Many Thanksgiving Blessings...
From inside the Little Blue Bungalow,
Katie Jean
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Christmas Family Traditions
I'm sure many of you have vivid Christmas traditions that you continue with your present day families. Since I was a little girl I remember waking up Christmas morning to a big mug filled with egg nog and pumpkin and zucchini bread on the counter cut into big slices slathered with butter. It was always such a treat since the remaining 364 days of the year we ate cereal (no sugar cereal either folks!).Though our family's breakfast is more varied now (Sorry Mom, no hard feelings.), we still continue eating pumpkin or zucchini bread Christmas morning as well as a few treats from my husband's past. In addition, my husband reads the Christmas story from the bible just as my father did year after year around our dining room table. I love having these moments of my past become my children's memories.
Over the past five years, we have also created a new family tradition special to just us. Each night before Christmas, I have a large basket over-filling with wrapped Christmas books for each child to pick as a bed-time story. Getting to open a package each night is such a thrill for the kids even though they know that inside contains a book about winter, snow, and/or Christmas. The excitement and anticipation for bedtime increases each night as we get closer to Christmas and Drew and I get to share a special moment with our kids reflecting on Christ's birth.
The 
cost has been quite minimal for this project and in less then forty-five minutes I can always get the books all wrapped after Thanksgiving. The first year my mom helped me (I was on bed rest with Mr. Keegan) purchase as many books as we could find about Christmas from Goodwill and other second hand stores. We were short a few that first year and borrowed a few great books from our local library. We wrapped them like the others but in a different wrapping paper so we could open them first to return them on time. (My mom would go crazy if she know I ever had a late library book!)Over the years, I have added to my collection when I found a wonderful Christmas book at a garage sale or local second-hand store usually for less than $.69 a piece. I then store all the Christmas books with my Christmas decorations in anticipation for next years discovery. After several years of Goodwill collecting I'm up to 48 books...enough for both kids to unwrap one each night before Christmas. This year Fiona helped me wrap all the books and she eagerly read each title to me as we wrapped them together. I personally am excited this year as I know she will be able to read them herself this year.
I love sharing this tradition with my family each night as we head to bed. I hope that maybe this is one of the traditions my kids will "adopt" into their own family's traditions.
From inside the little blue bungalow,
Katie Jean
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
An Impulse
Too often in life we are confined to our "boxes" and "normal routine"
and don't look around for the unexpected. We are told, "keep your head down and keep walking". And for what? The norm.Isn't it funny how during our school age years we yearned to be "normal", to belong. Now as an adult the taste of "normal" in my mouth is bleak. I long for a break in my routine a blast of the unexpected, an impulse. Unfortunately with two working parents, young kids and the pace of life the impulses are infrequent. Sometimes I yearn for more out of my life.
As I age, my eyes have changed. Though my eyes haven't physically changed, (OK, they have changed some hence the reason I need bi-focals) my perception has changed.
I now notice the oddities. The things that don't "add up" in my daily routines.
On Sunday we enjoyed a slower Sunday afternoon strolling through a local apple orchard picking apples. And in the midst of all these loaded apples trees was a single white chair. Since the orchard we visited wasn't a heavily commercialized orchard it was even odder for us to be among this quiet orchard and then to see this random chair.
Though I walked by it a couple of times on the hunt for the best tasting heritage variety, it kept "haunting" me. What in the world was it doing here? To pick apples? Did someone need to rest while picking apples?
In the last minutes of our pick, I instinctively looked at the kids and said, "PHOTO SHOOT!" And in an impulse, I plopped the kids down and started shooting a series of shoots. No, they weren't professional, but it represented my kiddos in this "season" of their life. Keegan was mad, Fiona consoled him, Keegan was still mad...But in the last shoot (shown on top) I captured a moment in time...my kiddos.... Fiona with her toothless grin, Keegan with tear-streaked innocent cheeks. An impulse. A blast out of my "normal"...a random photo shoot in an abandoned apple orchard on a lazy Sunday afternoon.
I need more random impulses in my life to help ease the normal, the routine. Like last night when I picked butternut squash in the pitch dark with my head lamp. (Seriously...don't ask.) I think these random impulses define us, not the norm. Whether planned or on "the fly" we all need something out of the ordinary in our lives, an impulse.
From inside the little blue bungalow,
Katie Jean
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
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