Take Me Back

Last night we opened the box containing Christmas videos… yes, only three days prior to Jesus’ birthday.  At least we found it and got it opened!  Ten years ago, our youngest son was born mid-November.  Being such a youngster he played the part of baby Jesus in the gigantic Christmas Spectacular at Phoenix First Assembly.  My Dad works in the video department, so we were blessed with three different tapes from three nights of baby Keeve being held up the air, half clothed in front of 7,000 people and blinding lights.  He was so darling, if I do say so myself.

From baby Jesus, we moved onto Larisa being a pauper girl when she was 4, dancing and looking adorable and dirty all at the same time…. same show as above… different year.  I love the results from pink spongy rollers!  (Look out, Zaza!)

THEN.. the highlight of our evening was a video our kids made with the help of their favorite babysitter, Ashley.  They were 2, 4 and 7.  We laughed so hard… and then played it again and laughed even harder.  Austin, at 4, was wearing these white Elvis pants that were supposed to go on the front legs of a large dog….  need I say more? Yes!  He was bare chested flaunting a gaudy gold necklace and a black wig.  Yes, he sang Blue Christmas by Elvis.  See a trend here?  His performance included the lip snarl and hip gyrations.  Made his daddy proud.  Larisa followed with a ballerina choreographed performance of the Nut Cracker.  I don’t think we realized how good she was at the time, but for a seven year old, it was amazing.  (She is a choreographer now for a drama troupe.)  And Keeve….. cute Keevey… we completely forgot that he lisped his S’s… and there’s two in Merry Chrithmath.  We re-wound the lisp several times until we couldn’t take it anymore for the pains in our laughing bellies.

Good times.  Takes me back.  We’ll have to make some videos this year that we can crack up over in another eight years.

Christmas Favorites

Somewhere along this getting ready for Christmas journey I came across four questions to ask each family member.  Questions that make each of us stop and really THINK!  The point was to make sure we hit on a fav of each person to keep that memory alive for them.  Here are the questions I asked each of my kids, my husband and myself:  (OK, of course they couldn’t just answer the questions.  They had to ask me questions about why I’m asking questions.  Questions like: Are you going to use this in a talk?  Why do you want to know?  Are you asking the other kids?  What’s this for???  Sheesh, like I’m the gestapo or something.)

1.  What is your favorite Christmas food? This particular question brought on answers to make you salivate…. Nanaimo Bars, Grandma’s Spritz cookies, Auntie Julie’s sweet potatoes, stuffing and gravy, etc.  Pretty standard answers, if you ask me… and easy to duplicate (with just a few phone calls…. hint, hint, Grandma!)

2.  What is your favorite Christmas song?  Sadly, Elvis hit the list of 2 of 5 household members…. Blue Christmas.  Good grief.  That’s a sad song.  Thanks to my mother, we have a dancing Elvis statue in his gold  suit with Elvis strumming the guitar to “I’ll have a bluuuuue Christmas without yoooooou.”  I’m embarrassed to report that it was the first Christmas song Keeve could sing.  Not too many traditional songs made the list as we tend to listen to Christmas albums of contemporary artists, like Mariah Carey (All I Want for Christmas is You), Harry Connick Jr. (A Happy Ho Ho Ho to You), Steve Tyrell (Winter Wonderland), Go Fish (It’s About the Cross) and yes, Elvis.  Here is our favorite from Go Fish that includes a comedian:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAckfn8yiAQ . 

3.  What is your favorite Christmas activity?  This was a great idea to ask because I had no clue about a few of the things my kids came up with: watching It’s a Wonderful Life together as a family while drinking hot cocoa, carolling, playing games, seeing all the ornaments from our trips, baking goodies and sitting in the dark looking at the lit up tree.

4.  What is your favorite Christmas memory?  Of all my question asking surprises, this one won.  All five of us mentioned one or both of these times:  our family Christmas in Flagstaff and the Christmas we delivered gifts to a family in need.  The Flagstaff Christmas is worthy of its own blog… in the next few days, I promise.  And the gift giving one is here:  https://mysistersjar.wordpress.com/2008/02/11/5-from-my-sisters-jar/  

We spent this evening telling good-ol’-family-stories… that only THIS family could possibly laugh at.  Those including calls to 911, paramedics, trips to the hospital, surgeries, hallucinations after anesthesia, barfing from the top bunk, Great Grandma killing a bird, etc.  SEE! Only THIS family!   What fun!  Make some family memories this season of Jesus’ birth.

?#15 from My Sister’s Jar – Ministikwin Lake

OK, I realize this blog is called My Sister’s Jar… and I haven’t pulled a question from the jar in three months.  Either I had to go in WordPress and figure out how to change the name of the blog OR open the jar and get with the program.  Even though I’m reading the book Do Hard Things, I chose the easy route this morning.

Tell about a time you accepted change and how it impacted your life.

