On the evening of the night before Christmas Eve, I realized: “everyone is busy doing stuff right now! I’m going to sneak out and finish my shopping so I don’t have to go out tomorrow.”

So I did.

I didn’t even tell anyone I was leaving, so that I could be free of any extra helpers. I just texted them to say that I had left.

My first stop was Old Navy, where I needed a sleep T to match Kaleb’s Christmas PJs, and I might’ve browsed for a few minutes for some things for me, too. I hurried, though, because I still had several stops to make: Hobby Lobby, In ‘n Out (gift card, not food), the mall, and Target.

When there was one person in front of me, my phone rang. For a second I thought...I should ignore that. Because how bad could they need me? But I was responsible, and answered the phone.

“Mom!” Nathan said, with That Tone in his voice. “You need to come home. Kaleb just cut his finger open and he’s bleeding everywhere.”

Sigh.

So I set down my pile of stuff, drove back home (calling the pediatrician on the way because it was nearly 8:00 and if you call much later than that, you’re headed to the ER or Instacare instead of the after-hours doctor), quickly assessed that yes, he probably did need stitches, and loaded him and Nathan in the van. (Kendell stayed home because he wanted to finish the laptop my sister wanted to give her daughter for Christmas, which he’d been working on all day, growing more and more frustrated because it wasn’t going smoothly at all, and can I just whisper that I was totally OK with him staying home because frustrated Kendell + hurt kid + waiting at the doctor’s office does not = a happy experience.)

He ended up needing one stitch, some medical glue, some glued-on steri strips, and a brace to keep his finger straight, as the cut is right in the crease of his top knuckle. As far as stitches go it was fairly non-traumatic for him.

For me it sort of felt like it might be the very last thing my flagging Christmas enthusiasm could handle, mostly because once we got back home all the stores were closed, so there was no getting out of last-minute, day-before-Christmas shopping.

I was up late that night, wrapping everything. But 2:30 a.m. bedtime or not, I was still awoken at 4:37 by the dulcet tones of Kaleb puking.

Apparently stitches were not the last thing I could deal with.

Because no holiday is complete without at least one of my children getting the stomach flu! Wheeee! And get it he did—over the next ten hours or so, he dry-heaved 19 times. Jake was downstairs, also throwing up. Two at once? Well, it means a lot of laundry and toilet flushing, but it also means the inevitable everyone-is-going-to-get-this-sickness-despite-how-much-bleach-I-clean-with fact goes much, much faster.

I didn’t even hope that Nathan and I wouldn’t catch it. I accepted that stomach flu would be in my immediate future. My only hope was that no one was actively throwing up on Christmas Day.

And guess what?

All my Christmas dreams came true!

I mean, I did catch it, but not until Friday. Nathan got it on Sunday. Haley, who was home for roughly 36 hours, did not catch it (guess that bleach and obsessive handwashing helped a tiny bit), and neither did Kendell, who is almost always immune to the tantalizing lure of the norovirus. But my hope, my frantic prayer, my placating the holiday deities with tradition, or maybe just luck—for whatever reason, no one vomited on Christmas. Kaleb felt awful, Jake was not his usual self, and I was nearly paralyzed with the dread of hurling...but no one puked.

No one puked! That is all I need out of Christmas!

As I’m writing this I’m realizing that I sound a little bit snarky. Sort of casual about the fact that my eight-year-old sliced open his finger and then puked his little guts out. And maybe not even snarky, but actually jaded. Especially if you knew how limp and lacking my Christmas spirit was this year, you’d start to believe that I was a direct descendant of the Grinch, not to mention the world’s worst mom.

The truth is, I’m seriously sick of the fact that nearly every Christmas, someone in my family is sick. How have I offended the holiday deities?

I’d like to lodge a complaint somewhere.

But instead, I am taking a big deep breath. I am chalking it up. I am putting on my big-girl Christmas panties (which yes! totally match my Santa suit!) and looking on the bright side:

I finished all the wrapping.

I survived the day-before-Christmas shopping madness.

I forgot to put only the following things in the stockings: headlamps (three boys), a Duck Dynasty soda-can cozy (Jake), cherry-lime Propel packets (Kendell).

And no one threw up on Christmas day.

