March 2 2017

We Messed Up Our Kids

We are good parents for the most part. Our kids might even agree. However, in the process of raising them to be the wonderful productive members of society that they are today, we may have seriously messed them up.

First we had a rule that they could only cry when they got “hurt” if there was blood involved. Next if they kept whining about some painful thing, we would tell them, “Don’t worry honey. If it still hurts tomorrow, we will just cut it off.” You know what? NOTHING ever hurt tomorrow! Now that seriously cut down on the whining around our house. We also wouldn’t let them use a band-aid unless they were actively bleeding. Don’t judge! Those cute cartoon band-aids were not cheap! I like to think we were teaching them to deal with the things life throws at them in a mature way. Continue reading

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February 10 2017

The Importance of Family Dinners

The Importance of Family Dinners

If you have children, you most likely already know how important it is to eat dinner as a family. We did this almost every night when the kids were growing up. The kids were allowed to help get dinner on the table by helping whoever was cooking or by setting the table. We would let them help plan menus for the week and voice what they were “hungry” for. Each child of course had favorite meals. We would talk about how it wasn’t good to eat the same thing more than one day a week. How we should try to plan a variety of different meats or even some meatless meals throughout the week. Eating together as a family affords opportunities to bond and many teachable moments.

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December 15 2016

Where is my Christmas Spirit?

I am normally very into Christmas. I used to enjoy the whole picking the perfect gift for each person on my list thing. But lately, my Christmas gift list just seems too long. I feel obligated to buy for everyone on the list and that turns it into a chore. The truth is, I rarely spend much time with any of the people on our gift list, so I don’t really know what the perfect gift for each of them would be any more. I’m not sure when this happened. Perhaps it was when the nieces and nephews began growing into adults and bringing dates to family gatherings. Then they get married or move in with their significant others. Sometime they married into ready-made families and the gift list grew exponentially. At any rate, it is somewhat overwhelming.
I love the way my sisters and I handle the holidays. We get together sometime near the holiday, well within a month of it usually. We each bring a wrapped gift valued at about ten dollars. The gift can be anything, but preferably some of them will be suitable for the men or teens and not just to one particular person. Sometimes we get a lot of gift cards, though they are wrapped creatively so it isn’t always obvious that is what is inside the wrapping. 
Once everyone is gathered in the designated location and the wrapped gifts are on the table, someone figures out how many of us there are and makes little slips of paper with that many numbers and folds each number up so they all look the same and puts them into a bowl. Someone volunteers to go around and have everyone select a folded slip of paper. The person who draws number one goes first. Number one gets to pick from all the wrapped gifts and open the gift they choose. They hold it up and show everyone. Number two then has the option to choose a wrapped gift from the table or take the gift from number one. This goes on until everyone has had a turn. When the numbers have all had their turn, anyone who had a gift taken from them gets to pick another one from the table and open it. If this happened a lot, they re-pick in the same order they picked in the first time around. When everyone has an unwrapped gift and the table is empty, number one gets the chance to take the gift from anyone else, and that person essentially ends up trading gifts with number one. After that is all over usually folks start asking others if they want to trade gifts. 
Sometimes the gifts are great, other times the gift is destined to become a white elephant gift offering or go into the donation bag. It doesn’t take hours like it does when a big family gets gifts for each and every other member and the group must sit around taking turns opening gifts so everyone can see every gift each person received. The point is spending time together and having fun, our little “Dirty Santa” game is how we have turned the holiday and a bunch of family members on very tight budgets into a fun and memorable experience. Sometimes, we learn a lot about each other by seeing what sort of gift each person contributes to the game. Some choose to bring a gift they would love to go home with themselves, sometimes it is more of a gag gift. Sometimes it is something edible like candy and the person opens it and passes it around to share with the group. We used to have separate groups for the kids and adults. Then the kids started growing to adulthood and wanted to be in the grown up group. We have a lot of fun and everyone seems to be relieved that they only need to come up with one gift per person in their own family unit. Sometimes, the person gets a great deal on a gift worth ten dollars and other times the person spends ten dollars on a gift worth much more. It doesn’t really matter. The gifts are just a fun way to get every one together in the same room to spend time together. 
I sometimes wish we could do this for the other side of the family too. There are just so many people and many of them are on tight budgets too. There are a few options, we can give a family gift, but that is difficult too as the kids are getting older. My family used to draw names about a month before the holiday, this used to be easy if we were all together for the Thanksgiving holiday as we could draw names then. We gave this up eventually because it didn’t really allow us to invite others to join us. I rarely managed to draw the name of the person I had found the perfect gift for, so that was a bit of a downer. 
All of this is to say that this year for whatever reason, I am having trouble getting into the Christmas mood. It has helped some to listen to Christmas music. It also helps when hubby is willing to help with the shopping and not just leave it all up to me to figure out. Of course it is too soon to talk about what sorts of gifts we chose for the various family members. You never know who might actually be reading this blog post. I keep thinking that eventually the mood will hit me and hopefully when it does it won’t be after the holiday season has ended and the new year has descended upon us.
So, what family holiday traditions do you have? Are you in the Christmas mood this year? Do you have any advice to share on what a body can do to enjoy the holiday season more and dread the gift shopping less? Any hints you can gift would be greatly appreciated.
Happy Holidays to you and yours!
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May 2 2016

