Christmas Time’s A Comin

A couple weeks before Thanksgiving, I was looking at the schedule, realizing how fast it was going to pass. Snow had begun to flirt with the holiday cheer and according to Caitlin, Christmas was near. Our schedule was booked. So, I booked buying a tree in the middle of that. In years past, we have spent fuel and money on a Christmas tree pass to go cut our own. This great tradition in Central Oregon produces some of the funniest, most interesting looking trees you’ve ever seen. Charlie Brown has nothing on the forest up past Sisters.

Before we had three kids, a mortgage payment and other expenses to worry about, going out to find a Christmas tree was all about getting out in the woods. I remember many years when my dad would fire up the beast (the 1986 Ford extended cab pickup) and take it out with my mom riding in the middle of the bench seat, to get a tree. The beast rests peacefully in our driveway this year with the crew cab. After a couple of sparse years, repeatedly burning fuel and funds we didn’t have, we decided that it was worth going to Big Lots to get a $20 fake tree. I had perused the ads for a month and figured that was the best bargain to date. Craigslist was a little discouraging in the tree department. I was still a couple of weeks off from NEEDING a tree, but I wanted to make sure it was taken care of. 

When we arrived at Big Lots to purchase our tree, the kids were exclaiming in glee at the displays.  They wanted one of everything. The selection of trees available only confirmed my expensive taste as I was drawn to the ones that cost the most. When we finally got to the $20 tree, we were a little put off. We circled the aisle again, re-evaluated our choice, and then decided that it was worth the effort. I figured that the staff didn’t share the same enthusiasm towards Christmas. Whoever set it up pry didn’t fluff the tree out right when they put it on display. It would look fine when I got it home and set up. We still had a week and a half until Thanksgiving. 

I got the tree home and set it up. A $20 fake tree is about the equivalent of the permit fee that they charge to cut your own tree. The ironic part is, it is just as Charlie Brown as the ones you cut down yourself. I had told Wayne that I knew I had enough stuff to fill it in. With some effort on my part, it would be okay.  I set out to accomplish my task using greens from the dollar tree that I had bought years ago for decoration. I added some garlands, too, that had a filling effect as well. I felt like it would suffice for Christmas after my additions to the tree.  Wayne was impressed with my effort. Finally satisfied, I had him put it in the garage, waiting for the day after Thanksgiving. 

Thanksgiving day, before we went over to join the rest of my family, I saw the best Craigslist posting ever: a nine foot tree from Costco, with lights not working. If you know Wayne, you know he can fix about anything. He always surprises me with his natural ability to make things work again. I kept thinking, “Oh, it’s only three feet taller than the tree we bought.” I was disappointed when I got the email that it was taken within the first few moments of being posted.  

The day after Thanksgiving, I was just thankful that I’d made our six foot tree fit. I was able to keep the bench that provides enough seating to have many people over comfortably. As I chatted with my mom, drinking my morning coffee, I received an email. It was from the people with the FREE Christmas tree. They wanted to know if we could we come pick it up. Pre-lit, from Costco, it was only three feet taller. I knew the quality had to be excellent. With sheer bliss, I told Wayne to answer his phone when they called to give directions. He was slightly irritated, being in the middle of a website upgrade, but still accommodating. I was kind of confused at why they were so eager to be rid of such a great tree. 

Being the good sport that he is, Wayne agreed to go pick it up. They had stated in the ad that you would need a truck or a van to pick up the tree. As he was leaving, I remember hearing some grumbling, because it was imperative that he pick it up NOW. I immediately messaged my mom, urgent with the need to share. After ten minutes or so, Wayne texted me to tell me that it would be a little big for our place. I took a quick glance at the bench, using it as a reference in size.  It shouldn’t be that big of a deal. We can just take the bench out, like I had planned before. 