Plus there were these favorite moments:

• after opening pajamas, the kids opened their sibling gifts. (They draw names.) This is always one of my favorite moments because it makes me happy to see how happy they are at giving. (Haley gave Nathan a new RUCA hat and a sketch book; Jake gave Kaleb some sketching pencils and a drawing book; Nathan gave Jake a thumb drive and some gingerbread-flavored reindeer-shaped peeps; Kaleb gave Haley a picture of the two of them together in a pretty frame he picked out and some peanut butter M&M’s.)
• A few days before he got sick, Kaleb asked me to help him with a project. He wanted to give everyone a presents, and he loves making notes. So we designed a “merry Christmas” card together on the computer, and then he spent hours coloring and writing on the insides. He gave them to each of us on Christmas Eve. So sweet!
• Making the wassail. I also baked a Mary Ann cake, sweet rolls, and the sausage-egg-hash-brown casserole it wouldn’t be Christmas morning without, but it was when I stirred the wassail and the scent swirled up into my nose? That is Christmas Eve.
• Haley stayed up with me. She mostly talked to me while I cooked, but when it was time to get the presents out, she carried packages downstairs, put all the bows on, and helped me organize. I told her some of the secrets I use in my Santa-Claus roll. It felt like seeing what is on the other side of the end-of-childhood door. Glimpses of her as a grown up. I love her so much!
• But I made her go to bed while I stuffed the stockings. Some things can still be a surprise! As a testament to my exhaustion, I did not remove a single price tag from any of the things I put in the stockings. And I didn’t even think twice about it!
• Kaleb woke up when Haley and I were in the process of carrying the Santa presents downstairs. He was sure it was time to wake up, and was confused about why I was up if Santa couldn’t come until everyone was asleep. (I believe he’s beginning to suspect something...) I always worried about a kid waking up, but this is the only time it’s ever happened. Is it weird that I’m happy it did? It seems like a classic Christmas moment I almost missed out on. I sat with him in his room until he fell back asleep.
• Right at the beginning of opening presents, I snapped a few pictures, and Jake (who hates having his picture taken) said "Mom, will you please not take a photo of everything?" and while I wanted to protest and say "I never take pictures of everything," instead I decided to take fewer pictures. I still have plenty...but there was much less picture-taking tension. 
• On Christmas morning, Jake opened a four-pack of Monsters. Kendell said, “hey! That’s what I have: a four pack of monsters!” (Awwwwwww.)
• Jake opened a video game called Dark Souls (don’t judge...I am so discouraged about the video-game thing and it is only between Kendell and Jake). Kaleb said “Great! A Christmas present from Satan!” (Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.)
• Last year, Santa brought books only to the kids and forgot to bring them for the parents. A Christmas without books is desolate indeed, so he was making no such mistake this year! Kendell go the book Darth Vader and Son, which is a graphic novel with the premise of...what if Darth Vader raised Luke? (It is hilarious.) Kendell, Jake, and Kaleb (my three non-readers) sprawled on the floor together and read it, laughing. It wasn’t only an awesome Christmas moment. It was maybe the best moment of my entire adult life.
• I always give the kids socks for Christmas. After we were done opening presents, Nathan told me that his socks (tall, colored Nike gym socks) were probably his favorite gift.
• We always open the “big” gift from Santa last. This year, there were gift bags (the only ones Santa used) left at the end. Haley’s was the biggest and it had a sweatshirt she had been dying to have (18-year-olds are hard to surprise); Jake’s had a Visa gift card so he could finally get some League of Legends skins; Nathan’s had a gift certificate for a new butterfly knife, and Kaleb had a little note that lead him to a new sled. It was a fun twist!
• At my mom’s for Christmas dinner, all of the Bigs sat at the Adult table. They all sat together and teased each other and listened a little avidly to the weird things we discuss at the grown up table
• I was so excited to have my mom open her gift from me, a calendar I made with photos from Italy. I think she liked it!
• Doing dishes with Becky and our niece Lyndsay. Is that weird? It was just so...companionable. Friendly and low-stress and happy. I am glad that my relationship with some of my grown-up nieces is starting to get stronger. (I just wish it could be like that with all of them.)
• Everything about Christmas night at my mom’s. Kendell was happy, the kids were all getting along, dinner was delicious, the desserts turned out well, everyone loved their gifts, everyone had fun. It was tension-free. Was it the last one? I don’t know. But I loved it.

See...that’s what I needed to do. Flush out the cynicism by focusing on the good stuff. It helps me remember that despite the illnesses, the dragging spirits, the stitches, and the just-fairly-average gifts, it was still a good Christmas! How was yours?

right at this very moment, I was probably crying. You see, this happened:

I had a baby. And not just “had” a baby. Was totally surprised by this baby who arrived 2 ½ weeks early. I was still a student then, so it had been a busy few weeks before he was born: the last flurry of essays before finals, and then finals, and then the last touches on Christmas, and then Christmas.

