Dear Norman Rockwell,

Dear Norman,
    I feel like Linus out in the pumpkin patch waiting for the Great Pumpkin, but Norman, you did not make it to my house again this year.  Have you lost my address?  I have been waiting and waiting for that Norman Rockwell Christmas, and I haven't seen it yet but I am sure you will come next year.  Just between you, me and Santa I am sending my Christmas list for 2014 right now so maybe you will put me at the top of your list.
    Of course I want world peace, food in every kitchen, a cure for cancer and every other disease, love for every one, and good will and kindness toward all men and women, and most especially children and animals.
    Personally, I  want the same things as last year so just pull out my last letter to you.  You know, new car, new house, grass & trees in the yard. Santa doesn't seem to respond to me so maybe you could speak to him for me.  Maybe I need to write to The Great Pumpkin too.  Linus may know something I don't.
    How was your Christmas?  Actually, mine was good, bad and ugly.  A little heavy on the ugly end. But I have had worse.  I will tell you a little about it.
    Good? On Christmas day both of my daughters came over and had breakfast with me. Juice and blueberry muffins.  It was wonderful.  They didn't wake me until the muffins were hot out of the oven.  I talked to my sister in New Mexico, my son in Seattle, my granddaughter here although I can never understand her on the phone very well.  She is only 3 and my ears are not what they use to be, but I did understand her saying that she got playdoh.  :)  My daughter-in-law emailed me pictures of my granddaughter with a new little bike and a doll house too. Playdoh was her favorite gift though. The weather outside was not frightful, it was sunny and nice.  If you can't have a white Christmas then sunny and nice is 2nd best. There was no mud for the dogs to drag in today and I was grateful for that.
   Bad  #1?  My son here in town was sick as a dog.  He did not feel like getting out of bed except to see his children have Christmas, then he went back to bed for the day.  He and I got sick at the same time.  I was sitting at his house yesterday when boom, one minute we were fine and the next minute we had a bug and we knew it.  Therefore, I didn't get to go to their house to see my granddaughter open her presents, (her brother is only 8 weeks old so he probably slept through it) and none of them got to come to my house for turkey.  
Bad # 2?  I was sick as two dogs.  I don't even know what that means except I feel pretty darn crummy.  Sore throat, fever, coughing, aching, headache, sneezing, arms feel like they could fall off.  I pretty much stayed in bed the entire day. The turkey I didn't get to have at Thanksgiving didn't get cooked for Christmas either.  Maybe tomorrow.  Today I couldn't have lifted the thing much less prepare it.  Instead I made myself some mac & cheese since that would go down my throat easy.  Since I didn't feel up to anything but sleeping and staying in bed my daughters went to their dad & stepmom's for Christmas after breakfast with me.  I was so glad they had a place to go and good food to eat but before I got sick I had planned a great day for us at my house.  
Bad #3? My daughter-in-law went back to work last week after having my grandson 7 weeks ago and she chose someone else to babysit my grandkids instead of me.  I had babysat my granddaughter all her life except her first 6 months until her brother was born this fall.  Then I was at their house every week day for 7 weeks after the baby came, letting my daughter-in-law have a good nap. It was just a communication problem, mostly. I told my son & D-in-L I didn't want to babysit, I wanted her to stay home with her kids. If she had to go back to work I wanted to babysit 4 hours a day. Could they find someone to share babysitting. Well, they found someone, for all day.   It was a blow, a big blow to me, but the new babysitter has two boys for my granddaughter to play with.  Yeah, well, I am heartbroken. Stressed. Sad.  On Christmas eve said babysitter called my daughter-in-law to tell her that her two sons and she herself were suddenly stricken with "the flu" and may have passed the bug on to them.  I think my son and I got it, but thank goodness, not my grandkids so far.
   Ugly?  my son-in-law decided two weeks ago that he really wasn't cut out for being a family man and told my daughter he wanted a divorce.  She is devastated.  My grandsons will be too.  She didn't want to tell them until after Christmas.  None of us saw this coming. It is a family tradition we have evidently.  Another relative's husband decided the same thing two days before Thanksgiving this year.  4 years ago another relative's wife decided she wanted a divorce 2 weeks before Christmas. The same year another relative's girlfriend dumped him right before Christmas when he thought they were planning on getting married.   All four were a big surprise to everyone except the person wanting out of the relationship. And all right at the holidays.  Unbelievable. 
    No, this was not a Norman Rockwell Christmas.  But I Norman, I am grateful for a lot of things. A roof over my head, my dogs, food in the house, and electricity keeping me warm.  Juice in the fridge for my sore throat. I have a family that loves me. I have a stack of library books to keep me busy.  My grandchildren are healthy ... that alone is enough to make it a great Christmas. 
    I hope next year is my year.  No one heartbroken, no one sick, my entire family together to eat good food, spend the day laughing and playing games, to go see lights, decorating a real tree together, packages for everyone, making fudge and decorating sugar cookies.  See you then, OK? And if you could make that happen in a big, big cabin in the mountains of New Mexico that would be super!
   Until then I am looking forward to getting well, and to a brand new year.  And glad this holiday season is over. 
    Happy New Year,
             Aunt Betsy
   

