Category: travel

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Family Yule Log – Part 1 of 3

One of my daughters volunteered us to make a Yule log for Christmas dinner. We were in Kentucky, checking in to a VRBO after our 6-hour drive and a Christmas Eve Service of Lights when I found out. Without a mixer anywhere in the cabinets, the bold yellow glow of a Dollar General open until 10 p.m. on Christmas Eve on the backside of nowhere offered a glimmer of hope for the first miracle we’d need to create this masterpiece of skilled baking and artistry I seriously doubted either one of us had – – except for her creativity. That was the only strong possibility we had going between the two of us.

The recipe said it would take 3 hours. It was 7:30. The second miracle we’d need would be wakefulness. A working oven (in this one, we’d be cooking with gas) and all the right pans and an assortment of mixing bowls would need a divine nod, too. 

The irony is that just a day before, I’d seen a perfect Yule Log as I’d scrolled on Facebook. I admired the swirl, the spongy-looking cake, and the icing that looked like tree bark. Oh, to be able to make a thing like that, I thought to myself.

“Someday, when I’m retired and have more time and patience, I’d like to try making a Yule Log,” I shared with my husband, showing him the picture. He studied it for a moment, noticing its intricate design, and then studied me, handing the phone back. I think he halfway expected me to laugh, as if this were a joke. I didn’t.

“But what about all these different ingredients?” I asked my baking partner daughter. ”We may have a Dollar General, but we’ll never find a grocery store open after 6 on Christmas Eve.”

“No worries,” she assured me, holding up a bag filled with an assortment of Ziploc bags. ”I already have all that, already measured out. It’s in this bag, and everything is labeled, right down to the eggs.” 

Sure enough, she came ready with the ingredient part. We added a jelly roll sheet pan and a roll of parchment paper to our buggy, along with the mixer. Then we thought of a can of Pam, a Hershey Bar to make chocolate curls, and some peppermints to smash for a top-garnish. We were ready to check out and go get busy on our baking adventure of a lifetime. On Christmas Eve.

At 8:00 p.m., we began the 3-hour baking quest. 

“I’ll bet you didn’t think you’d find yourself making a Yule Log on Christmas Eve, did you?” she asked.

“This is not the first time I’ve found myself doing something I didn’t expect to be doing,” I reassured her with a smile of readiness for anything.

I heard my husband chuckling from the den, where he sat reading. ”Nope, it sure isn’t, and I’m sure it won’t be the last, either,” he added.

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Kitty’s Fruitcake Cookies

Kitty and Randolph always stopped by my grandparents’ house in Blackshear, Georgia on Christmas Day with a big, round, heavy tin of fresh-baked fruitcake cookies. The grownups would sit in the parlor on the antique furniture by the silver tinsel tree and talk and talk and talk, while my brother and I would figure out ways to steal cookies. We didn’t know we weren’t supposed to like fruitcake cookies, so we liked them – and still do. We are among the small percentage of the population who can actually savor a slice of fruitcake with a cup of coffee.

My grandparents were natural social distancers back in the 1970s, but Kitty and Randolph were part of their small circle of friends- close enough to make it past the front door. Kitty was always smiling and laughing, but Randolph was quiet and reserved.

My maternal grandparents lived life unto themselves. They both worked – she in the Sears Catalog department in downtown Waycross, Georgia, and he for Seaboard Coast Line Railroad in Waycross. Both worked hard and came home at the end of the day to each other, their impeccably clean house, and their manicured lawn that they took great weekend pride in landscaping during the warm months. 

Those Christmases, so full of vivid paperdoll and red wagon and Daisy gun and army men and fruitcake memories, come rushing to mind as I sit here in my living room thinking of my early childhood years when we traveled to visit our grandparents in our metallic blue and woodgrain-sided Buick station wagon through the back roads of rural Georgia, my brother and I lying flat on our backs on a quilt in “the way back” (third seat flattened to a bed area, with no seatbelts, of course) looking up at the stars in the clear night as pine tree tops whizzed past. 

My eyes gaze upward to the window over our front door, out to the stars past the pine tree tops, realizing that the years, too, have whizzed past faster than I could have imagined. I’m older now than my grandparents were then, and understand in these years more than ever before how fleeting time truly is. 

And I wonder whether fruitcake-filled Currier and Ives Christmas tins with lids of horses pulling sleighs over snowdrifts out by the old two-story farmhouse are still a thing anywhere. I’d like to steal some cookies and tuck myself away in all the wonder of a silvery tinsel tree, reliving just a few moments of those good old days, hearing Kitty tell stories and coffee cups clink and antique chairs creak as folks laughed, before screens came along and disrupted real human conversation. 

Those were the best days. 

