That’s what Noah asked me for in the store today. What he meant was 11 dollars and 99 cents, but who’s quibbling with adorableness? He wanted to know if I had 11 dollars and 99 dollars to buy a specific toy that he’s had his eye on in the past. Sadly, I had to say no to the charmingly phrased request, because the Easter Bunny has already acquired said toy to be delivered in Noah’s Easter basket on Sunday morning.

It broke my heart to see his sweet eyes start to fill with tears. But on the plus side, score one for the Easter Bunny who knows one little boy’s heart’s desire. The Easter Bunny rocks!

Yes, my kids scored a Nintendo Wii from Santa this Christmas. Santa acquired the Wii a few months ago, in anticipation of a Christmas shortage, and it stayed in hiding until it was time to load up the sleigh (er, um, the minivan, to transport gifts in hiding back to our house in time for Santa’s big delivery).

Sometimes, Santa gets it right.

The kids particularly love bowling on Wii Sports. All I’ve heard for days are cries of “strike!” and “spare!” every time they hit one. Kent likes tennis and golf, while I switch it over to Super Mario Galaxy after the kids are in bed. So far I’ve managed to collect 7 stars (out of 120) in my quest to rescue Princess Peach. At this rate, I expect I’ll be enjoying Mario for a very long time. Whenever I can wrest control of the Wii from the kids, that is.

My kids have inspired me today.

First came the Easter eggs. I helped Maia and Noah color them this afternoon, a day later than normal due to a busy day yesterday, and some of the fruits of their efforts are pictured in this photo. Every egg designed by Maia had a theme relevant to the meaning of this special day. Every single one. The full text circling the blue egg on the left, written in magic crayon, says “I love the Lord.” And Noah insisted that crosses adorn nearly all of his eggs; which he got, with a little help from Mommy.

Then came the sidewalk chalk. While I was inside cleaning up remnants of Easter Bunny chaos and then rearranging kitchen cabinets to make more functional sense for our high traffic use, the young’uns were outside playing with the chalk that came in Maia’s Easter basket. When I later went out to inspect the damage, the proclamation in this photo was the very first thing I saw outside the front door. “Donahues love Jesus.” I think I can safely say Maia speaks for us all.

The next thing I saw was this announcement that “Jesus is the King.” Our front walkway is actually graced with two of these—one labeled with Maia’s name (pictured) and another with Noah’s name—and Maia proudly showed them off.

I’m convinced that God is whispering in Maia’s ear, the same way I have heard Him whispering in mine. She’s certainly not shy in talking about God or showing her love for Him through prayer, song, and, apparently, Easter eggs and sidewalk chalk.

I can’t wait for the day when both of my kids make these types of statements in front of our church congregation as they are about to be baptized. That will be a celebration, indeed.

Ho Ho Ho, Merry Christmas! We’re enjoying ours around here. I have an almost-four-year-old who is showing off his silly putty mustache as I write this, and an eight-year-old who is studying the instruction book from her new magic set. I think we’ll be watching magic shows for quite some time to come. Somewhere around here Santa also left a bike, and a pogo stick, and some games, and far too many other odds and ends. Just a guess, but I think the kids are happy with the loot.

And now we’re off to read Luke chapter 2, to keep our hearts on the true meaning of this special day. We’ll then be spending the rest of the day and week with family.

Wishing you and your families all the peace, love, and joy that Christmas represents.

Happy Independence Day! I don’t know about you, but I feel pretty darn fortunate to be a citizen of our great nation. I’m putting on my patriotic mood and remembering the principles on which our country was founded. And of course we’ll be doing the usual—barbecue, swimming, fireworks (on TV), and sparklers for the kids. It’s family day. Enjoy yours!

Is anyone missing some presents? Because I think Santa left a few too many at our house. And I certainly hope Santa doesn’t live to regret a drum set for a certain three-year-old!

Must go brush up on the engineering skills to figure out how to extricate some of those toys from their packages. Then on to church to remember why we celebrate this special day. We’ll be spending the rest of the day with family. A very Merry Christmas to all!

*************** 

"She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins."  Matthew 1:21

Once upon a time, there was a girl. And the girl believed in Santa, and all was merry. Then one day, as the Christmas season was underway, a heated argument broke out among a group of peers in the girl’s after school care program. The cause of the argument remains unknown, but the caretaker of the class knew just what to say to stop the ruckus. She told the children, which included kindergarteners and first graders who still believed, that while Santa was once a very wonderful man who did wonderful things, he does not exist any more.