The day before Jake was born, I had spent the day running errands with Haley. She was tired, and we shopped right through her nap (we were in K-Mart buying wipes when I realized the time!), and so she wanted me to carry her everywhere.

Maybe that was what did it?

Because later that night, after working for awhile on the bumper pads I was trying to make, I woke up feeling weird. Feeling sort of labor-ish, but I couldn’t be in labor because A—all the contraction-ish pain was in my back, and B—my due date was still 19 days away and C—I totally wasn’t ready.

The crib wasn’t set up yet.

The bedding wasn’t finished.

I only had one package of diapers.

I hadn’t bought binkis, or bottles, or burp cloths, or anything else baby related.

(I’d wanted to wait until January, when I had a babysitter lined up for Haley and an entire day of baby-related shopping planned. I’d get ready after Christmas was past, and the decorations put away, and speaking of which: the house was still decorated for Christmas. I couldn’t have a baby yet because how would I un-decorate with a newborn and a toddler?)

But the pain kept on going so I got up, and I found some scissors, and I sat on the floor in the middle of the still-empty nursery, where I cut the price tags off of all the cute baby clothes I’d bought.

I had a good, long cry and then a long, hot shower (during which there was an enormous shifting which I presume was the baby flipping over out of posterior position because the pain went from my back to my belly in one long undulation) and then I woke up Kendell because ready or not, we were having a baby.

Jake was on his way!

I cried a lot when each of my kids were newborns. Hormones or whatever, I couldn’t bear knowing that they would grow up, that they would leave that sweet newborn phase behind.

But it was especially bad with Jake, I think because I wasn’t ready. Not just with the baby stuff, but with the heart stuff. It was a strange tug: I couldn’t wait to hold him and see him and have him in my life (really: I can’t explain how much I wanted to finally bring home my little son), but there were all these other concerns. I didn’t want my relationship with Haley to change. I was scared to have the responsibility of two kids; it seemed absolutely impossible to manage. I hadn’t decided yet if I’d be able to go back to school after he was born—if I should take a semester off, or take no time off, or not go back at all. (If managing two kids felt impossible, managing two kids and homework felt insurmountable.)

But if I am honest, the biggest concern was this: I wanted a son but I was terrified of boys. I came from a family with four girls in it, and while I had held baby boys and even fallen in love with one before, I’d never tried to take care of any.

I don’t mean the actual, physical part of baby boys (although that was a learning curve that left me unexpectedly drenched more than once!). I mean: raising a boy. Raising this boy, whose personality seemed so sure and certain right from the beginning, who was himself before I was even certain I was pregnant—this boy who I loved so much. How would I raise him so he turned out to be a good boy, a good man?

I wasn’t always certain that God hadn’t mixed things up. What did I know about boys?

But something magical happened the second they handed Jake to me. He settled into my arms and I swear he was radiating a sense of contentment. If I could read his body language it was saying that he was done with waiting and he was ready to come because he wanted me to hold him. Me. And not just me, but me finally.

He wanted me to be his mom.

He came into my life and he brought this impossible thing with him. Impossible to name, but also sometimes impossible to believe that it exists. This relationship we have. He heals old wounds. He makes me laugh like no one else. He drives me crazy. He points out the wonders of the world—the small ones not everyone notices. He makes me more angry than I can describe and then he turns it around with his slow grin and his desire to do the right thing. Don't tell anyone, but he has a tenderness that the world has taught him to hide (but it is still there if you watch). He is energy personified, until he is its opposite. He is funny, smart, bright, and exceptional in quiet ways. He is full of goodness. And all of that is wrapped up in a boy, a boy I get to know and influence and love, to tease and buy shoes for and beg to let take his picture.

And while it didn’t ever really entirely go away—my fear of boys—it settled, at that moment of meeting him. Because I knew, and I still know, that he wasn’t afraid to be my son. I learned that I didn’t need to raise a man right at that moment, but that it would be years of trying and failing and getting things right and apologizing when I didn’t.

Sometimes, I confess, I still wonder: ummmm, was there a mix up somewhere? How did I (who can’t throw balls with any sort of skill, or muster up energy over which sports team is winning let alone understand the rules, with my non-mechanical, non-spacial, non-rambunctious mind) end up with a son? (With multiple boys?)

But I remember that body-deep surety that he wanted to be my son, and I hope that what I bring compensates for what I lack. I hope I have taught him something, and influenced him to do good things and try hard things and survive bad things, to be brave, and caring; to remember, to apologize, to forgive.