ThePianoGuys

This music calms my soul.  You may have seen them on GMA recently or on Today. I just wanted to share:

ThePianoGuys O Come, Emmanuel  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iO7ySn-Swwc

No one plays the piano like ThePianoGuys  http://www.abcactionnews.com/dpp/entertainment/music/the-piano-guys-put-a-new-spin-on-holiday-music

Where Are You Christmas?   http://thepianoguys.com/portfolio/where-are-you-christmas-live-in-concert/  That precious little girl singing at the end is pianist Jon Schmidt's daughter, Sarah.  When she hugs and kisses her daddy at the end ... my eyes were swimming.

I can not imagine how his brain works that he can play upside down ... http://thepianoguys.com/portfolio/rudolph-merry-christmas/

My Second Best Christmas Ever

     The 1990's were good years for me.  Both of my best Christmases ever were in the 90's.  My 2nd best was not on Christmas day but a get-together I had mid-December one year.  I will try to not be wordy but I have to give you a little background.
     I do not have a single memory of Christmas when I was a child.  I grew up in a weird family.  We had Christmas, per say, I just don't remember it.  My older sister does not remember Christmas either.    I will just leave it at that.  I DO remember frosted sugar cookies from a bakery at my school parties.  I thought that was the most luxurious thing in the world.
      Christmases during the time my children were small were very good.  Christmases after they grew up and left home ---eh--- lonely mostly.
     Normally, I don't do parties.  I am an introvert.  I am a homebody. I don't like socializing. But I always wanted the big loving family experience of a family meal or get-together or something.   Aunts and uncles and cousins.
     I did not win the family jackpot, not counting my kids and grandkids, and my sister. My sister and I are in contact almost daily now but for a good 40 years we barely knew each other.  That weird family thing.  (I remember when we started to be close.  My mother had died.  Me in my 30's, my sister in her 40's, and us at the florist when I had a thought. The thought was that we were orphans. I said something like "We are orphans now. Maybe we should get to know each other.) We rarely ever see each other since she lives in another state but email has brought us together.  I have a much older step-brother that lives on the other side of the country and I wouldn't know him if he were standing behind me in the grocery check out line.  Aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, significant other, in-laws, out-laws....no.  None.
    Well, one year, this was back before my sister and I really got to know each other, I decided I was going to have that big loving family experience come heck or high water.
     I made my own big family.  I wanted to have a very simple dinner with my "big family" and I wanted to do something "Christmas-y."  Something a family would do together.
    A large church in town, not mine, had a magnificent Christmas program each year.  It was wildly popular.  It was presented numerous times during December. Tickets were free, but you had to have a ticket.  I called the church office.  The largest amount of tickets one person could pick up was 50.  I picked them up.  Now I knew my own big family would number 50 souls.  The first 5 tickets were for me and my children. Now I needed 45 more "family members."
     I prayed about who could I adopt for the evening to be my family.  I prayed and pondered and thought and made a list.  I didn't really have but a couple of close friends. I was busy with my kids when I was not working. I had a lot of acquaintances though. The first name that came to me was my favorite grocery store checker.  I didn't even know her last name.  Our only connection was that she was friendly, always smiling, funny and I liked to get in her line when I bought groceries.  She seemed like the kind of person I would pick out for a cousin.  
