Christmas Tree Hunting 2009

All the kids were home for Christmas this year and it was so wonderful! We all went to church together last week and it was very strange to sit there all together again after years of having the kids in various places of the country for various activities. I guess what was strange about it was that they're all so grown up now. There is some type of great satisfaction to having your grown children all together at church. It's a sense of completion or just maybe the beauty of the family all going somewhere united in belief. A work of art ...a display of one's magnum opus of sorts! Well, anyway, it was very nice.

Austin arrived on Thursday the 17th of December. I only had one more day of work left before winter break started! Since Coy also had Thursday off of work, and Coy has a truck and muscles, we decided to get the tree the day Austin arrived home. So when I got off work, we headed right out to go tree hunting. Every year getting the tree presents some sort of issue. Last year it was just me and the three youngest girls, Katie, Emily and Mckenzie. We got our tree successfully, but getting it home was very difficult. No one would help us tie the tree on top of the car that year because of "liability" issues. Consequently, we had to figure it out ourselves which turned out to be quite comical. Other years we had always convinced some empathetic soul to help us but not this year. Our home teacher from our old ward had also helped us on a few occasions. Ultimately, we ended up tying all the doors shut as we secured the tree to the top of the car, which also meant that we had imprisoned ourselves inside the car as well. When we got home, Mckenzie had to climb out a car window, find some scissors and cut us out of the vehicle. We were excited to have a truck this year so as not to deal with securing the tree on top of the car again.

We usually go to the Snowshoe tree farm in Orting but when we arrived it was closed for the season already! What is wrong with the Snowshoe people? Don't they know some people work and can't get their tree right away? This untimely closure presented us with a dilemma. You see, we have a patented Snowshoe tree stand. It has a spike that sticks straight up and they have a special drilling system with which they drill a perfect hole in the trunk of the tree that enables the user to plunk the tree directly on the spike with no further hassle or complication. I have loved and enjoyed this special stand for several years now and it has enabled me as a single woman to successfully put up my own tree for a number of years now. Especially those pesky Noble trees that are very very heavy and have humongous trunks. However, I should have known better than to commit to their tree stand. It is really just a wicked trick to keep the consumer a prisoner. We are now confined to only shopping for our tree with them. Oh what a clever scheme!

Angry that I had limited myself to but one tree farm and realizing the convenience of the special spike tree stand was out of the question, we found another tree farm on the same road as the Snowshoe farm. It was open until 7pm. Finally! A tree farm that understands the plight of the working woman! I remember one other year that we tried to go after work to get the tree and once again Snowshoe let us down. They closed at like 4pm due to daylight issues they informed us.

Anyway, we went to the new tree farm and chose a lovely Noble tree which was less expensive than the Snowshoe trees anyway. We did not choose to cut it down this year even though Coy was home. The tree farm owners informed us that it was super muddy and we might as well just choose a tree that was already cut. They looked very alive and healthy so we chose one of those. Now, what to do about a stand? The men at the tree place showed us "the best stand ever made" but to the mere mortal eye it was hard to see the grandness to it. It just looked like a bent piece of steel. They said it was "malleable" so we could arrange the tree any way we wanted to get it straight but Coy and I were both skeptical. The price of the best tree stand ever made? $38! Yikes! We told them about our special tree stand and they offered to drill a hole in the trunk of the tree with their hand drill. Now, I knew this would not work. How did I know? Last year my hometeacher tried to do this for my mother's tree and it was hopelessly crooked. Somehow a hand drill just doesn't work the way the Snowshoe drill does. However, I was hopeful and allowed them to drill the hole. I thought maybe they had some special method to replicate the Snowshoe method. They didn't. It was just a bunch of old men in rubber jumpsuits trying to sell a tree. When we got home the tree did not stand straight or even close to it.

