and let me tell you this will be a Christmas to remember but now I am going home. Can't wait to see everyone that has been waiting for us. It will be a good day!

Salvaging Christmas

Well, we are stuck in Boise that is. I was supposed to be in Virginia right now, hanging with my family and getting ready for Christmas. It would have been the first time we were all together for Christmas in 14 years. Yeah, it was a big one. We are here though. So now I am having to salvage Christmas. I know this will be funny one day. Not so funny now although I am trying to laugh and I have had several conversations with God about this one. We were all checked in yesterday and putting the kids to bed since we were going to have an early morning. That is when the mister checked the flight status and there it was.....cancelled. Great. So we call Alaska and they tell us it is our flight out of Boise that is causing the problem. We could get out of Seattle. Hmm...do we try to drive to Seattle. It is 9pm, snowing hard, and it is a 10 hour drive to Seattle. The mister calls back and asks about Salt Lake, LA, Portland, anywhere...nothing. Dec 27th is the earliest we can leave. Okay I guess we will take what we can get. Then we decide well let's try to drive. Alaska calls back about our flight on the 27th, I tell the girl that we are going to drive so we will fly out tomorrow. She says Oh no. She had cancelled our flight for the 23rd. Okay, I guess we are going nowhere. Now being the efficient girl that I am, I had already taken down the tree, packed away all the decorations and shipped all the gifts FedEx....even the Santa gifts. What now?! So the mister calls FedEx and gives them our sob story...the gifts will be here tomorrow. Just in time for Christmas eve. Since I was heading out of town we had no groceries...nothing...no milk, no eggs, no cheese, no bread...you get the picture. So I had to brave Walmart and Costco 2 days before Christmas. Fun Fun! Now I am home sitting by my fire trying to figure out what just happened. I am salvaging Christmas. It will be fine. We will be fine. I will spend Christmas with my family. It may be on the 28th but we will still be together and this Christmas will go down in the history books for us.

~Scarlett

My 2 Front Teeth

Christmas Vacation

Christmas Vacation is here and boy am I loving it. The month has been hectic to say the least. I am ready to take a break and just enjoy some time with my family. Tomorrow we are going to open a few presents, head out to breakfast, and go see high School Musical 3. We haven't seen it yet and it is in the dollar theater now. You probably are wondering why we are opening presents so early. We are heading back east for Christmas so we are opening a few presents that don't really need to travel across country with us. My wonderful husband is taking me home for the holidays. It is the first time in 14 years that my family has been all together for Christmas. We always see each other in the summer but travel at the holidays is not the easiest. We are spending Christmas in Fredricksburg. I am excited to see the decorations. It should be beautiful. It will be fun to have my family around me. I have most of the presents wrapped and almost all the projects done. I will have to post a few pics of some of the things I made this year. It was fun to do a little crafting even though I had to squeeze it in between a million other things!

My People

You know how there are times when you just need your people. You know the ones that know you, really know you. No frills, no masks, no fuss, just you. That is what I need right now. This week has been hard. Despite all that is going on around me I am trying to keep that Christmas spirit but let's face it, this world sucks! There I said it and I feel a little better. I love to hide out this time of year at home, Christmas music blaring pretending all is good in the world unfortunately this week I have not been allowed to do that. Yesterday I had to go to a memorial service for a very good friend whose daughter died. She was 38...young. She committed suicide. I know I can hardly believe it myself. Seems to be a theme in my life this year and I am starting to hate it. Before I headed off to that memorial service I had to make a call to Child Protection. Usually this is not a big deal, I make the call and leave the rest to CPS. This case is different. Sad. That is about all I can say about that. I also hate it. So I am doing what I do to survive. Writing it here. This is my place to dump so sorry if this is not uplifting but I just had to dump. BLAHHHHH....So come friday I am leaving it all behind and I will spend the weekend with the ones I love the most in the world and I can hardly wait. My Christmas music will be blarring and all will be right in the world again.
~Scarlett

Simply Christmas

Last night was our music program at church and it was fabulous. I think it may be the best one yet. The band was awesome and the kids did a great job but the message is what touched my heart and I needed that. I went into the program thinking one more thing to do on my list of gottados. I had a conversation with a friend right before the program started about all the shopping, wrapping, partying, and trimming I still had left to do. We both agreed it was the busiest December we have ever had and neither one of us were in the spirit. About 15 minutes into the program we both had tears streaming down our faces. The entire message was about how all the things we have to do keep us so busy that we forget why there even is a Christmas. It is simply this...God with us...He sent his Son so that we could be with Him and He could be with us. That is all God wants is to be with us. How amazing. So quite down shopping and wrapping and trimming because my heart needs to be still. My heart needs it to be Simply Christmas.