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The Best Present is Presence

I didn’t want them to leave, even though we go back to work tomorrow and most of our grandkids have another week of homeschool before they take their Christmas break. Sawyer is in 3rd grade, Saylor in 1st, and River in PreK. Beckham and Magnolia aren’t in their school years yet.

Aidan, the oldest and a teenager, lives in a neighboring county and attends a private school there. He has finally caught – and exceeded – my height. We’ve been back to back and heel to heel for a year now to see when the day would come, and it has happened!

Even though it’s far from our normal routine where we live with three Schnoodles, having part of our family come for a visit is a joy! They are a lively bunch, and they make us so proud!

We love taking pictures each time we all get together. Our daughter in law sets the timer and makes the run to take her place before the click, while we all watch the flashing light and say “cheese” on repeat until it stops. She’s an iPhone wizard!

This year, no one felt like getting dressed for a picture, so we didn’t. It was a rainy, cold weekend and we were busy staying warm and playing dominoes and watching movies and eating nonstop. So we opted for the reality photo, the one where you have to keep calling everyone to get outside and no one can pry themselves off the couch or chair they’re occupying. No one wore anything except pajamas with a coat or robe (and not the family matching kind with the coordinated Tartan plaid that looks planned and professional). A couple of us had shoes on, no girls had makeup on, and one or two of us might have brushed our hair or teeth. We simply ran out in the misty drizzle for a photo to mark the occasion.

L-R: Saylor, Kim holding Beckham, Briar in back, River, Aidan, Sawyer, Marshall holding Magnolia, and Selena

This may be my favorite picture of us ever taken. When our grandchildren are grown and look back on these days spent with their grandparents, this is what I want them to remember – that we were happy just the way we were, and that we chose to savor every moment relaxing together at home. And that we didn’t need a crippling blizzard to know how to stay in our pajamas and drink coffee and chocolate milk all day and stay cozy.

It’s true: the best present is presence.

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The Past, Present, and Future

Seven years before she died, my mother joined one of my daughters and me on a girls’ trip to Dahlonega, Georgia. My college roommate makes it an annual tradition to take her own mother and daughters to start the season of Christmas shopping the weekend before Thanksgiving each year, so we met them there that year, staying with them in their favorite Smith House suite overlooking the Dahlonega square. It was a magical time of welcoming the Christmas spirit, eating great food, playing dominoes and cards, reading, sleeping past 6 a.m., lingering over coffee, and shopping for those on our lists.

I’m so grateful for that time we had together. Mom knew something was different, and she suspected Parkinson’s Disease long before her official diagnosis came. Her right thumb trembled endlessly, and she found she grew weaker and felt increasingly exhausted in her daily routine, even with her normal daily tasks. I was glad our room was close to the town square so that she could go back and rest when she felt too tired to walk.

We were downstairs in one of the gift shops when Mom’s eyes lit up. She’d spotted the sale sign on Willow Tree items. I was curious about what she’d wanted from the selection, so I followed her over to the table, where she stood admiring the Nativity set.

She bought that basic Nativity set as my Christmas gift that year and added to it for the next several years, giving me a new part of the collection each year. At the time, I was thankful, but not nearly as grateful for that gift then as I am today. The memory of our time together lives on, and this is one gift that I truly cherish because it marks our trip and takes me right back to the place where she found the joy of giving this to me and building it over time. When I admire these pieces, she is right here with me. In this Nativity, I see the past, present, and future.

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Festive Gas Pumps

Earlier this week, I watched a Tik Tok video showing a prank a teenage girl played on her father by telling him she was having car trouble and didn’t know why. She said she’d put gas in the car and loved the festive red and green gas pumps the stations were putting out for Christmas like she’d seen on Tik Tok, and that she’d chosen the green one. She knew she wasn’t out of gas.

“You didn’t!” her dad muttered in disbelief, before using a few choice words about staying off of Tik Tok.

When I pulled into the gas station on my way home from a conference yesterday, I chuckled when I saw the pumps. Sure enough – red and green.

I chose the red one.

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Recovering Rituals

I’ve had a few surgeries in my lifetime, starting with a tonsillectomy when I was in kindergarten. We lived in our house on Timmons Street on St. Simons Island, Georgia during this time, and I remember it as clearly as if it were yesterday. The house was white with a royal blue exterior wall in the carport and a 1970s modern-at-the-time artistic architectural barrier wall of cut-out circles that gave a false notion of privacy between the car and the road.

Since we had just moved to the island back in those days, Dad serving as a new pastor with long hair and sideburns looking a little bit like every picture of Jesus I’d ever seen, the members of the church showered us with things for me to do as I recovered. They stopped by and held my baby brother, and they brought ice cream, popsicles, soups, coloring books and new crayons, and books to read. I got spoiled early on to the ideas of what recovery from surgery meant: all the ice cream I wanted, and fun new stuff.