Coy and I went to the Fred Meyer and found a cheap tree stand and brought it home. We realized it was too small for the tree trunk to fit into (those darn Nobles) and were exhausted at the idea of going back to the store again to get a bigger one. Coy worked some magic with a saw and managed to get the tree in the stand. Yay for men and saws! I know this sounds kind of sexist and weakling but I am okay with the fact that I as a woman do not like to saw trees or grovel around in the dirt. Some women do and that's fine for them. I like the lady card on that one myself.

We ended up with a beautiful tree and broke the bands that held us prisoner to the Snowshoe tree farm! I feel free and triumphant. Hopefully, Coy is here again next year!

Matching Socks

Socks are funny things. They're so essential (well they used to be before flip flops became all the rage) yet so small and well-- separate. Here in lies the problem!

Trying to keep socks matched in a big family is nearly impossible. I'm not saying it's easier in a smaller family, but I have to use what I know as a reference. Also, I grew up an only child with my mom and we always knew whose socks were whose. Dealing with army sized proportions for anything was a complete shock to my system and I had no idea what I was in for when it came to the socks!

I remember when my children were all little, back in the old days when I did ALL of the laundry in the house for five children, wearing matching socks was an amazing accomplishment for anyone in the household to achieve. It would start off with me buying a nice full pretty set of socks for each child to put in their dresser drawer and then...they'd wear them. Now granted, there was always a honeymoon period where I worked hard to match the socks right out of the dryer. But after a couple of washes it was just a confusing nightmare. Which sock matched which? I was dealing with minuscule size differences and 4 girls! Even during the honeymoon period, after the first wash, I never matched as many pairs as I bought. We'd go from 6 pairs to at most 5 pairs right off the bat.

It's not that I didn't try to troubleshoot the situation. I did devise different methods to increase the chance of the children having matching socks. I bought color coded socks thinking they couldn't get mixed up with the other children's socks because I would know their colors. Unfortunately, after the first sock was lost the other one that matched it in color was never worn again. Then it occurred to me that buying socks that were ALL the SAME color might actually be the answer. That way, anyone's sock could go with anyone else's! The perfect solution I thought! It didn't work. Each child wore different sized socks. I had masses of white socks, all in different sizes but the size differences weren't profound enough. The same color socks just created an even bigger problem than before. My next thought was to buy each of the children a mesh bag to put their socks in and they could get washed in the bag and the bag handed back to the appropriate child. Ingenious right? Well, do you know how much those bags cost? I never bought them. I think someone should invent a special magnet that gets embedded in the sock which draws only its true match to its side.

Anyway, as time went by, I began to lower my standards for the children's attire when they left the house. I settled for simply having the children in socks period. They didn't necessarily have to match I thought to myself. After awhile, wearing matching shoes was all that I required. I mean, why did socks have to be the end all to everything? Finally, I started throwing all of the socks in a laundry basket. All the socks in the house went in the basket and the children had to fend for themselves if they needed socks. Every morning they'd dig through the "sock basket" and decide what "matched." It wasn't a pretty picture. A child's idea of matching and an adult's idea of matching are two different things. Their socks rarely matched.

Then, the unthinkable happened. One of my children became old enough to wash her own clothes. I think she did it just because of this very problem. She wanted to keep track of her socks. She wanted to know that when her socks went to the wash, she would get them back. It provided a form of security for her. So, out of survival, she began keeping her dirty clothes in her own room and washing them herself and protectively bringing them from the dryer directly to her bed. No one else got her socks anymore. I won't say that the washing machine or the bed never confiscated one of her socks, but her chances of having matching socks greatly increased!

During this same period of time, my middle daughter, Emily, developed an all out phobia for putting any of her clothes in the wash because it took so long to get the laundry done. She just simply wouldn't wash them at all. She'd wear them, take them off, fold them and put them back in her drawer--socks and underwear included. One day I noticed a bad smell in her room and followed it to her dresser. It was then that I discovered her drawers full of dirty, smelly clothes, socks and underwear!

"Emily!" I said. "You're clothes stink! They need to go in the laundry! "

"Those are mine!" she said adamantly as she snatched them from my arms.