The Rewards of Parenting

Who knew having kids and raising them to adulthood would feel so rewarding? It seemed like it was hard during each stage we went through, but once it was over then we moved on to a new and different stage.

Before you know it the kids are growing up too fast and instead of celebrating all those “firsts”, you find yourself celebrating the “lasts”. You know, last day of kindergarten, last elementary school awards program, high school graduation, last time you will have to help one of your kids move into a dorm room, that sort of thing.

In five days, we will celebrate another last. Our youngest is graduating from college and moving home. Last time we will have to help pack and move a kid out of a dorm room, last graduation open house, last week of empty nesting for a while. Yes, I will miss the empty nesting. You feel a sense of pride as they reach monumental birthdays. You dread when you no longer have babies, toddlers, preschoolers, but instead you have teens, oh boy! I remember feeling like we had really done something worth while when both kids were officially adults, able to vote, drive cars, get tattoos! Yikes, not all of the rights of passage that come with being an adult seemed like good things. Then the oldest graduated from college and I was so proud. I realized he had done something nobody in either mine or his dad’s family had done since maybe his grandfather, and that was graduate with a four year degree in just four years. We had our share of college graduates in our family, but none had managed to get through in just four short years. Way to go! Then he got his first big-boy job as he called it and he wasn’t moving home. Not even to the city we lived in. But that was alright, he was only an hour up the road and he was doing well. Then when the baby turned twenty, I wanted to celebrate the fact that we had survived the teen years relatively intact. Once the baby turned twenty one, I suddenly had two grown children who not only could legally drink, but chose to do so. Wow! So not sure I am ready for this! The baby turned twenty two, was in her last year of college and it looked like she too would get the four year degree in the four year time frame. Excellent!

So I am bursting with pride yet again. Soon we will have not only two grown adult children, but two college graduates! Who knew when my husband and I struggled through getting our degrees while dating, getting married, having kids and working that we would set such good examples for our kids. They grew up knowing that they were expected to go to college, that we didn’t expect to be able to pay for it so they would need to get top notch grades so they could get scholarships. We were right, we are part of that middle class poor who earn too much for our kids to qualify for financial aid, but not enough to really be able to help them much. We did the College Choice 529 plan thing, but didn’t get started saving until the oldest was starting high school. We faithfully put away $170 a month for just over 10 years to be able to help each kids with ten thousand dollars toward their senior year of college. Do I wish it could have been more? Of course I do. I told the kids that we couldn’t help them until their senior year because first of all we needed more time to save up the money to be able to help them and second because we wanted to make sure they were serious about college and getting a degree. We all know kids who go away to college on their parents’ dime and party all the time until they flunk out. We didn’t want that to happen. They needed to keep their grades up and show up for classes. Their student loans are in their names, because they give out loans for kids to get an education, but not for parents to retire on. It scares me that even going to reasonable priced in-state schools, they are still graduating with over fifty thousand dollars of student loan debt hanging over their heads. That is more than we paid for our first house and almost as much as we sold it for fourteen years later. My husband never had student loans, and I had only five thousand dollars or so amassed during a couple of my last semesters in college. Of course we both took well over ten years to earn our four year degrees going the part-time, slow way and paying for it as we went. Those were the lean years of our marriage. Never much extra time or money, but maybe that wasn’t all bad. We raised our kids to respect money and to be thrifty. They grew up wearing second hand clothing of their choosing from the local Goodwill and thrift stores. They were fine with it and I didn’t stress out if they ruined a pair of jeans or a shirt now and then. They didn’t cost that much and we knew where we could find replacements fairly cheap. Perhaps because they had held jobs and grown up thrifty, they knew the value of the education and student loans they were getting. They didn’t squander them. Yet another reason to be proud of both of them.