Lots of times I still don’t know what I’m doing, like yesterday when I was so mad at Jake I couldn’t concentrate or even hold still, and the madness boiled down to its essence which is always the same thing: fear that I am failing at raising a man. A good man. (Not that I doubt his goodness, but my ability to not let the world wear it away.)

But then he smiles at me, and I swear, I still see in his face (more than any of my other kids) his newborn face looking back at me. He smiles and no matter what, I am swamped with loving him, exactly who he his, with his foibles and his humor and his way of being in the world. His Jakey-ness, which in essence hasn’t changed since that first moment.

Jake started teaching me boy (it is a sort of language, after all) as soon as he arrived, and he’s been teaching me ever since. Sometimes it is utterly alien and others it is just human. Sometimes, now, when I am learning teen boy, I am still as baffled (and amused) as I was by baby boy. Sometimes it heals me as it brings an understanding to some parts of my own teenage experiences. Sometimes it is sheer frustration but always, always there is that way I feel about him.

“Love,” we say, as if those four letters, that sound we make with our mouth, is enough to encompass all of it, the billion tiny moments that form a boy’s relationship with his mom, and hers with him. But it’s the only word I know and so I’ll say it again:

I love you, Jakey. Happy birthday!

(With apologies for all of the bad photo-of-a-photo-in-a-sheet-protector-type pictures I've included on this post...one day I'll buy a scanner, another day I'll scan in all my old negatives...)

Over the past week I’ve:

• missed Nathan’s choir concert because I didn’t ask for time off from work early enough
• yelled at Kaleb when I really should’ve just hugged him and apologized
• missed seeing Nathan pin his wrestling opponent because I was at my mom’s
• forgotten to excuse Jake’s tardy so he had to sit in detention instead of having fun at Flex
• forgotten to pay Nathan’s lunch money
• promised Nathan I’d buy the snacks for his Drama party—and then I forgot
• neglected Kaleb’s homework (we studied for his spelling test this morning while driving to school)
• waited too long to order the gift that Nathan wanted to give his Dad for Christmas, and now it’s too late to get it personalized and shipped
• left a messy kitchen when I went to work so the kids had to clean up my cookie mess for me
• failed to sort the socks.

OK, it’s true: I fail to sort the socks quite often, leaving my desperate children to fish out their own matching pair, or grab their brother’s socks and then argue about it with said brother when he spots his favorite socks on someone else’s feet.

But somehow it feels worse to drop so many balls during December.

The image of a perfect mother is much more sharp and clear in my mind in the 24 days before Christmas. You know, the mom who doesn’t keep promising her eight-year-old that we’ll finally put the tiny balls on the little tree tomorrow, and then tomorrow, and then tomorrow. The perfect mom in the corner of my eye is organized and efficient and all of her presents are already wrapped. Good hell—her presents are already purchased! Her sugar cookies are baked and her friends love their hand-made gifts; the holidays don’t seem to make it impossible for her to do her regular stuff as well.

None of her children are disappointed.

And while I know that perfect mother is only an illusion, I want to be her so badly. Mostly I want to be her because that is the kind of mom I want my kids to have, but partly for myself. Because if I were perfect I wouldn’t have to feel how it feels to fail your kid.

I’m not sure what it is (well, actually, I do: not enough running causes the black dog to start nipping at my psyche, and as there’s been no running except for that one glorious day before it snowed when I threw my ankle concerns to the wind and ran four miles, yeah: unleash the hounds of hell), but this December has been rough. I’ve had exactly zero motivation or excitement about Christmas decorating, organizing, making, giving, planning, or shopping.

So I already feel like I’ve failed.

And the thing is, I know. I know. In fact, I had a little meltdown in the middle of November in the grocery store, on an afternoon when they were sampling little raspberry tarts and baking cinnamon rolls, and the mingled smell was so evocative of Christmas to me that I had to put on my sunglasses because I was seriously crying in Costco. Not because I was excited for Christmas to come, but because I desperately wanted it not to come. Because if it comes? If December is really, really here, and then Christmas? Well then, it means that before I know it, one more Christmas will be over, and suddenly the Christmases I have left feel like beads slipping off a broken necklace. There are only, what, perhaps two more when I have a believer, if I’m lucky, and only three more before Jake goes to college, and five more before Nathan does; only nine more before Kaleb is off.

That’s not very many, and here I am wasting this one because I can’t seem to find any motivation or excitement.