It was the Christmas season of 2004 and my sister’s family had arrived from Washington to spend three weeks in Phoenix with the rest of our extended family.  They only come every other year, so we were all looking forward to games and food and fun, especially the nine grandkids.  About a week before Christmas, my dear husband told me that he had a Boxing Day surprise for me.  (That is a Canadian holiday on Dec. 26th.)  Anticipation and glee filled my heart, as I LOVE surprises.  Not knowing makes my mind go WILD with wonder and it simply causes life to be extra exciting.  That was all blown to bits when he told me that my surprise was a family road trip to Ministikwin Lake, Saskatchewan…. an 1890 mile ONE-WAY trip straight north from Phoenix to Canada’s frozen tundra.  Rick’s parents rented a teeny log-cabin on the frozen-solid lake and his brother’s family was also going.  Now, Crosby family get togethers are filled with fun, laughter and frivolity, but keep in mind it was December…. AND MY SISTER’S FAMILY WAS VISITING.

I’d like to report that I smiled and said, “Sure, honey!” but it didn’t go down that smoothly between us.  In fact there were several lively discussion behind closed doors.  With tears in my eyes, I found my carefully prepared Christmas list in Rick’s wallet.  I crossed out everything on the list, wrote PARKA in big letters and handed it back to him.   (This was the ‘accepting change’ part of the story.)

Anyway, we drove for three days through rain and sleet and even snow to a 700 square foot cabin where 13 of us stayed for a week.  It was cozy, to say the absolute least.  Did I mention that it was MINUS FIFTY DEGREES? An “arena” was cleared on the lake and the men and kids were captivated with hockey the entire week.  I did a puzzle.  Pictured below are five cousins from three families and Jennie, my sister-in-law, the black scary-looking-bank-robberish one from www.bagsforzaza.blogspot.com   NEW BAGS up TODAY!

There are about 27 blogs that will eventually be written from our time on Ministikwin Lake (a claustrophobic attack at 3 am, the Canadian candy bar taste test, the faiwwies, THE trek to the remains of the EP club, the missing tooth, the frozen blanket stuck to the wall, the tip jar, the garage sale on top bunk #2, just to name a few), but onto the second part of the question: how did it impact my life?  Well, we’re still married.  The forced trek north did go down in the family history books as “the maddest I’ve ever been” but, like I said, we’re still happily married.  Sometimes you just have to give in and do what you DON’T want to do to keep the peace. It’s like my momma used to say, “Do something you don’t want to do every day.  It makes you a better person.”

This is Aus right before frostbite set in.  His face was frozen like this.  (kidding)  The moral of the story is “when life hands you snow, make snowballs with rocks in them and annihilate your opponent.” (It really does make you feel better.)  Great family memories were made… and I have a really nice parka out of the deal.

Not So Famous Quotes

My son, Austin, (the one who is currently sunburned only across the bridge of his lily-white nose… “I thought I put sunscreen everywhere!”….. sheesh) came up with the idea to retain one memorable line from each of our family vacations.  I liked the idea.  It’s like an inside joke for the whole family.  A one liner that transports all of us to the same location, time and incident… and makes us laugh, creating family bonds.

Years ago we all went with Rick to Oklahoma City where he had a week of flight training.  The kids and I dropped him off each morning and went exploring.  The Cowboy Hall of Fame is in OKC… and they have an entire room full of drawers dedicated to barbed wire.  I had no idear (cowboy talk for idea) that there were thousands of ways to tie barbed wire knots…. but there are… and they are all preserved in drawers in OKC.  (That was cool side information not related to the Famous Quotes.) 

On a different day in OKC, we found a movie theater at 10:00 in the morning and decided to see the kid’s Christmas movie about the train with Tom Hanks…. title escapes me….  and when we walked up to pay for one adult and three kid tickets we were greeted by an old woman with a wicked witch voice.  She slowly raised her shaky, knuckled finger, pointed at Larisa and asked in a high screechy voice, “How old is SHE?”  It startled all of us. The volume.  The sound.  The accusing manner.  We ended up being the only ones in the theater, so Larisa sat in the first section, Keeve and I sat in the front row of the back section and Austin ran up and down the aisles throughout the whole movie.  Just this week one of our kids did the scary “How old is SHE?” line, teleporting us back to OKC. 

So our recent dental vacation south of the border produced so many great one-liners, we had a tough time deciding on the perfect ONE for that trip.  Most were great salesman lines from street vendors trying to sell us their wares.  And the nominations for Best Line in Los Algodones were: “Almost free today.”  “Just one Mexican minute.”  “I’m having a Chapter 11 sale.  I just filed this morning.”  (My personal favorite.)  But the all time winner was from a man selling a “leather” hat to Keeve.  The only leather thing about it was the little braided strap around the brim.  The rest was a great looking and feeling imitation, but the back was synthetic fabric.  So $20 was WAY too much.  Rick stepped in to barter, at which, I must add, he is a master.  Please, let me give you a little glimpse into how it went:

Guy: $20

Rick: $10

Guy: $19

Rick: $10

Guy: $18

Rick: $10

Guy: $17

Rick: $10 (See the pattern here???)

Finally the guy came down to $12 but Rick was stuck at, you guessed it, $10.  The fine salesman finally slaps Rick on the shoulder in a friendly gesture and says, “Why you have to be so Mexican?”  Priceless.  The ultimate term south of the border for being highly frugal…..  Mexican.  Albeit, Rick does blend in well down there with his jet black hair, dark skin and Mexican teeth, it totally made us laugh that the guy recognized Rick as one of his own.

A belated Happy Father’s Day wish to our Mexican.  You’re the best dad!  (a close tie with my dad, of course.)