Tag: travel

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My Christmas Shopping System: Lessons Learned from My Grandfather

For the first few years of being grandparents, we overdid it a little with Christmas. Let me rephrase that the way my husband would say it happened: for the first few years of being a grandparent, I (me, singular) became Santa with a full sleigh at Christmas. My heart grew too many sizes to contain all the joy, and it flooded the living room in presents for our grandson.

My second, forever, current, and final (in that order, and all the same) husband is still taken aback at times with the flurry of people and number of gifts under the tree at Christmas. He grew up the eldest of three siblings, and the age span took him out into the working world and out of the home while they were still growing up. He was married for a short time, and he and his first wife have one son. If he remembers ripping wrapping paper and other Christmas chaos, those sensory elements of sounds, pitches, and squeals of laughter have evaded him up until he is reminded once again of the reality of noise when he is in the midst of multiple children.

I was married for the first time on this very day forty years ago when it fell on Thanksgiving Day, at 11:00 a.m., before anyone sat down for a turkey dinner as we slipped out on our honeymoon. The best thing to ever come of that marriage that lasted 19 years – other than the lessons learned and my former mother-in-law’s amazing recipe for cranberry orange relish – are three children, their mates, and their seven children, along with the hope of generations to come. The second best thing was that I learned to play a mean hand of euchre, a popular card game played widely up in the northern part of New York State.

By the time my second, forever, current, and final husband and I married, our blended family of four children were practically grown, except for two still finishing high school. They wanted mostly clothes, electronics, and cash for Christmas, and they knew by this time how to sleep late on Christmas morning. Our lives were mostly quiet until grandchildren came along, and suddenly the wonder and surprise of young children returned. And so did all the festivity of Christmas!

When the second grandchild came along, I had to cut back on the Christmas shopping. When the third came, even more. By the time the fourth was born, we needed a system and some ground rules to try to avoid breaking the bank. With the fifth, we tried the first system that worked, but by the sixth it had already changed. With the seventh grandchild’s arrival and plans to retire someday, we think the current system will work but have an alternate plan for retirement when it happens.

So many of my friends ask how we do it, even pre-retirement, with seven grandchildren. And through trial and error over these past 15 years, I’ll spare the journey and share what works for us. It all began when my paternal grandparents used to give each of their grandchildren cash on Thanksgiving Day. My grandfather, who had lived through the Great Depression, served as a pastor, and made his fortune in railroad stock but who had always lived as if he’d had nothing, had kept cash envelopes in his shirt pocket, and as the opportunity presented itself, he’d spent time with each of us to tell us how proud he was of us and to give us Christmas money. As a teenager, it meant the gift went further with the sales – we could pick exactly what we’d wanted from them and could get something better, marked down (the year of the Sony Walkman comes to mind). But as a young parent, that Christmas money was a total game changer. For so many years, that check meant my own children had a visit from Santa. I learned from my paternal grandparents that giving money is not impersonal at Christmas, as many folks may believe. I learned that in the ultimate spirit of giving, sometimes the gift of greenery makes the difference in the way others are able to focus on giving and not merely receiving.

That’s why our adult children get greenery at Christmas, before Black Friday. Cash. I’d been too proud to tell my grandfather all those years ago that it made the difference in my own children’s Christmas, but fast forward to this past week: one of our four said to me what I wish I’d said to my own grandfather – – this makes all the difference, and now Santa can get busy. Because adulting is real, and parenting somehow makes it real-er.

That’s half of the system that works. The other part is in a fun jingle I heard somewhere along the way, and we’ve been using it ever since. We asked our children to create an Amazon list for each of their children, with their first name and the year. In that list, they include a selection of items in these four categories: something they want, something they need, something to wear (in the correct size), and something to read. And from there, we are able to use the list either for the exact item or for an idea of something we shop in person to purchase. I’ve given up on coded gift wrap, too, in a different pattern for each child – – now it’s just one of those glorified plastic bags decorated all in Christmas colors, and the four items go all in the same bag, one for each child on the years we are able to get together in person. On years when the children are with other family members and we FaceTime, the Christmas bags make it easier for the parents to organize the gifts and keep them hidden in their homes until Christmas. On years we are together, it means I’m not up wrapping at all hours of the night.

This system may not work for everyone, but it works for us, and when others try to grasp how we “do” Christmas with seven grandchildren and four children all in four different states from Atlantic to Pacific, I tell them: we have a budget and a system, and we stick to it. It does not take away from the Christmas cheer – – it keeps it in perspective! Most of all, it keeps this Nana from trying to outdo Santa, and that’s important to the real Santa.

If we find that in retirement our jingle needs a trim, I’ve thought ahead to the next system. It may sound something like this as the grandchildren reach their teenage years – something you want, plus something you need that’s either something to wear or something to read…..or greenery. We’ll see what the years bring.

On this Black Friday, happy shopping! May you find the perfect gift for everyone on your list, no matter what your system is, even if your system is no system at all. And may you find parking spaces close to every store if you are an in-person shopper.

…above all

no matter the level

of festivity and chaos and noise

may you find moments of

peace and quiet meditation

keeping the real reason for the season

at the heart

of it all

All of us, except for one grandson who did not make the October trip with us
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Celebrating Life, Observing Thanksgiving

On this day last year, we were waking up in Plymouth, Massachusetts and heading to Plimoth-Patuxet Museum to have Thanksgiving Dinner in the spot where the Pilgrims and Native Americans had it for the first time all those years ago. It was a highlight of our trip through New England on the heels of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Convention, which was held in Boston in 2024.