Which makes me feel worse.

So when I do something dumb like forget to call the dermatologist to squeeze Kaleb in for the enormous plantar wart he’s suddenly developed, it’s not just beads slipping off a string or balls bouncing...it feels like dropping boulders.

Like I am always, always messing up.

I don’t have a conclusion. I don’t even know if I should post this. Is it whiny? Am I lame? Or just pathetic?

I don’t know.

But it feels like I should be able to figure this out. I should be able to balance my regular life with the demands of the holidays. It’s a thing people do all December all over the world.

I want to figure it out. But while I try, I keep fumbling. And all I can do, I guess, is try to pick up the things I dropped, and feel that awful “I dropped it again!?!” feeling, and ask my kid to forgive me.

Tomorrow we are having a baking day at my mom’s house. By "we" I mean: my sisters and three of my nieces. Instead of, you know, baking something, I decided, "hey! I saw that book about candy making at work the other day! I should make some hand-dipped chocolates!"

Now, before you go all doubting Thomas on me, I’ll have you know that I make caramel and fudge every year.

And in fact, I'm practically an expert at making fondant and soft caramels for dipping. Because I took a class! at a real candy store! And I’ve made them before. One time. Back in 1995. How much could I have forgotten?

Only that it’s harder than I remember?

Maybe.

So tonight, in preparation for tomorrow, I decided to whip up a batch of chocolate nougat, one of chocolate caramel and also a batch of fondant. My first clue should’ve been when I totally made a mess cracking the first egg for the egg-white nougat.

Because it all went downhill from there.

But I persevered. I washed the mixing bowl out and started again, following the nougat recipe exactly. What you do is whip the egg whites while a sugar syrup is boiling happily away. So I whipped the eggs and watched the thermometer in the syrup, and I boiled it to exactly 245 degrees, and then I slowly whisked the syrup into the egg whites.

Seriously. I did it just like the recipe said.

Except (and, ummm, hello, this makes sense because, you know, physics), not all of the syrup whisked itself into the egg whites. Nope. A good deal of it whipped itself into the air and became...whipped sugar. (Read: hard, crystalized sugar. Wrapped in thin amber strands around the beaters. Pretty...but not so awesome in a soft nougat.) But I’d used the last three eggs I had so I just kept going.

And maybe there was something tickling at the back of my mind...something I’d forgotten about candy making?

Nah.

Meanwhile (back when the sugar syrup for the nougat was boiling), having forgotten how much concentration it takes to make candy, I decided to multitask. I started working on the chocolate caramel.

What you do for chocolate caramel is start by mixing sugar and water, and then just letting it sit over a medium-warm burner until it starts to boil. Then you add some Karo syrup, and you let it cook again, stirring every once in awhile, until it’s at 310 degrees. (That is hard crack stage, which will be important.) Then you cool it slightly, and add in other stuff.

So the sugar syrup for the caramel is bubbling away cheerfully on the power burner of my stove while I’m trying to whisk the sugar syrup for the nougat and only having, well, not very successful success. And it’s bubbling away happily while I’m carefully stirring the chocolate, butter, and vanilla into the nougat (carefully because I’m trying not to knock any of the 1.2 million bits of crystalized sugar into the nougat). And then it’s suddenly bubbling not so happily nor cheerily. It’s furiously boiling, it’s furiously mad, it’s, yeah, it’s burning because hello: I knocked the power burner dial up to high.

Sweet!

So I’m trying to pour (but not scrape because: sugar crystals) the nougat into the parchment-paper-lined pan and the kitchen is filling with smoke. I give up on the nougat, grab the pan full of burning sugar syrup, and start pouring it down the sink, with enough hot water that I think I’ll be, you know, safe. Except the handle to the pan is freaking hot (it’s not called the "power burner" for nothing) and so I drop the pan into the sink and burning sugar syrup splatters all over my hand.

Holy sweetness.

I mean, as sweet as it sounds, a burn from burning sugar syrup? Not so sweet.

So the kitchen smells like burnt sugar and charred flesh. The nougat is a sort of lumpish, brownish mess on the parchment paper. But I still have the cream and the chocolate ready to go for the chocolate caramel, so I just start the sugar syrup over again. In a smaller pan and on the normal burner this time, because all that I did wrong the first time was use too big of a pan and too big of a burner.

Deep breath.