That’s why I began thinking about the silver linings of surgery before I came to be with my adult daughter as she recovers from a tonsillectomy. This isn’t easy surgery – – the older you get, the rougher the recovery. I was even more certain of this when the surgeon appeared from behind the curtain as we awaited the magical hour.

“Are you ready for this?” he asked her.

She had a far more enthusiastic response than either of us was expecting.

“Well, it’s going to suck,” he warned her. “There. I’ve said it. I had this same surgery at your age, and it’s not easy. But it’s worth it. There are healthier days ahead.”

I am a fan of new, young doctors with all the new technologies like the one I had when I broke my foot in 2022, but I took great comfort that this ENT looked older than I am, and I began saying silent prayers of thanks for his level of experience. The good Lord sent comfort on many levels for this mother’s heart as I watched my child being wheeled out to the operating room.

The silver linings and up-sides of surgery include time together, even though we aren’t running around having all kinds of adventures and fun. We’re sharing the sweetness of flattened Coca-Cola so the carbonation doesn’t sting, and we’re having conversations about hopes and dreams.

We’re also knitting hats. I was thinking back on the days when I was young and someone gave me a weaving loom. I must have made a hundred potholders and loved every single project I finished, carefully sorting the colors into piles and counting the numbers I’d need to be coordinated and not all willy-nilly random about weaving just any old colored loop in there.

Years ago, we made a bunch of hats using round looms. I’d passed the looms on to someone else to enjoy once we’d squeezed all our own joy from them, so I stopped in and got some new ones, along with some yarn for the journey. Together, we watched a refresher YouTube video to re-learn how to cast on and cast off, and we started our handiwork.

Oh, the fun of simple time, talking through the hours, sipping apple juice, and creating something that will bring warmth and all the pride of wearing a handmade item. I knitted a baby cap for a new grandchild, and she worked on a hat for herself for the coming colder days.

Somehow, working with her hands has taken her mind off of her throat and given her a different focus. And watching her work has given me a deep peace that everything will, indeed, be better.

Healing is a process that takes time, but togetherness and family time makes it all more bearable.

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Goal Update for November

At the end of each month, (or beginning), I review my yearly goals and spend some time reflecting on how I’m doing in living the life I want to live ~ a way of becoming my own accountability partner and having frequent check-ins to evaluate my progress. I’m still in the process of revising some of my goals as I encounter successes…..and setbacks. New goals have asterisks for the month of December, when I will report on them in a few weeks. For the month of November, here’s my goal reflection:

CategoryGoalsMy Progress
LiteratureRead for Sarah Donovan’s Book Group




Blog Daily




Write a proposal for
my writing group’s book and a proposal for an NCTE presentation for November 2024		I participated in the November book discussion with Sarah’s reading group and look forward to reading January’s book (we skip the month of December)– I Hope This Finds You Well, by Kate Baer. I’ll participate in this book discussion in January 2024.



I continue to blog daily, and the daily writing and reflecting is a wonderful habit for me. I don’t feel complete without some form of daily writing, and the blog is a way of continuing the habit.

My writing group is writing a series of new books, and I will spend time editing the chapters we have written. I will continue to add chapters as we receive feedback from our proposals. We are each sending our proposal out to some publishing companies. I’m also meeting to help write a proposal for the NCTE 2024 Convention in Boston in 2024.
Creativity

*Decorate the house for Christmas




My main December creativity goal is decorating the house for Christmas, since we didn’t decorate at all last year. The grandchildren will be coming to see us, so there must be trees! For the month of November, I spent some time knitting hats and doing some therapy coloring with a daughter recovering from surgery.
SpiritualityTune in to church





Pray!



Keep OLW priority		We have tuned in to church every Sunday in November and will continue doing the same for December. We plan to attend a Christmas Eve service this year as well, with one of our children.

My car is still my prayer chamber for daily prayer, and there’s so much to give thanks for. I continue my conversations with the good Lord each morning and afternoon.

I’m still keeping my OLW my priority: pray!
ReflectionWrite family stories

Spend time tracking goals each month		I have shared family stories through my blog this month and will continue this month to do the same. I’ll participate in an Open Write storytelling event and share a family story out loud!

