The Lights of Christmas on Camano Island

On Thursday

my just-now-back-at-home-husband and I

decided to fly our

empty nest for the night.

We headed up north to Camano Island to

go to 

The Lights of Christmas at Warm Beach.

Don't let the name of the

beach fool you.

It was certainly not warm or tropical!

But it was very festive and colorful.

We held hands and walked the acres of lights

and scenery.

We loved watching the young children 

with a look of wonder on their face.

As we walked through the candy cane tunnel I

watched a little girl skipping along.

Her face was full of animation and enthusiasm as she yelled out 

to her mom and dad

"HO! HO! HO!....

GUESS (add lisp) who I am?????"....

"I am.... SANTA CLAUS.... (add lisp)

and THIS!!!....

.....THIS!!! IS MY NORTH POLE"

(arms spread out, twirling around)

She summed it up perfectly.

THIS was a Christmas wonderland full of color and joy,

carolers and a 'train' ride around the park.

Hot donuts or wood oven pizza.

Elephant ears and deep fried Oreo cookies.

It was a perfect place for us to spend time alone

snuggled in the cold hand in hand.

We stayed in one of their rooms at the park for the night.

Decorated with garland and lights.

No television or Internet.

Just us.

And when we awoke in the morning and looked outside....

A surprise snow fall!

We really felt we had gone to Santa's North Pole after all.

The Making of a Family Heirloom Cookbook

Way back in the Early 2000's

when I thought overalls were cool... shabby was 

JUST getting chic...

and I had dried flowers and raffia decorating my the walls leftover from

the 1990's...

Way back when I still had young children in elementary school... 

who didn't cringe with the embarrassment

of mom dropping them off at the bus stop in my pajamas because

we overslept...

(Yes, WAY back then)

I had an idea.

An idea that would make me mom of the year.

Other moms would want to come to my home and sit around the 

dining room table and drink coffee with cream

 and share secret recipes and traditions and stories about their families .

Yes, I was going to make THE most amazing cookbook full of

family recipes, old pictures, and stories of

our very own Green Family Traditions.

Just the five of us.

The family who celebrates EVERYTHING with food.

A little bit of my husbands family...A little bit of my family...

But completely OUR family.

So, 

I woke up in the middle of the night to write down stories that came to me. 

 I daydreamed as I soaked in the bath at night about this

idea that could make me famous.
After all,
shouldn't every home have a cookbook to pass down that includes traditions & history?

My grandma Robbins inspired me.  When she passed away my dad gave me a pile
of her cookbooks. I loved going through them because she always made
a note with the date she made the recipe and who she was with.
It wasn't just a recipe, it was a cherished memory. A family event.
I loved this idea, and I soooo loved her!
(That is an color photo of her original cookbook I have)

 I dug through boxes of old photographs while the kids where at school.

I shopped the scrapbook store and picked out pretty papers.

And I began to TYPE, and SNIP and PASTE and SCAN photo's.

Until about day 5...

That's when I stopped. Just because.

I thought I had a lot of time to get it finished. 

I tucked all my pictures, recipes, stories and famous aspirations into a notebook.

It got pushed aside with the other cookbooks, and moved along with us to 2 new homes. And there it stayed...bits and pieces of my dream to pass onto my children...

until last Fall.

*****

There is something surreal about watching your daughter get married.

The bittersweet realization that she belongs to another family now

as well as her own, and will soon be making

 family traditions with her own husband... and someday children.

I had flashbacks of our family sitting around the dining room

table celebrating Birthdays, Christmas & Thanksgiving and Easter.

I pictured many last days of school and going out for ice cream to celebrate.

Memories of neighborhood traditions on the 4th of July with our friends who were like our family away from home.

Snow days with hot chocolate and toast.

Homemade Raspberry jam with biscuits and sausage gravy breakfasts.

The eager little faces ready to help in the kitchen.

My little helpers were all grown up.

Those moments of catching them with their fingers in the cookie jar had passed....

SO QUICKLY.

****

I knew what I had to do.

Within days of returning from the wedding I dug out that old dusty notebook.

I was determined to make a cookbook for my kids!

Thankfully, there are websites and templates to work from now days.

The thought of all that scrap booking times three books...ugh.

However, in my search for exactly what I needed, 

I noticed there are very few websites that allow you to tell stories, add pictures, 

and add extra pages...and I NEEDED extra pages.

About 70 to be exact.

I finally found a GREAT website that had exactly what I was looking for.

(Totally my own opinion!)

Mixbook.com

My husband joined in, and found all the recipes and I typed them into the template.

I added pictures and stories and traditions from both of our family sides.

It was an honest to goodness work of love!

And the truth is...I'm glad I never finished the book all those years ago.

We weren't done creating family memories of their childhood.

We wrapped them up and gave each child their very own copy of

THE GREEN FAMILY HEIRLOOM COOKBOOK

for Christmas... so that no matter where they go

they will always have a part of their childhood home with them.

xoxo

PS.  In case you were wondering...
Izzy had a great day at the doggy spa!

Dance into 2012!

"Your time is limited, don't waste it living someone else's life.  Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living the result of other peoples thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinion drowned your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition, they somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

                          -Steve Jobs

************

My heart was full as my kids were home for the week.  There is a beautiful energy in the house with them here.  Its the heartbeat of a family. A rhythm of voices, laughter, teasing and my oldest son playing his guitar. It fills us overflowing with gratitude and joy.