I also decide that the recipe is too small, so I am going to increase it by fifty percent, even though I’m sure learned somewhere that you’re not supposed to double candy recipes. I do it anyway and once it starts boiling it looks exactly right. So I stir it now and then while I’m washing out the mixing bowl, burnt-sugar pan, 327 measuring cups and 5 rubber spatulas. I scrape all of the nougat I can into a ziplock bag; we’ll just see how it is tomorrow. I check the thermometer and stir and make sure that the burner stays on medium. I stir the vanilla into the cream and maybe I groan just a little bit when I lick the spoon.

I stir the sugar syrup and watch it closely.

I reread the recipe and I remember: oh, yeah. I need butter. Six tablespoons! No! Nine, because I’m 1.5ing it, right? So I toss the butter into the microwave and push, yes, start. Instead of soften, and I realize it twenty seconds in, and then I sigh and wash the butter off the microwave tray and start again with a new cube.

I check the thermometer again: 310! So I turn the burner off, and hold the pan in a bowl of ice to stop the cooking. And then I think, wait, this next step is weird, because it seems like pouring cream (which by now is room temperature) into hot sugar syrup seems, well...not very wise. But that’s what the recipe said when I read it the last time, so I pour in the cream, and just as I’m pouring I remember the two things I forgot from my long-ago candy making class:

You have to adjust the cooking temperature for altitude

and

310 degrees is, remember, hard crack stage. And if you don’t have a thermometer, how do you test for hard crack stage? You drip some of the sugar syrup into cold water and see what it does. At 310, it forms itself into long, hard strands.

Guess what happens when you pour cream into 310-degree sugar syrup?

It totally seizes.

Like a great big lump.

And as a bonus, I had this brilliant, ah-ha moment just while I was pouring the cream in, so I started to stop the pouring by grabbing the metal part of the pan. Yep, instead of the handle. With my other, non-burned palm of course!

Wheeeee!

So now there’s this big, hard ball of seized sugar syrup sort of mucking up the cream.

And I’m thinking, what a stupid recipe! And then I actually look at the recipe, and I see the step I skipped: let sugar syrup cool for about five minutes. Before pouring in the cream.

Yeah.

But I persevere! Because as scary as caramel is, it’s also fairly forgiving. You just heat it up again. So I pour in the butter, and I stir. I stir and I stir and I stir, and slowly that hard-as-glass sugar ball dissolves in the warm cream and butter. Caramel consistency is achieved at last!

Then I stir in the chocolate (a mix of dark and milk).

And pour the whole gloppy, delicious mess into another parchment-lined dish.

And then I scrape the pan with a spoon and I eat the little leftover bit of chocolate caramel and I try not to swoon.

Because, yum. Despite the burned skin, the sticky floor, the buttery smear on the microwave, and the five dozen kitchen utensils I’ve used—or perhaps because of all that—the chocolate caramel? It’s totally delicious.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring. Definitely not a batch of fondant, as I am exhausted.

Maybe after a night in the fridge the chocolate caramel will be disgusting.

Maybe the nougat will be unusable.

Maybe I’ll just have to run to Wal-Mart to get the ingredients for actual cookies to bake on our baking Saturday.

What I do know is this: It’s all the fault of the recipe book. It’s totally not because I took one class once nearly two decades ago.

Seriously.

I’ll let you know tomorrow how my regular caramel turns out, which I can make (nearly) with my eyes shut. I don’t even need a candy thermometer because I know what color it’s supposed to be when it’s done cooking. Sure, I have to open my eyes to see the color, but that’s OK.

Candy making just requires a lot of focus.

