Gift-less Kids are Gifted

Christmas for us was a culmination of activities and time spent together as a family. Not just one day, focused on opening gifts. It was a nice break. It definitely felt different. I want to say more peaceful, but really it was hard trying to explain to people just what we were doing. The bulk of our society doesn't get it. Materialism, consumerism runs rampant. Even those who think they aren't materialistic can't go without gifts on Christmas. That seems to be breaking some cardinal rule. If you say you don't need things to be happy, then I'll challenge you to try it. That's just what we did -- gave it a try. And I have to say, we're just fine without adding more garbage to the landfill (whether it's from gift wrap, boxes, undesired gifts, or things we'd have to get rid of to make room for new things). One night after having a discussion with someone who just didn't get it, Brandon and I had a really good conversation and were able to laugh at ourselves (very hard). That felt good. My family is loved. One person wrote, "Kids Who Are Gift-less are Gifted." I think I gave my kids a real gift in our experiment. We had a fun time together -- played games, sat by the fire, performed skits, recorded a commercial, sang songs, baked and ate. And were really happy to have Brandon home for several days.

For breakfast I tried to make coconut crepes. My kids love to make crepes, and I had seen this variation in my cookbook that sounded yummy. The only substitution the recipe made was to use coconut milk in place of regular milk. But I knew I had seen coconut flour at the store, so I thought that would be a nice addition as well. I tried that -- and failed. I now know that coconut flour does not work the same as other flours. We tried several attempts to salvage it. Nothing was working out. Brandon finally tried to convert them to pancakes. They looked nice, but didn't taste so well. Then he tried to turn them into cookies. Still not quite right. So, after getting on the internet and learning about coconut flour I found a recipe for some brownies that matched up pretty well with the other ingredients we'd already put in our "mixture." After lengthening the cooking time as long as we could (we had to get to church), they turned out ok. Chloe really liked them. So, lesson learned.

My dad wrote on our family blog that all these years he thought the true meaning of Christmas was "giving," but this year he decided the true meaning of Christmas is "love." Yes, Dad, you hit the bullseye.

I came across a couple quotes this weekend that struck a chord with me and sums up our holiday:

1. "There are times when the right thing is the hard thing, and we need to do it because it is the best thing."
2. "It's not what's under your tree that matters, but who is around it."

This is who was around my Christmas tree...