    I knew another lady that was single and without much family.  I knew her holidays went about like mine.  She became a cousin too.   Other names came to me.  Patrons from work that I felt a closeness to; a special teacher from my kid's elementary school days.    
    I was active in my small Mormon church and people there were very good to me.  Now Mormons know how to have big loving families.  Big families.  I am a convert.  My 4 kids and I were a small family at church.  :)  I invited some of my church family that were important to me.  The first "church people" I thought of was an older couple that I just loved to pieces.  If I could have chosen them for my parents or grandparents I would have.  Of course they became part of "my big family."  Several of the women from church that had been so good to me became aunts and sisters and cousins, along with their husbands.  Now I had uncles and brothers and male cousins.   Some people were in their 70's, a few were children, and all ages in between.  I was soon sorry I only had 50 tickets.
    There was no way on earth I could afford to take 50 people out to dinner.  There was no way on earth I could cram 50 people in my home for a meal.  I could barely afford food for us five, not for a party.  December in Texas might be mild but too cold for an evening picnic in a park.   My church had a room big enough but it would not have been appropriate to ask to use it and few of my new "family members" were members of my church so I didn't want them to think I was trying to convert them.  I finally came up with a meeting room I could use for free so now on to coming up with food for our family dinner.
    I wrote a letter to my prospective family members, told them what I wanted to do, that I had the tickets for the Christmas program and invited them to be my family for the evening.  I said I couldn't afford food for 50 but I could provide beverages, disposable bowls, plates, spoons, napkins etc if they could bring one thing to share...a crockpot of soup or chili, or bread, or a dessert for a potluck dinner. I would bring my crockpot of soup too.  We would eat and then all go to the program together. 
    We had the best extended family dinner that I ever had.  It was awesome.  Most of the people did not know each other so before we started to fill our bowls I asked them to find a seat at a table and let me introduce everyone.  I went to each family or individual and told why I felt they were special to me and why I wanted them to be my family for the evening.  There were lots of hugs, laughs and some happy tears.  We had a great time.  It did not seem like a roomful of strangers at all.  We all visited. We ate delicious food. Had tons of leftovers. Several offered to bring the paper goods and beverages so it turned out to be no expense for me except my soup offering.  The church was only a few blocks away and we all enjoyed the Christmas program so much.
    One of the nicest things I heard that night was from a woman of considerably more means and status than me.  She told me she and her husband had a calendar full of holiday parties and events to attend but this one was the least stressful to think about attending and the most fun.  That it was truly like a big family gathering.
   If you are like me and Norman Rockwell family gatherings don't happen in your life and you want to do something fun for Christmas, or New Years, or for a random Saturday night I highly suggest you create your own family.  You never can tell, it might turn out to be one of the best times of your life.  Merry Christmas!
P. S.  I would like to add that we all became one big happy family and stayed in contact, but no.  My very best friend has passed away, others moved, others I just no longer see -- the grocery store checker was no longer there one day.  Life happens, but for that one evening it was very good.
   