A half an hour later, I heard the diesel pull up to the garage and went with glee to meet Wayne as the garage door opened. His expression was still a tad grumpy, but I chose to ignore it. I looked in the back of the truck and there were THREE big boxes! I was really impressed, because the boxes themselves were twice the size of the box our tree from Big Lots came from. We unloaded them into the garage and Wayne coolly passed by me and resumed his post at the computer. 

Feeling a bit elfish, I asked him if he was eager to set that bad boy up. He said no and ignored my excitement. He went back to what he was doing before he was so rudely interrupted. The kids, knowing that dad had gone to pick something up, ran into the garage. They immediately exclaimed “Dad brought home three Christmas trees!” Feeling rather proud of myself, I said “No kids THAT is ONE Christmas tree!” 

Unable to contain the enthusiasm, I broke open the box labeled base. I pulled out the bottom and with a great tug, it came loose. I handed it to Anthem to take into the house. It landed with a thud and she dragged it into the living room. Feeling boisterous by my big score, I decided to grab the bottom of the tree. It was a lot heavier than I realized and I kind of got a hint of why Wayne was so irritated. 

Dragging the bottom of the tree in to set up, Wayne politely ignored me at his computer desk. It was bulky, but I figured, eh, no big deal. It was wrapped up in a conical shape deceptive to its true girth. When I sat it down on the base, I realized WHY Wayne was politely ignoring me. It unfolded into six and a half feet diameter of a tree. It took up the whole living room space between the couch and entertainment center.  My eyes the size of saucers, all I could do is say “WOW”.  The warm feeling of a Christmas miracle began to flood through my spirit. 

Determined to see the tree in its full glory, I went about bringing out the next portion. I went to lift it out of the box and it was a lot heavier than the first part. Shocked, I drug it through the house and gave Wayne the pitiful “help me” look. Casually trying to ignore me, he couldn’t get away from it. That’s when he decided to show me the full effect of my ambitious intention. Ever so helpful, he put the rest of the tree together. It was as tall as the ceiling fan in our living room. You could barely squeeze past it by the couch in our living room. I sat in my chair with my laptop in awe of it. I laughed. Then I laughed even more. Wayne hid himself on the other side of the obnoxious tree, at his desk. He continued to ignore me as nicely as he could while I laughed uncontrollably.

My exuberance about the tree hit full peak. I called everyone I knew to tell them about the massive tree in the middle of our living room. It was the most beautiful fake tree I have ever seen. All put together, only half of the lights worked, but when the remote was on, it rotated too! The tree was so large we had to take out the bench that accommodated guests. It blocked the entire view from the kitchen to the living room. Every time I looked at it, I felt a bit like Clark Griswold. It was a sure sign it would be the best Christmas ever.  I laugh whenever I think about the tree. It reached the little kid in me. It felt like having the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree in the middle of my house. 

The joy of Christmas isn’t necessarily in the tree, or the presents that go under the tree. It’s about the time we spend together as a family. The hysterical story of the Swearingen Family Christmas tree will be one of my favorites for years. The tree did finally grow on Wayne. He had to endure hours of laughter as I sat and rejoiced in my marvelous find. He did remind me that he had the chance to email on the tree as well, but HE knew it wouldn’t fit.  The story of the extravagant gift given away for free is common during Christmas, but this year I will appreciate it so much more.

Investing in Success

A couple of months ago, I was so excited to share how our family was finally recovering from the recession. We had made it through losing a home, a business and living with my parents for a year to recover. The whole year was an amazing journey and beautiful story of how things finally started going right. Wayne had landed a job that quickly promoted him. We went through some music classes that ultimately led to him doing some sound stuff for concerts in Bend. We found a rental home that was perfect to start over in. My gardening took on a whole new level of success with hydroponics and worms.  In November, we were all going to go on Wayne’s health insurance through his work. It felt like we were finally back on track with our lives.  It felt like we could live and dream again.