Today the house is quiet and I'm picking up the leftovers of a wonderful week.  Things that would have bothered me years ago, but I savor now. Paper scattered on the bedroom floors, a stray sock left behind, empty dishes on the nightstand. They are remnants of the people I love and hold so dear. My children, my family.


So...now I'm a little teary. (and still in my Pj's at noon, by the way) I'm looking forward to helping Jeff put up the tile back splash today. Then we are meeting up with our dear friends for a movie out and appetizers.  It won't be a late night for us.  All the family time this week has left us a little worn out (in a good way!)


As each of our children bring in 2012 in their own special way, I pray that God will watch over and protect them, tonight and every night. I pray that God will guide their hearts to be all that He has created them to be, the courage to change what they can, trust in God to be beside them when they can't, and learn to celebrate the process!  


I pray for you too, my friends, that your new year brings joyful fresh starts. That you will take each moment and opportunity and dance with it. Take the lead and dance!


xoxoxo
Jodi

Happy New Years Everyone!

Please be safe, and don't drink & drive.  

Dear Santa....and a Mothers Love

Christmas Eve!

It has been a quiet, relaxing day at the Green House.

We are breaking the fondue tradition

and having pizza for dinner.

While watching "Its a Wonderful Life".

Then, its off to 

Christmas Eve Service at our church.

That is my favorite part of the evening...

I have written about my dad

many times on my blog. 

But I have not shared much about my mom.

I talked about her last Spring when 

I visited for my step fathers heart surgery.

As an Air Force "brat",

we moved A LOT.  About every 2 years.

Luckily, most of the time we were settled during the

Christmas Season.

One thing I know is that my mom ALWAYS made Christmas

special no matter where we were.

When I was about 5 years old

we lived in a single wide trailer in Wisconsin.

The snow was as high as our trailer it seemed.

That year I was very worried about Santa finding his way to our

little white trailer in the snow.

Here is a "word for word" letter (said by me, written by my mom)

on December 15, 1971

Dear Santa,

My name is Jodi and I'm 5.  I've been good. Can I have a Crissy doll please and a Baby Tender Love and a record player and and electric tooth brush and a sled please.  And my name is Jodi and I live in a trailer in Wisconsin. It's a whole bunch of white and a little bit of green. Daddy has a new car with a little black roof and shiny yellow.  You can get a sandwich and a beer when you get here. And milk too. Don't no little kids be naughty! Bring ma ma a beautiful dress with Christmas trees on it and get daddy some bafume that smells really good. That's all.

God Bless you!  From Jodi

Funny, huh?  

Makes me think of the movie "Christmas Vacation" with

Uncle Eddie. Remember? ha ha

The following year, my sister and I awoke to

the most amazing sight.

We had an entire village of "Little People"...the house, farm, schoolhouse.

New babies in in their cradles, and a Daisy BB Gun for me.

I will never forget that morning.

My dad had been gone over seas for a year and he was home.

It was more than we could ever imagined.

When I was 11, we had a foster sister

named Rosemary that lived with us. She came

from an awful home situation. My dad made cradles for her and my little sister. 

Mom made blankets for their baby dolls.

Rosemary cried because she had never had a Christmas like that.

She was adopted by a family in Seattle soon after.

I would love to find her someday.

That next year we moved from Washington

to Minnesota.  Everything we owned was in storage and we had to live

in a huge, scary, lodge know as  temporary housing.

We were the only family there during Christmas.

We went sledding down the huge hill behind the lodge, went to the club

for dinner, and I played my 45's on the record player all day.

With everything in storage, my mom made all our ornaments

for the little tree we had that year.

I still have several of the felt and sequenced ornaments.

They survived many more moves, a divorce, and being passed around for a few years.

They are some of my favorites.

A reminder of a mothers love in every stitch.

When I was 14, we moved to Phoenix

during December.

Again, we found ourselves in a temporary housing situation.

It's like living in a hotel room.

The temperature was hot.

Not at all like any Christmas we'd shared before.

One late night, a few days before Christmas,

 I saw a glow between the cracks of the bathroom door.

I snuck over and peeked inside.

There was my mom, sitting on the toilet seat, with a stocking in her hand.

She was sewing embellishments on two hand made stockings for my sister and I.

With all our belongings in storage,

she HAND made us stockings.

I have often wondered if I would do the same.

Take the time at the end of a long day to create a hand made stocking.

I love my children, but I think I would

go out an buy one instead.

I cherished that stocking for a long time.

It found its demise on my 2nd Christmas with my husband.

Our black lab puppy decided he wanted the

chocolate, and ate through the toe!

He did not care about the loving stitch work.

 I couldn't fix it. I cried.

Many Christmas mornings have come and gone since then.

Some years we have had much, and others we barely scraped by.

But one thing remains constant.

Love

May Jesus' love be the thread holding together the embellishments of your life.

God Bless you this Christmas and always.

xoxox

Jodi

UPDATE:  We love our church located in Silverdale, WA
The staff created this video as part of a beautiful Christmas service.
They always incorporate laughter into the services.
I love that.  Enjoy!

Silver Bells....Silverdale version