One of the things that really pleased and surprised me as a parent was how smart our kids are and how good looking. Still not quite sure how that happened! I mean, you hope, pray and dream it will be that way, but you just figure you could never get that lucky. Well, we won the parenting lottery jackpot. We have two great kids who never caused us many sleepless nights, stayed out of trouble, got good grades, were pleasant to be around, are well liked by their peers and adults in general and who actually seem to like being around us. Well, most of the time anyway. Who could ask for more? I thank God and the fact that both my husband and I were raised by good parents who cared about us. Here’s to hoping you had as good a luck and experience raising your kids as we did raising ours. (1,094 words)

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March 11 2015

How to Fold King-Sized Sheets Alone and Making the Bed Easier

We have had a king-sized bed for more than twenty years. I had to teach myself to fold those huge sheets alone because there was rarely anyone capable of helping with this chore. I will try to explain how I do this.

When the sheets come out of the dryer, the pillow cases are easy enough to fold, of course.

The flat sheet is a bit trickier, but still quite possible. I find the top edge of the sheet. You know, the one with the extra thick fabric about four inches wide, sewn down.  That is the top edge of the sheet. I find one corner of the top edge, then run my hand down the side to find the corner of the bottom edge on the same side. I then bring the bottom corner up to its matching top corner then keep those two corners tightly grasped in one hand while following the top edge along to the other corner. Once I find the other top corner, I repeat the search down the side for the other bottom corner. Once I find the other bottom corner, I match it to the top corner. Now the hard part is done. You have the king-sized sheet folded in half, bottom to top. Once you have this done, fold the two sets of corners together with the top edge out. From there it doesn’t really matter how you fold it and it is now a quite manageable size. I try to end up with a folded bundle about the size of a sheet of printer paper.

The fitted sheet is the hardest one to fold. It might be easier to practice this method using a twin sized sheet. Once you have it mastered the same method can be applied to any sized sheet. It is similar in theory to folding the flat sheet, but you put the corners over your hand like a mitten. One corner tucks into the other until you end up with a square about three foot in each direction with the four corners all tucked inside each other. Again, what you do from here is up to you but you want to end up with a folded bundle of a size similar to what you got when you folded the flat sheet.

Place the flat sheet on the tale first, then stack the fitted sheet on top of that and put the pillow cases on the very top. Now your sheet set is ready to go into the linen closet. This might be a good time to mention that when folding sheets it is very important to fold with the side you want facing up when you make the bed on the inside. This likely doesn’t matter unless you want to have troublemaking the bed with these clean and nicely folded sheets.

Now the benefit of folding the sheets as instructed with the right sides in for the fitted sheet and the side you want up in on the flat sheet, is that it make making the bed alone much easier. When you are ready to make the bed and have stripped off the dirty sheets, stuff all the dirty sheets into one of the dirty pillow cases. This keeps the entire sheet set together through the laundry process. Now that the bed is ready for the clean sheets, unfold the fitted sheet until you have the four corners tucked into each other and put that quarter sheet down on one corner of the bed. I usually put it at the head of the bed on the left side, but the process works whichever you corner you choose to make first. Unfold the sheet so that top half of the bed is covered with the half sheet. Now carefully unfold the rest of the sheet to cover the bottom of the bed. Walk from one corner to the next out your hand into the corner pocket then lay it at the very corner of the mattress and press firmly while the other hand slides the pocket off the hand that was holding it and wraps it neatly over the corner of the mattress. Repeat with all four corners. The flat sheet is done basically the same way, but when you get the sheet unfolded to the one quarter size, make sure the top edge of the flat sheet is in the proper corner of the bed where you want the sheet to be after the bed is made. Make sure the fold lines up with the center of the bed. I usually put it about six inches down from the top edge of the mattress, but if you like plenty of sheet to tuck up around your ears while sleeping go ahead and line it up with the top edge if the sheet is still long enough to tuck under the mattress at the foot of the bed. Unfold the first fold across the bed, smooth it out and walk from side to side to check that there is the same amount of over hang on each side. Once that adjustment is made, you are ready to unfold the final fold and smooth the flat sheet over the rest of the bed. Now if you plan to tuck the foot of the blanket in, go ahead and put it on now using the same method as we did for the flat sheet. If you don’t plan to tuck in a blanket, go ahead and tuck the foot of the sheet in under the mattress then add the blanket and you are done making the bed.

I usually put the folded set of sheets into one of the pillowcases and fold the pillowcase around it before putting the sheet set away in the linen closet. This is my way of keeping all the pieces of any given sheet set together without having to worry about digging through or having any of the parts come unfolded. This may not be anyone’s idea of the perfect way to fold sheets, but it is my way and it works for me. (1,019 words)
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