The girl pondered this news in silence for a few days, then asked the question her mother was not expecting for at least another year or two. “Is Santa alive?” And just like that, the girl’s mother was all at once saddened and livid and heartbroken. The mother expected that the girl would one day hear the truth from a classmate or begin to figure it out on her own, but never dreamed she would hear it from an ADULT who should know better. The mother wonders, what gives a grown-up the right to make the decision that it’s okay to spoil the illusion for someone else’s child? And in the pressure of the moment, the mother lied. “Of course Santa is alive. Where do you think your presents come from?”

The angry mother, not being the confrontational type, joined forces with a friend to make their concerns known to the teacher. The meeting was brief and polite, and the teacher promised to make the situation right with the children. The daughter hasn’t mentioned it again, and the mother is afraid to ask, not wanting to make things worse by reminding the girl of her doubts. The mother is simply not ready to face the inevitable questions that will follow. The Easter Bunny? The Tooth Fairy? And what of those other things that are intangible but so very important and real? Because although the daughter may have the maturity to handle the distinction, her mother does not yet have the words to explain why God is real, even though Santa Claus is not. She needs time to prepare that argument.

The mother is likewise not at all ready for this innocent phase of childhood to be over. It still feels like it’s only just begun. So she’ll preserve the reputation of Santa for as long as she can, and hope that her daughter will forgive her for the little white lie.

I’ve let my inner kid escape, and there’s no stopping her now. The Christmas season is upon us, and I’m feeling the spirit. The decorations are up, the Christmas music is playing in the background, the Christmas cards are ready to go out, and I’m feeling extra smiley. I love this time of year.

Tonight we partook in what has become an annual tradition. We went to Disney/MGM Studios with friends to see the light display. All 5 million of them. Really. 5 million lights! The evening could not have been more perfect for it. A rare cold snap made it feel almost like winter. The fake snow shooting down from above seemed like it belonged more than it ever has before. Because of the cold weather, we could almost believe it was real. The piped-in Christmas carols had me singing and bouncing along. And the steaming hot chocolate was just the thing to top it all off.

Here’s what I love about this season, religious preferences and politically correct discussions aside. It’s the fact that watching my kids enjoy it brings out the kid in me. Tonight, I watched Maia’s thrill at the fake snow falling in her hair, and Noah’s thrill at it landing on his face. I watched them chasing the falling “snow” (really soap bubbles), trying deliriously to catch more. I watched them both marvel at the lights and get excited about drinking hot chocolate. And a little part of me couldn’t help being excited right along with them. Because it wasn’t about the shopping, or the presents, or the bah humbugs. It was just about feeling happy and sharing the good cheer. But my darling daughter totally takes after her thin-blooded mother. Because as we were leaving, she, who was dressed more warmly than any of us, announced with high spirits that she had just said a little prayer to God. She prayed for heat. Amen to that! (Though I make exceptions when Christmas carols and fake snow and hot chocolate are involved.)

No matter what cultural or religious observances you honor in the coming weeks, it’s time to get your holiday mood on. It’s the season for being a little bit happier and little bit nicer. It’s the season for slowing down to remember what is important and why you celebrate. It’s the season for cherishing your loved ones. It’s the season for being a kid again. Who’s in with me?

My parents sold my childhood home last year when my dad retired, and built a new house near us that they have finally moved into. It’s gorgeous. Simply beautiful, and state of the art. I dream of some day having such a home for my family.

But…

We slept over there for the first time on Sunday night, and it was weird to wake up in a room in my parent’s house that was not MY room. It wasn’t my furniture that I grew up with or my bathroom or my view from the window. It wasn’t my old school-age belongings in the closet or my old books on the bookcase or my old stereo next to the bed. It wasn’t my old creaky ceiling fan. It wasn’t my walls that I drew on with crayon or my bent up blinds in the window or my scratched up door or anything even remotely familiar. Not even a candy wrapper under the bed to call my own.

In short, their new house holds no memories for me yet.

That will change, beginning as we all gather around this Thanksgiving and perhaps start some new traditions. But it got me thinking about how different my reaction was from the reaction I had when we moved into that home where I spent a majority of my growing up years.