Wayne and I used to joke that we started out in a full run at life together: got married on the fly, had a kid per year and moved three times.  Our family and our life developed so quickly, we didn’t have the time to build solid roots. It was in the resting and rebuilding time, living with my parents, that I felt we were able to establish those roots after establishing a family. During that journey, we had some of the best family and friends surrounding us, supporting us and cheering us on. They cried with us, they laughed with us and we even lived with some of them.  I felt like we came out of it even stronger than before.

In October of this year, Wayne came home early one day and told me he lost his job. It was so disappointing. However, after a whirlwind year of goodness, I knew the ability to dream and hope was still alive in me.  What I didn’t realize was that we were presented with the chance to walk out one of the most important times of our lives. The joy from the momentum of the beginning of the year would be meaningless if we didn’t continue to carry it through the rough spots.  This has been one of the most significant lessons of my life.

In the past, I preferred to hide from the issues.  I spent the days wishing the problems or situations away instead of dealing with them head on. I didn’t want to share with others or participate in their joy, because I felt so deprived of mine. It felt like we were failing in life. I would retreat into our house, turning off the phone, turning off the computer and not answering the door. For the sake of our pride we would put on a wary façade of making it when we did go out.

However, this time, it is different. I am surrounded by so many fresh reminders every day of how great our life is. We live in a wonderful home that I have fallen in love with every morning that we wake up in it. We live in a neighborhood that has become more than just houses, but alive with people that we love and share lives with. We have a family that is filled with people that are related by blood and others that are just as precious because of the things we’ve faced together. We have a love and a passion for life reflected by the vibrancy that we approach each day with.  I have enjoyed our children, our home and the time we get to spend together so much more this past year.

My husband has inspired me every day with his persistence. He works hard every day that he can, taking each job offered, to make things work. He hasn’t ever complained about any of the jobs handed to him. It would be easy to feel over-qualified and under-appreciated based on his previous experience, but instead, he comes home happy that he is still providing for our family. On the days that he is home, we’ve been able to enjoy and appreciate each other’s company.  He is such a good husband, a wonderful father and a faithful friend. He continues to build my admiration in him through his dedication to doing excellent work no matter what the task.

I feel like when we started appreciating the process of growth, instead of just waiting for the outcome or arrival, we truly began to value the most important pieces of our lives. Every friendship, every trial, every day, is just one more line in the story of who we are and were created to be. The time we invest in the people around us contributes to the success of that story. We’ve been so blessed by all of the people that have been willing to invest in us from past to present. Those seeds of faith we place in others through our daily contact, our friendships and our words, are so important.

It’s the time of year to be thankful and reflect on all of the blessings we’ve received. This year it is so special to me and it is my joy to appreciate every moment of it. Our family has grown through so many challenging seasons. As I look around, I see how beautiful our life is through each of them.  We haven’t really ever been rich according to what other people judge by, but we continue to grow rich in love and relationships.

One From The Archive

I cannot believe how quickly time has passed. We're on to new things and different lessons, but some of the themes stay the same. I am so thankful that I no longer have 3 kids under 3. All of them are now successfully potty trained, but still retain their witty little ditties they do. I laughed out loud, remembering writing this.

August 16th, 2008

Treasures and Terrors

In these great days of raising three healthy, bouncing children, I am beginning to wonder if there is something wrong with my programming. I think I was born without one very important gene: the MOMMY gene. I thought moms were warm, cozy enveloping sweaters of comfort, ever enduring love that always smelled and looked nice. As I look around at the craziness that has become my life, I am pretty sure that I don’t remember my mom yelling at us frequently or looking permanently like she was going to blow her lid. Some days I wake up just not ready to wrap my head around the new mini mind battles that are about to take place. They’ve been happening with greater force, with less and less time in between them. My kids have had a serious case of pushing boundaries often reducing me to tears through the last week. As they torture each other, I find myself wistfully dreaming that I had gone back to work for that $500 a month after paying daycare and let someone else go crazy with a bunch of kids almost the same age.