1. Because today is exactly two weeks till Christmas and I've purchased exactly one gift.
2. Because I have no clue what to get any of my offspring.
3. Because my usual holiday "I love being Santa Claus" exuberance is TOTALLY GONE this year.
4. Because my husband has 87 days of vacation to use before January 1, so he keeps staying home. Which yeah, I know, should induce marital nirvana, but really, not so much. I can't get anything done when he is home. Well, anything other than assure him he's not likely to get lucky, head out for a special beverage an unholy amount of times, and discuss endlessly (without ever deciding anything) what we should get the kids for Christmas.
5. Because the calendars aren't done.
6. Because the bright and festive holiday stars I saw in a quilting magazine and thought sure, I can make those! I'll make 35 of them! how hard can they be? are actually really, really hard to sew unless you're a sewing fascist of 1/4-inch-seam and matching-points perfection, so right now there are star parts strewn everywhere, not to mention the rest of the mess that sewing entails.
7. Because I've been cooking a lot.
8. Because I've developed an unhealthy affection for the Food Network, and sitting in bed watching Guy Fieri take his enormous, disgusting bites of the World's Most Unhealthy Food gives me a perverse pleasure that outweighs my annoyance at how he always has sunglasses stuck on the back of his head. Can't someone on his shooting crew stick them in a backpack or something? Or can't he just leave them in the car?
9. Because it takes a lot of frickin time to eat all of that chocolate. (Read: Peppermint Dark Chocolate Lindt truffle balls.)
10. Because while I'm super excited for Saturday's girls-only baking party at my mom's house, I am A---not excited about the backlash that comes from "girls only" in my household of boys who would sometimes like to see their family despite the fact that they have penises, and B---not sure what I should make. My over-achieving crafty persona would like to make homemade, hand dipped chocolates but I'm not sure that's a persona I should nurture. She did, after all, encourage me to make fabric stars.
11. Because I still need to finish a scrapbooking assignment (I can't get even one single layout done, while meanwhile scrapbookers all over the globe are merrily making their December Daily albums; those people's craft personas must be megalomaniacs), a writing assignment, some stuff for church, and the decorations.
12. Because I need to go to the post office. To.Day.
13. Because I wanted to make a holiday quilt for Haley, but I didn't.
14. Because last night Jake cut his finger open and getting stitches takes time.
15. Because somehow in my normal, non-December life of kids, house, job, and exercise, I already feel like I can't keep everything together, so throwing Christmas in the mix has shoved me right down the rabbit hole, so instead of doing any of the 1,287 million things on my to-do list I'm eating tater tots from Sonic and thinking my lalalalalala thoughts and yeah: actually blogging.

But those are the reasons I have neglected you. January will be better.

Love,

Me.

In the early years of our marriage, it took much trial and turmoil (and probably more than a few tears) to get the Official Thanksgiving Schedule sorted out. You know...eat with Kendell’s family one year, eat with my family the next, only it’s not just us, it’s getting everyone on his side to eat together on odd years and everyone on my side to eat together on even years.

It took awhile.

But for the past ten years or so, it’s been running pretty smoothly. This year was our year to eat with Kendell’s side. As our oldest niece, Hilary, was leaving for her LDS mission a week before Thanksgiving, we decided to have our dinner early. So a few Saturdays ago, we all went to my sister-in-law Cindy’s house and ate Thanksgiving dinner.

It made the rest of November feel sort of weird. A post-Thanksgiving limbo.

And it also left me with the question of what I’d do for the real Thanksgiving day. You know...the day that Haley could come home. Cindy’s family went to a movie and a restaurant, but somehow I couldn’t bear to do that. So instead I decided I’d just fix Thanksgiving for my little family.

No big deal, right? How hard could it be to make the whole meal by myself? (Something I’d never done before.) Not, I discovered, technically difficult. Just really, really exhausting. To make it worse, I didn’t ask for Wednesday night before Thanksgiving off, so I started preparing at 10:00 pm.

We finally managed to sit down to eat at six o’clock.

It’s true: I’ve never been known for getting meals on the table at the time I say we’ll eat. (This used to drive my father-in-law nuts, when they’d come to our house for birthday dinners. I’d say "we’ll eat at 5:30" and it’d be 6:45 before actual food was placed into mouths.) But the food, while untimely, was delicious, so that’s OK, right?

Here’s what I cooked:

• turkey (I roast a pretty good turkey breast but I’m a little bit afraid of whole turkeys; all the boys were disappointed at the lack of turkey legs)
• mashed potatoes (Haley and Adam peeled the potatoes for me; I set them lose and then got busy doing something else and before I realized it they’d peeled nearly the entire bag; we had enough potatoes to fill my two biggest pans. Jake mashed the potatoes, which has become one of his responsibilities)
• gravy (one of the secrets to delicious gravy: you must make a roux, not blend the flour with milk; if you cook the flour with butter or turkey fat it adds an extra layer of flavor)
• stuffing (my mother-in-law’s stuffing was one of my favorite things about her; I’m not really adept at stuffing-making but this year it was just about perfect)
• green bean casserole (only Kendell and I like this so I made a little pan)s ok. Leftovers!)
• cranberry sauce (only I like this)
• chocolate cream pie (I modified THIS recipe so it would fill my deep pie dish, as everyone but me loves chocolate cream pie so I wanted a big one)
• pecan bars (using THIS recipe; Kendell loves pecan pie but I wanted something easy and these? they were the surprise Thanksgiving hit!)
• two mini pies, apple and raspberry (I made small pies because it wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without them but I’d already made two enormous ones for our Saturday Thanksgiving)

Some other Thanksgiving-week highlights I’d like to remember:

Kendell and I took a quick trip up to Salt Lake to visit the new Trader Joe’s, go to Nordstrom (oh how I miss having a convenient Nordstrom! and as a side note, the one at City Creek makes me feel inadequate and intimidated on so many levels), try out our new car, and just hang out together. It was a pleasant day!