I remember the first time I ever saw that house. My parents were house hunting, though I didn’t know it then. We used to drive around neighborhoods, and we kept coming back to one street where two majestic Spanish-style houses stood side by side, with nothing else but empty lots in either direction. I don’t know if it was true, but at the time I thought they were the only two-story homes in our tiny retirement town. I remember thinking one would have to be very rich indeed to live in such a grand palace. Because to me, they seemed palatial.

Fast forward to the day my parents informed my sister and me, around 6 and 8 at the time, that we would be moving. They insisted we had seen the new house, but I didn’t know which one they meant and we never drove past it again until the day we moved in. Imagine the utter shock and giddy delight and pure joy of a third-grader who realizes that she is about to move into her dream home and live out the life of a princess. I over-exaggerate the scale of the house now, but that’s really how I felt then. It’s probably the closest I ever came to having my jaw literally drag on the floor. It was also the first time I truly realized that my father’s profession as a physician made us better off financially than most of my friends. Something I ever after tried to be sensitive to.

I remember being positively ecstatic to get, as the oldest child, the room on the back of the house with a view. I’ll never forget falling asleep that first night, looking out at the twinkling lights of the town across the river, for our new home sat right on the water. In fact, I probably didn’t sleep much at all that night. (This is the same room, incidentally, whose strategic location allowed me to sneak out undiscovered that one time in high school, and was also the scene of the great candy wrapper crime.)

I remember lots of other great things about that house. I remember my sister and I sliding down the banister, carving grooves into the wood from the buttons on our jeans. Our mother knew the truth even though we denied it. She was not amused.

I remember that my sister and I had our own playroom, until our baby sister came along a couple of years later and it was converted into her room. We forgave her. I think. Well, maybe I didn’t forgive her so much as I accidentally dropped her on her head once. Same thing. We were even after that.

I remember my mother telling us to let my dad know dinner was ready. We’d always yell up the stairs to him at the top of our lungs, and she’d always say, exasperated, “I could have done that.” It took us leaving for college before they wised up and got an intercom.

I remember getting into huge trouble for drawing on the concrete floor of the back porch with some type of permanent markers, and years later rediscovering the “art” when the Astroturf that had been put down to hide it was ripped up to make way for tile.

I remember how when I fought with my sister, my mother would send us both outside—one to the front yard and the other to the back yard. But we always outsmarted her in our sneakiness. We’d meet up on the side of the house to compare notes over how mean she was and plot our revenge. She says now that she always planned it that way on purpose, because at least we were talking instead of fighting. Uh huh, Mom, likely story!

I remember sleepovers and piano lessons and presents piled high in the living room at Christmas. I remember how my mom found an egg in my drawer once because I wanted to see if it would hatch if I took it out of the refrigerator. I remember how my sister cut a hole in the screen on her window so she could wave to the neighbors. I remember being scared at night and sleeping in her room more than my own.

I remember how my parents and our next-door neighbors threw big Thanksgiving shindigs for a while. They started out small and grew each year until they were renting tables and dishes and silverware and setting up picnic-style outside. Everyone brought a dish. It was a tradition until the year it rained, and the dishwasher broke. That was the year we had about 100 people—a lot of dishes to wash by hand. It was also the occasion on which I got my first kiss from a boy. After that, Thanksgiving went back to being a family affair (because of the rain and the broken dishwasher, not because of the kiss, which my parents are probably only learning about for the first time by reading it here).

I remember a sapling of an oak tree that was planted by a family friend in the front yard not long after we moved into that house, and impatiently thinking that by the time it grew large enough to climb, I’d probably have kids old enough to do the climbing for me. That’s true, but now we won’t be back to ascend that particular tree.

Here’s another silly thing I remember. Until the thrill of our new residence obliterated all thought of the house we had just vacated, I recall being sad at leaving the only home I could remember up to that point. I went around taking mental pictures of each room, so that I would always remember them. I wanted to burn them in my brain since I didn’t have an actual camera. And you know what? I do remember them. Yet when my parents moved out of the house last summer that they had called home for nearly 30 years and which I consider my childhood home more than any other, we went around and took real pictures with a real camera (being technologically advanced and all). It turns out I don’t need them. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a memory is worth a thousand pictures.

Here’s the bottom line. No matter what, and no matter where, I’m thankful this Thanksgiving that I have such wonderful memories and that I have a family to share them with. Because after all, home is wherever the people you love are.