While dealing with a brutal force of allergies that I can’t remember dealing with before, Carson, 15 months, has been waking up a couple times a morning with high loud pitched screams of torture for the last week or so while he tries to push some monster teeth through his little gums. He woke me up at 5.30 am the other day. Anthem, the three year old mouth, spent a good part of that day in the corner for not listening. Tristen, the two year old exhibitionist, wouldn't keep her clothes on during a play date. Then she came in with a mouthful of just dirt, acting a little odd, so I was positive she ate something she wasn't supposed to. Only a day later, Anthem woke up at the crack of dawn and took it upon herself to wake everyone else up. Through my morning fog I had an intense desire to scream, kick and cry as I heard her go wake her sister, then creep in to her brother’s room, ruining any chance of waking peacefully and blissfully rested at 8 o’clock in the morning.

I am pretty sure I busted one of their little mastermind operations today. This all started when my kids discovered the snap peas that were growing through the garden fence. They took delight in their own private buffet outside. Being the little vegetable enthusiasts that they were, they KNEW that there were better treats inside the fence. Because it was just a bit too quiet out there, I walked around the back yard towards my garden. Anthem, being the wise coordinator that she is at four years old, took off running from the garden fence, yelling “TRISTEN DID IT”. I see my little blonde haired terror bolt from the greenhouse, tomatoes in hand, trying to scale the fence quicker than I get through the garden gate. Carson is just standing there, taking it all in, wondering why he didn’t get his tomato. Sitting on the fence, in a tidy little row, is all the ripe cherry tomatoes that the little grubber could find. The trail of green tomatoes coming out of the greenhouse was more evidence leading to what I really didn’t want to find inside. My only ripe tomato plant had been limbed in search of the greater treats.

Two years ago, I had a similar experience with my first garden. My children have this love for anything and everything vegetable. I was just beginning to cultivate my green thumb. The green onions that grew and grew and grew boosted my pride and confidence in gardening. Every morning I would go outside, tend to my garden and watch the girls play happily in the yard. In the afternoons, I would let them run in and out of the house while I prepared dinner. One evening, I went out to find that they had uprooted almost my entire prized crop and had savored the ends of them as well. GREEN ONIONS! What kids eat green onions? Apparently mine do. I was crushed. My husband, being the loving kind man that he is, had gone out there and gingerly placed the remaining bulbs back into the ground; reassuring me that they would still grow. The next day, my dog took the liberty of digging them up as well. That is when the garden fence became a must.

My kids have impressed me lately with their climbing abilities. The garden fence was cake compared to what they learned to scale first. We have a kennel out in the middle of the yard. It’s fairly tall and pretty impenetrable to other critters. It started out a dog kennel, and then we started housing the new chickens in there. Their roosting box and their food is also in there temporarily until we get the chicken coop started. Right now, they free range in the yard. My kids really enjoy the chickens. They also enjoy the kennel. I started locking it, because it was just gross to look out there and see the kids eating the produce discards that I threw out there for my flock. My husband started a “roof” of sorts for the kennel months ago, in hopes that it would become the floor for the ultimate playhouse. As most of these grand intentions start out, they soon fizzle out when the funds do or another project gets started and there is usually a fair amount of work left undone. My kids think it is really cool regardless, because the floor/roof, whatever you want to call it, isn’t completely done and doesn’t cover the whole kennel. They learned that since I locked the door in front, they could just climb the kennel, drop over the other side and climb down. It’s a little disturbing to look out there and see my children running around in the kennel knowing that they didn’t open the door.

In the whole theme of the insatiable hunger, because I obviously do not feed my children frequently enough, I have been discovering that food disappears rather quickly in our household. Not at the normal rate for starving children, but like I had a tour of preschoolers come through and ravish the snack shelf of my pantry. The other day, while searching for dirty laundry, I found shriveled up grapes under the girls’ bunk beds. They weren’t quite to the raisin point yet. This morning, I went out to get the chickens some cracked corn and found that my children had noticed that we store the food in there. There were three little granola bars, still in wrappers, lying right next to the food bag. I am not sure if they were tucked away there for the chickens, or in case the kids needed a power snack to push their poor shriveling limbs back up the wall of the kennel to get out next time.