~Scarlett

Sweetness

I was driving in the car with my gigi the other day and we were listening to Christmas toons. The song Mary did you know came on and she started singing along. It was so sweet. I have always loved that song, one of my favorites. After the song was over we had a little conversation about it. It went like this:
gigi: Mom Mary was sooo lucky.

me: Why is that sweety.

gigi: Because she got to see God.

me:(chills) Yeah she was pretty lucky because God chose her out of everyone in the whole world and she got to have baby Jesus in her tummy.

gigi: She had a magical baby.

me: I am sure that it was very magical having an angel come and tell you that you were going to have a baby.

gigi: It must have been magical to kiss God.


I love this girl more than words can ever express. Thank you little one for reminding me why we celebrate and giving me perspective in all the hustle and bustle.

~Merry Christmas
Scarlett

Okay so you have to hear my totally absurd Target experience. Tuesday night as I was trying to squeeze in making dinner before picking up gigi and a friend from gymnastics I hear a crash in my living room. I run in to see my Christmas tree laying on the floor. I think what the heck just happened. I ask the little man to help me set it back up when I realize the tree stand broke. We have a fake tree and bought this tree stand last year at Walmart. I call the mister who happens to be in Beverly Hills working and spotting stars (Will Smith) so he decides to help me and search the net while I am driving to get gigi. Tree stands are not very easy to find but he spots one on the Target website. It says IN STORE ONLY so I went to the store. After searching for a while I decided to ring the customer service thingy. Here came someone to help me. I asked about the tree stand and she looked totally clueless so she referred me to another guy that was supposedly the Seasonal expert. I ask him about the tree stand again clueless. I said well it was on your website as an in store only item. He looks at me with a completely straight face and says "Well, 99.9% of the time our website is wrong". Are you kidding me???!!! So I say well that is really helpful. Then he offers me a tree stand for a real tree. I tell the guy that I need one for a fake trees. He says oh, the fake trees come with stand. um yeah I have a fake tree I just need the stand. So he just stares at me like I am nuts. Then along comes Miss clueless to let him know he has another customer that needs his expertise. I walk away shaking my head and wondering what corporate would think of him tell me that their website sucks. I should have know when he walked up that this was hopeless. He had the shifty eyes...you know where they both go in a different direction so you don't know which one to stare at. I know mean...but you are laughing and if you aren't you really want to. Any hoo, back to square one. I head home but on my way call the mister to let him know that Target's website is wrong 99.9% of the time and a cross eyed dude stood between me and my tree stand. The mister says I just called Walmart for you and they have one. I swing into Walmart and head to the Christmas section just hoping I do not have to call on an associate for help. There on the shelf is one tree stand. The irony??? it is the exact same piece of *&@# tree stand that I had at home in several different pieces. I grab it pay the 7 bucks and head home wondering what the heck just happened. Seriously? Did I do something to deserve this? Got home put the tree back up only to find that it was swaying back and forth. I put books under each leg, say a prayer, and go to bed. What else do you do?

Bah humbug....Scarlett

** If you happen to have a good idea for a tree stand apparently there is a market. Just make sure it is not a piece of %$#@.

Forgiveness

Okay it is 6am and I am posting. If you know me at all that is crazy because I always get up at the last second. I have a huge knot in my neck so I was up at 4am. Hopefully my massage lady will fix that today. As I was sitting here in the quiet of the morning my mind has a little time to wander. A luxury most moms don't get due to all the background noise. There has been a theme in my life lately that has surrounded gratitude. I know that it comes with the Thanksgiving season and all but this year it has spoken to my heart. Last night in our small group we were asked to give one thing that we were thankful for. No pat answers allowed, you know the ones, God, kids, husband, country. We had to really think about one thing we were thankful for outside of all that. One word has been coming up lately and that is forgiveness. I am thankful for forgiveness. Maybe that sounds like a pat answer and yes I am thankful that God forgives our sins but more than that I am thankful that God allows us to forgive others and that He heals relationships. I am also doing a Beth Moore Study right now (Psalms of Ascent) and I have been struggling just a little to get into it. This week hit me square in the face. It was about forgiveness. She talked about how God forgives us and does not keep a record of our sin. If He did we could not stand. I thought about that and what that really means. The fact that God keeps no record yet we keep every detail of when we have been wronged. I know I do. God has been working on my heart in this area and when I finally got it the very thing that I was so desperate for him to fix and heal was done. I cannot tell you the burden that has been lifted from my soul. For that I am thankful. I am thankful for forgiveness.