Shut Your Eyes And See Christmas

     When I worked at the library I worked in the Youth Department.  We were on the second floor of a large library and our area took up almost half of the floor.
     Being in our own little world upstairs we had opportunities to do things not available to every department.  One was that from Thanksgiving through Christmas we played Christmas CD's at our desk.  Not loudly, just loud enough for the two employees manning the desk to hear and not so loud that phone calls to the desk could not be heard over the music.  I lost a good bit of my hearing about halfway through my 20 years at the library so much of the time I could not hear the music, even with my hearing aides, if the volume was low enough for someone with normal hearing to quietly listen.      
     We had one children's CD that we especially loved and even after hearing became difficult for me if no one else but staff was in the department I was allowed to turn the volume up when this particular poem came on.  The CD was Fred Penner's The Season: A Family Christmas Celebration ... a wonderful CD and not your typical children's CD .. this one is beautiful, not chipmonk-y.  Mr. Penner recites a poem and then it is followed by a verse of "I Heard The Bells on Christmas Day."
      The poem was written by Rose Fyleman, an English writer and poet.  In December 1929 she was invited to Winnipeg, Canada to be a guest speaker at some women's clubs.  One evening Ms. Fyleman and a president of one of the women's clubs took a walk from her hotel to the Manitoba Parliament Building to see the statue of Queen Victoria on the front lawn.  Ms. Fyleman went back to her hotel and wrote the poem "In Winnipeg at Christmas."
      I have never been to Canada.  Every Christmas of mine has been spent in the desert of New Mexico or the plains of the Texas panhandle.  I have had white Christmases but more often than not the weather has been sunshine and fairly warm.  Most often children have no trouble at all riding new Christmas bicycles in t-shirts and jeans, maybe a hoodie or jacket. Even as a child I saw Christmas as something totally different than my experience, obviously colored by things I read.  Then, and now, in my mind I see Christmas as snowy ... 4 feet of snow, at least, and snowmen everywhere.  The colored lights of Christmas decorations blurry because of the big fluffy snowflakes falling.  No matter where you are Christmas carols playing.  Everyone offering Christmas greetings, laughing, happy. Christmas trees, and wreaths and decorations on light poles.  "Ugly Christmas sweaters" that are not ugly to me.  Decorated sugar cookies, beautiful Christmas packages piled under trees, homes packed with loving family.  You can see how I fell in love with the poem below.
      If your library has Mr. Penner's CD check it out and shut your eyes and listen.  You will see Christmas.  If you can't get the CD then shut your eyes and ask your favorite person to read it to you.  If you live alone like me then memorize the poem and recite it to yourself.  It is lovely.
    

In Winnipeg at Christmas

In Winnipeg at Christmas there’s lots and lots of snow,
Very clean, and crisp and hard
And glittering like a Christmas card
Everywhere you go;
Snow upon the housetops, snow along the street,
And Queen Victoria in her chair
Has snow upon her snowy hair
And snow upon her feet.

In Winnipeg at Christmas they line the streets with trees-
Christmas trees lit up at night
With little balls of coloured light
As pretty as you please.
The people hurry past you in furry boots and wraps;
The sleighs are like a picture book,
And all the big policemen look
Like Teddy Bears in caps.

And oh! The smiling ladies and jolly girls and boys;
And oh! The parties and the fun
With lovely things for everyone-
Books and sweets and toys.
So, if someday at Christmas you don’t know where to go,
Just pack your boxes up I beg,
And start at once for Winnipeg;
You’ll like it there I know.

-Rose Fyleman

Merry Christmas from Betsy to you

The Twelve Days of Christmas, or Our Best Christmas Ever

                                                         
I have no idea who gave my family our best Christmas ever.  I tried to find out so I could not only thank them but let them know what they did for my family.  They worked so hard to keep it a secret and after awhile I realized they didn't want me to know so I gave up trying to figure it out.  Besides, I had given it my best shot and came up with nothing! No clue!
 
     It was back in the early 1990's. I was divorced, working at the best job in the world (library) but for a tiny bit above minimum wage and I had 4 children.  I didn't have a lot of money to do fun things for my children during the holiday season. My Mother had died the year before right at Christmas and I was dreading the season coming around that year.  A couple of other difficult things were going on.  It was not going to be a Norman Rockwell Christmas. 
     Whoever it was knew my schedule well.  Two weeknights a week I worked until 9 p.m. I worked every other Saturday and the other week days until 6 p.m.  I lived in a bit of a scary neighborhood and I think they realized anything they left on my porch would disappear if left alone for long.  They left us 12 gifts, at random times, but always just shortly after I had picked my children up and arrived home at night.  Being December it was always in the dark.
     The first gift came early in December.  It was a thin tree branch, maybe about 5 or 6 feet tall, with a pear attached to it and a little note ... "On the first day of Christmas my true friend gave to me a pear tied to a tree."  My children, ages 8 though 14, and I thought it was fun that someone rang our doorbell and left this on our porch.  I assumed it was meant for one of my daughters and from one of their friends. We did not expect another gift.
     A week later, the doorbell rang again. No one there but a gift was left on our porch.  I am sorry to say I don't remember what it was, but it went along with the song and had a little note... I am pretty sure it was a box of Chocolate "Turtle" candies and a bar of Dove soap.  It definitely brightened our day.
    We thought there might possibly be a 3rd gift so the kids tried to listen for a car to stop at our home but we never heard or saw a thing.  At a random time the doorbell would ring and they would be out of sight before we opened the door. 
    We asked everyone we could think of if they were leaving the gifts. No one admitted to it but many friends of mine and my children would ask daily "did you get another gift?"  It was fun & holiday joy for a multitude of people, especially my co-workers!  Never knowing when a gift might come or what it would be created suspense, anticipation, and happiness that made that December fun when we were sorely missing my Mom and their Grandma. 