I told her that we had to wash them, but she began to cry and sob and repeat that the clothes were hers and she wanted them back. I promised she would get them back but this went on for a few years. I had to sneak in her room and steal her clothes to the laundry and try to get them back in her drawers before she noticed they were gone. Sometimes she would find them missing from her drawers and come and steal them back from the dirty laundry. When I'd go to do the wash I'd notice her clothes were gone. It was an ongoing battle. One Christmas when she was looking in the Sears wishbook she saw towels. She pointed to them and said,

"I want those for Christmas."

I guess I didn't get the towels washed quick enough for her either. Today, she still won't put her clothes in the laundry, but she will let me wash them and trusts that I'll give them back. She's come a long way.

Now-a-days the socks leave trails around the house of the children who have gone before them. When my 19 year old son left home to go to college in August, 2008, the one thing I thought I wouldn't miss were his socks that were always left on the couch or floor where he last lay before he went to bed the night before.

"These socks!" I'd exclaim. And, "COY! You're socks are here again!" as I dangled them in the air and scowled at him.

Exasperated, I'd set them on the stairs (the place I put things that I want the children to take to their rooms). Then, a week later, the socks were still there, where I had hopefully placed them, except now there were several other socks which had joined them and formed a small mountain. No! I definitely would not miss his sock messes!

Then, he left. For weeks after, I kept finding his socks in odd places.

It went kind of like this. After he left, there was still a mess in his room. He had left a huge pile of socks that he didn't know what to do with....all mismatched of course-- ones that he saw as useless. Well, I take that back, there were some matching ones I'm ashamed to say, so I called him to say that he had left some perfectly good socks at the house. He had acquired my frustration for the topic and told me he didn't want them. Just the sight of the pile probably brought back bad memories of searching for his socks in the sock bin for all those years. So, I gathered them all up and took them to the garbage (yes, I threw away perfectly good socks). There! Coy's socks were gone. It seemed a waste, but better they go than cause clutter around the house. There was no one else to wear socks that fit a boy's size 11 and very few matching ones anyway.

Then, the haunting began. The first sock I found after the purging was in the couch. I began to cry at the sight of it. Not because his socks were still popping up, but because that single sock reminded me of all of the frustration I had hurled at him, because it reminded me of the little son that was now grown and gone, because it reminded me that now I wished he was here.

While it may seem a bit cliché, I think I better enjoy the mess while I have it. Someday, the only socks I will have to look after will be my own. Although, my son has moved home and I'm back to putting his socks on the stairs for him to take to his room. Who knows, maybe in the future socks will become a thing of the past and this blog will become like an artifact of the old days when we actually wore socks?

Here's to the messes the kids make and to the effort of taking care of them. Just like people say we need to learn to love our bodies with all of their flaws...I'm learning to love the messes my children leave behind--kind of.

About what I was going to do and ended up doing instead...

Okay, so I was going to write a book with the above named title, but now I've decided that a blog might actually get written before all of the funny stuff in my life is gone i.e. the children. My life used to be much more confusing than it is now, but I still wanted to try to chronicle the adventures of being a single mom with 5 children even though 2 of my children are grown and gone and back and gone again.

As the title insinuates, things around my house are a bit disorganized and just doing everyday things, like trying to find matching socks, can be an adventure around here. Maybe it's not as crazy as a few years ago, but it's still interesting. So, this is not a blog about how to do everything better or how to be more efficient or more prepared. It's about being okay with not being perfect. It's about accepting ourselves with all of our imperfections and laughing about it or crying...whatever fits the moment.

At the moment, I'm crying while I watch the VMA awards tribute to Michael Jackson and my laundry lays at the bottom of my bed needing to be done so I have clothes to wear to work tomorrow and my salad ingredients lay in the fridge in their separate little bags waiting to be cut up and put together so I can have healthy lunches for the week because I have some major pounds to lose. The salad probably won't get made because I'm tired from making dinner. I'll make it tomorrow (right?). Well, I'm off to bed for tonight but I'll get back with you soon!