I’m tracking goals, revising, and considering some new categories as I look at my goal table. I’m already looking at my goals for next year.
Self-Improvement*Reach top of weight rangeThis is a setback for me since April. I’ve hit major stress and gained weight, despite joining WW. I need to set a firm date and get the mental mindset that it takes to stay on track. I have work to do. Update: every day, the diet is starting “tomorrow.” I seriously need a good mindset to start back.
GratitudeDevote blog days to counting blessingsI begin the days this way and end them giving thanks as well. November was full of gratitude and thanksgiving by its sheer celebrations, and I celebrated the birthdays of a grandson and a brother. Taking time to pause and give thanks for people and blessings brings joy and reminders that family is a gift.
ExperienceEmbrace Slow Travel








Focus on the Outdoors


I’ve taken a trip to be with a daughter having surgery in November, and while this was not adventure travel or vacation, we found ways to maximize our togetherness and make the best of a time of recovery. Next month, we will be welcoming visits from family members and visiting some out of state as well.

I’ve joined Project Feeder Watch, since birdwatching is far more comfortable and warm from inside the house. I plan to add two entries per week throughout December, totaling at least one hour per week.
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Surgery Day – A Visit from Her Mimi

Throughout her life, my mother loved birds. Songbirds, water birds, and birds of prey. She could spot a hawk from a mile off, as if she’d had some inner sensor alerting her to their presence.

My brother Ken and I often share pictures of hawks when they manifest themselves to us, especially on significant dates – birthdays, holidays, or times of concern. We often mention that we saw Mom sitting on a wire by the highway making sure our seatbelts were fastened and our doors were locked.

My children often share how much she meant to them – taking them to Dairy Queen for Cotton Candy Blizzards, making strawberry figs in the kitchen, taking walks along the beach. They called her Mimi.

Imagine the deep feeling of comfort when my daughter and I were leaving for the hospital from our hotel this morning and noticed, resting on the wire directly above the car, a hawk – seeing us off, assuring us that her spirit was right here with us in these tense moments of anticipating surgery. A tonsillectomy is rough surgery for an adult, but Mom’s spirit affirmed for us that we are on the way to better days ahead.

I’d parked the car with her guidance the night before. That inner voice told me, arriving after dark, to park near a light – not on the back side of the building, as had been suggested by hotel staff at check-in. I followed that voice. She is always steering me in all the right ways, right down to parking the car for safety and so she’d have a wire for a better morning greeting.

Even brief appearances and signs bring deep comfort to us! Mom knew how much this hello from Heaven would mean to us.

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A Morning Prayer for Safe Travels and Family Surgery

I’ll be on the road today, bound for the home of one of my grown children who did not have a tonsillectomy as a child and must have one as an adult – and who is also extremely limited in medication options.

The last time I was headed there for the surgery a few weeks ago, I got a call an hour into the drive. “Turn around, Mom, I have strep again, so we have to postpone.” I could hear the tears and sheer frustration in this quivering voice – in this 8th case of strep since February.

So I did. I came back home to wait for the next steps.

Surgery was rescheduled for this week.

I’m praying for a smooth surgery, for a speedy recovery, and for this not to be so painful for my child. I hear it’s rough as an adult to have to undergo this particular procedure. We will, however, celebrate the silver linings – ice cream, milk shakes, and books. I’m bringing sketchbooks and art supplies, too.

All good vibes, thoughts, and prayers for safe travels, successful surgery, and for speedy healing are most appreciated. We’re looking forward to healthier days ahead, and we are grateful to live in the age of modern medicine.

Thank you so much!

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A Hike Through F. D. Roosevelt State Park

Boo Radley, Ollie, and Fitz hiking the red and white trails of FDR State Park in Georgia. I do not own the rights to this music.

Our time on this Thanksgiving getaway is coming to a close for now, but instead of starting the campsite breakdown as we normally do on the last afternoon of our camping adventures, we took an impromptu hike with the boys on the trails of F. D. Roosevelt State Park in Pine Mountain, Georgia. I’m sharing a video of their tail-wagging joy as Boo Radley, Ollie, and Fitz traversed the terrain.

We met another couple hiking, and the wife observed, “Looks like you have your own sled dog team!” I chuckled because I am always referring to them as our sled dogs. When my sister in law walked them with me this week, she was surprised by how hard they pull. I told her that if there were snow on the ground, we could put on skis and they’d pull us all around the campground. Truth.

Our Georgia State Parks offer different types of clubs for kayakers, canyon climbers, dog walkers, and cyclists. Tails on Trails seems like it would be a healthy challenge for the two humans belonging to these three canine trail enthusiasts for 2024, so already I’m thinking of working it into a yearly goal.

As we sat around the campfire last night, I turned on the green sparkle lights and watched them dancing like tiny fairies in the trees as I reflected on what I loved most about the week- being able to get away and enjoy time in nature with family, spending time with each other and with our dogs, and truly taking time to give thanks for our blessings. Time. Togetherness. Thanksgiving.

These are the parts of the week that meant the most to me.