    Of the other gifts I can only remember four.  Instead of 3 French hens we found 3 frozen Cornish hens and other food items to make a meal.  Our five golden rings was a can of pineapple rings.  Instead of 10 Lords a Leaping we received socks. Pretty socks - argyles, stripes, bright colors - not just plain old white socks.  A pair for each of us totaling 10 socks.  They were pinned to something, I can't remember what, but pinned as if hanging on a clothes line.  The last gift was a party in a box ... items to "drum up a party"....cans of Sprite, cookies, snacks.  It was the best Christmas ever.
     I so wish I had the list of exactly what we received.   I kept all of the notes that came with each gift but somehow I lost them over the years.  I recently googled "gifts for the 12 Days of Christmas" and found this wonderful article: http://familycrafts.about.com/od/christmascrafts/ss/12-Days-Of-Christmas.htm.  It has great examples of things you can give for the 12 days.  If you can ever afford it and know someone who needs some holiday cheer I promise this can't be beat.  It doesn't have to be expensive gifts, just requires some imagination.  We appreciated the can of pineapple as much as any of them.  20 years later when I see a pineapple ring I remember that feeling of bliss finding our "5 golden rings."  20 years of thinking someone loved my family so much that they created gifts, came by my home and left them 12 times during what most likely was an already busy month for them.  Somebody cared about us. 
    Go out and hug somebody, and give someone a Christmas surprise if you can.
                                      Betsy

On a Roll ...

     I've been feeling a little under the weather, just a sore throat, but my daughter came over last night and made me comfort food ...  Pumpkin Cake Roll, the recipe from the Libby's Pumpkin can or their website.  Powdered sugar, pumpkin cake, and a cream cheese filling ...  Heaven to Betsy, that is good!  Very easy to make and such a pretty dessert.  
    Twelve days until Christmas ... are you A, B or C?
A.  Ready and just waiting for the big day.
B. Still having shopping & decorating to do.
C.  Waiting for it all to be over and looking forward to a new year.

I am A and on a roll ... presents purchased and wrapped just waiting to be with grandchildren, but also C.  
  

Thanksgiving Meal

     I really love food.  My favorite Thanksgiving foods are cranberries, classic green bean casserole, and especially cornbread dressing.  Oh, and I love pumpkin pie.  Turkey? Eh, I will eat the breast meat.  My favorite Thanksgiving family story involves green bean casserole.  I make it with Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup and French's French Fried Onion Rings -- the recipe off the onion rings can.  I am not a gourmet cook and not afraid of "cream of" soups.  When my first grandchild, Mason, was about 2 or 3 he was at my home the day after Thanksgiving.  I dragged out all of the leftovers from my fridge and had them on the counter.  Day old green bean casserole still tastes good but it tends to look a little gray and unattractive after a day or two in the fridge.  I picked up my grandson and was showing him the food, asking him what he wanted me to put on his plate.  When he saw that grayish green bean casserole he made these huge "precious moments" shaped sad eyes and said "OHHhhh, my momma told me NEVAH put that in my mouth." We have no idea where he got that or what he thought it was.  (and that word up there is "never" -- he had trouble pronouncing his R's)
     What are your favorite Thanksgiving foods?