Climbing hasn’t been the only problem I have had lately. In addition to the climbing, nudity has become all the rage at my house. It hasn’t really bothered me much as long as I am not required to participate. I figure that you only get to wish you could do that when you become an adult. We are fortunate enough to live on a place with more than an acre for my kids and animals to run on. It’s fantastic. Though we have a busy road that backs up to the pasture, the place has been fenced really well. The pasture is L-shaped and impenetrable for deer, random critters and unwanted visitors. We also have some really good trees to pretty much block the view from the traffic that zips along blissfully unaware that our little place is tucked in here. It’s when the nudity and climbing combined that it really started becoming not so fun or cute.

One day, Anthem came in to let me know that Tristen had climbed the tree next to the hot tub. I figured she was stuck or something, so I rushed out to see what the problem was. She was in a pine tree with nothing but her birthday suit on. As soon as she saw me, she hopped down and said “HI MOM!” That was a little odd. It was more disturbing, though, to look out while doing my morning chores and see the girls playing nude out in the pasture with the dogs. At one point, Tristen decided that it was time for business. That is when her world turned into one great big outhouse. I am not really thrilled with this new point of view. Since then, I have seen her drop her panties on the deck twice. It’s become this new adventure to her. My husband, being a pole barn builder, often takes the kids on ride a longs out to a job site. After this week, of dealing with the peeing wonders, I was leery of the excursion and told him to watch her like a hawk. Thankfully, we had no incidents while out on the job. I thought boys were the ones that you had to worry about that stuff with. I am on girl number two that thinks that is one great trick and I am not even sure I want to start thinking about potty training the little guy.

My kids’ athletic skills are not the only things that they have been showing off. Anthem has a pretty keen mind and has great radar for picking things up. In the same trip out to the job site, we were patiently waiting for lumber, sitting in the shade during the record setting heat wave of this summer. Anthem turned and looked at me, saying “Whew! It’s hot out here! I’m sweatin’ like a pig!” She must have picked that one up from a movie. My all time favorite display of understanding this week was when I was in the other room, getting ready to leave and I overheard Anthem say “Daddy, my attitude stinks sometimes.” After having a challenging week of wondering whether or not my children have hearing problems or I am not being clear enough, there was a bright window of hope that opened. Of course, there was a glimpse of that earlier in the week, when Anthem told Tristen to stop doing something because it was irritating her. For a four year old, her diction is very impressive. Not only that, but she definitely gets an A on verbal application. I wish the same application was dedicated to listening.

Tristen, on the other hand, is still learning to master the art of parroting. She’s got a couple of phrases that are down really well. Try not snorting when your two-year-old turns to you with a twinkle in her eye and starts counting, “1…2…3…” then asks “Do you want a spanking?” or I really found this one funny, “You want a whoopin?” I am guilty of threatening the first one, but I am not quite sure where the second one came from. Tristen’s best phrase right now is one that will forever be dear to my heart. My kids’ John Deere wagon is one of their most prized possessions. It is only natural that it would be used as a reference point in Tristen’s ever expanding vocabulary. The other day, Wayne called her a ragamuffin. Immediately, she turned around and looked him in the eye and said adamantly in her little Tristen voice, “I not a wagon muffin, I TISTEN!”

As I have faced all of these challenges in a week, I am much more thankful that I have great parents that are still alive to tell me that I turned out okay and that they are proud of me. I keep telling myself that's why it is worth all of the insanity. That one day, the child with incredible obstinacy and an obvious hearing problem, will be a mother just like myself and my mother, with incredible wit. I will be able to offer complete sympathy and comfort in my ultimate wisdom of all things. They provide living proof I will make it. I will most likely have an even greater cultivated sense of humor in addition to tons of lovely examples to pass on to my children one day when they face similar trials.