Haley came home on Wednesday. It was strange—in a good way—to have her back. She brought home a bunch of dirty laundry and asked me if I’d wash it for her and dare I confess: I got a little teary-eyed. Just...I know, it’s just laundry. But it was good to know that there is still some taking-care-of left to do.

On Thursday morning Kendell and I went out to buy a newspaper so we could see the Black Friday ads. We had to try about eight different places before we found one, as they were all delivered late. We ended up finding one at Macey’s (a local grocery store); I made Kendell go in and get it since I was still in Pjs and slippers!

Kendell took all of the Bigs back to Macey’s once we discovered it was open, to get some groceries for Haley. They kept calling me and asking me questions about prices and brands and what to buy.

Kaleb was dying to spend time with Haley. She took him to get a haircut! (What hair salon is open on Thanksgiving? The one right next door to Macey’s...)

Even though I’m not supposed to because my ankle is still bugging me, I went running. I couldn’t stand not squeezing in a few miles on Thanksgiving. Just two miles around the trail by my house, but it was enough to take away my grogginess and make me feel bright. I had the kids come with me and throw the football together in the grass by the trail. (Some were not so happy about that, but I insisted.)

We took a quick family picture outside in the front yard. I haven’t looked at them yet, but there better be a good one because it’s the only chance I have for a Christmas-card photo! The kids kept getting distracted because our neighbor’s cat was in our yard...yeah, that was perhaps the shortest photo-taking session in the history of Sorensen photo-taking sessions!

How was your Thanksgiving?

Yesterday I stood in a long line at Wal-Mart. While I waited, I was composing a Facebook status update about how much I hate Wal-Mart but how it was no one else's fault but my own that I was there, at a store I detest, in December.

In the line of what was apparently the world's slowest Wal-Mart cashier.

Plus I was a little grumpy because all of the errands I needed to do were making it so I couldn't work on the craft project I need to finish.

(Actually...I need to start it.)

But instead of picking up my phone and writing that update, I started looking around. I thought about something I'd read somewhere, a list of December goals that included always being friendly in stores, even the crowded ones. I thought of one of my own personal decisions, which is to never be talking on my cell phone when it's my turn at a cash register.

I really looked at the cashier, who, to be honest, really was slow at sliding each item across the scanner, but she had a friendly face with a sort of exhausted expression. I thought about how annoyed I get when I have to work at the Internet desk, which is sort of the same thing as being a Wal-Mart cashier, and how difficult it is to deal with people who arrive at your desk already frustrated and grumpy. I only have two hours a week at the Internet desk, though, while her whole life is narrowed down to being a cashier.

I watched the mom in front of me, who was struggling with her WIC coupons and blushing when the cashier had to call for help.

Then I noticed the line to the right and front of me. There was a young mom with three little kids—all under the age of three or four—holding one, and trying to make the baby in the basket stop crying and the older one standing in the cart (because there wasn't room for her to sit down, it was so full of groceries) hold on to the sides. In front of her was an elderly man who also had a full cart. Just as it was his turn to start putting his groceries on the belt, he turned to the young mom.

"Why don't you go in front of me?" he said.

She protested that he was there first, and she was OK, but he insisted.

"I don't have any babies to take care of," he said. "You go ahead."

As I watched this interaction, I felt some of my annoyance and frustration melt away. And I thought about the power of example. That gentleman didn't do what he did to help me, but it still did. His actions reminded me that people are kind and good, something it is easy for me to forget. He reminded me that small, kind actions are quite often larger than we know.

He taught me that being pleasant in a crowded line isn't only about smiling at the cashier, making eye contact, and saying thank you. It's about noticing what other people need and then fulfilling those needs if you can.

I think it wasn't just mine that was lifted. I think the mood of everyone who saw that small act of kindness grew lighter. So he didn't just help the mom with three kids. He helped the cashiers, too, who for a few minutes had less-frustrated customers. And the people in line, whose hearts were softened and made happier.

And really, he helped everyone else I came in contact with for the rest of the day. And maybe even for all of December, as my goal is now not to just be pleasant in a crowded line. Not to just smile at the cashier. But to watch for and fulfill whatever small needs I can.

I want to follow his example.