After the end of the conference, when Ada Limon had delivered the final keynote speech, we’d taken the ferry back across Boston Harbor to the airport and rented a car. We headed up to Kennebunkport, Maine for a night, then across New Hampshire to Woodstock, Vermont for a night, then to West Chesterfield, New Hampshire, and finally to Plymouth each for a night before completing the loop back to Boston, turning in the car, and flying home. We still talk about the fun we had on that trip, just the two of us, seeing New England by car.

Yesterday, true to small town living, we were out at our local Ace Hardware Store buying ten bales of pine straw to go by the shrubs in the front bed when we saw Briar’s brother standing in front of the only grocery store in town, holding his bag of heavy whipping cream and a Coca Cola in a bottle and talking with a friend. He ambled over to the car, where we sat reminiscing on the trip we’d taken down Route 66 a few summers ago. Along with his wife, the four of us had rented a car at Midway Airport just below Chicago and embarked on the journey, completing half of Route 66, which runs from Illinois to California, and flying home from Albuquerque after one full week of a carefully-segmented trip that allowed time for taking in the main sights we’d wanted to see.

We need to finish that trip, his brother said, and we both agreed.

This Thanksgiving is different. We were supposed to be camping on our favorite campground in one of our favorite sites, but vertigo got in the way of being able to pack the camper and keep the reservation. It got in the way of shopping and doing anything other than being still all week. We cancelled our camping plans, and I took to my favorite chair with Audible as the great world spun all week. At least when I’m down and out, I can have some sense of normalcy through story – – and travel, vicariously. This week, I’m at the Maple Sugar Inn spending time with the ladies in the Book Club Hotel. They haven’t read a single page in their book club yet, but these characters do have some interesting lives.

I’ll hit pause on my book around 10:00 to shower and dress, and to meet my husband’s brother and his wife at a Cracker Barrel an hour away from our home deep in rural Georgia. None of us felt like cooking – and even the thought of all the bending involved in cooking and baking sends me spinning in orbit. It’s simply not the year for that.

It’s a year for being home and taking it easy – going nowhere that involves a suitcase, letting others cook, and savoring the simple pleasures of home. A day for sitting next to the fire under the flannel blanket we bought last year at The Vermont Flannel Company in Woodstock, all warm and comfortable, counting my blessings. It’s a day to reflect on the week we spent in October in the mountains of Tennessee with our children and grandchildren, and a day to call and wish them a Happy Thanksgiving as they celebrate this day with other family members.

And it’s a day to remember those who are no longer with us. Mom left us in 2015, but this will be our first Thanksgiving without Dad. It’s a game changer when both parents are gone. I miss all those who taught me how to observe holidays and to be able to appreciate them without the rigid anchors of tradition making them feel any less special. Today’s quiet stillness and Cracker Barrel dinner is every bit as meaningful as last year’s dinner in Plymouth.

and so I sit in

my green chair, reflecting on

Thanksgivings past while

counting my blessings ~

browsing Kindle, Audible

for my next great trip

because over rolls

turkey and cranberry sauce

and pecan pie, we’ll

talk books, and that’s a

festive way to celebrate

~ turning the pages ~

Last Year’s Table Setting

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November 24: A Hardscape Redo Using Chat GPT

hardscape~

easier maintenance

for two aging

bodies to maintain curb

appeal on a farm house……

We started re-thinking the hardscape bed right outside our front door back in August. We fiddled around in Home Depot and Lowe’s, checked out designs shared on social media and websites, and thought of our own needs for a low-maintenance bedding design that will require less care than the one we just pulled out that had been there for 17 years. A Confederate Jasmine was running rampant, taking over the entire brick wall out front and serving as a nesting ground for birds. The one shrub we left was a gardenia bush just because I love the smell wafting by when I sit on the front porch reading in the late summer. I carefully dug up the Giant Elephant Ear bulbs to replant them in pots instead of the ground.

We looked at all different possibilities for a redesign.
I spent a Sunday putting down new landscape fabric to cover the rocks that have been there for 17 years. We will add newer, cleaner rock while letting the first base serve as additional weed killers.

Once we finally decided on the rock we wanted to use, we set off to Lowe’s with the truck and trailer to get two pallets. Little did we know that it would not go as far as we thought it would. Our entire budget for this project covered only a third of the bed. We reconsidered using pine straw for budget purposes, but decided ultimately that the bugs it brings to the foundation (and Copperheads love it, too) was not in line with our original decision, so we went back to the drawing board.

We used the tractor to make the work load lighter. We emptied the bags of rock right into the bucket and used the bucket to hep spread the rock.

Ultimately, we will have a black and white hardscape design with evergreen shrubs in pots, along with several gray hardscape boulders. We like the straight lines rather than the waves, but we are considering a curved line to account for the additional white rock we will have to purchase to make the straight line work.

Chat doesn’t understand that our sidewalk runs in a different direction, but it does understand that we needed to see the concept of the design. We’ve decided on small black polished river rock to finish the bed, and we will work to that end…….meanwhile, we will have to re-vamp the budget and decide when to add the additional features.

For today, we have a half-finished hardscape and high hopes we can get it finished before the landscape fabric blows away!

Chat GPT can make mistakes, it says.

And here’s a blooper to end the day on……just for giggles. Chat GPT has the driveway going completely in the wrong direction and added grass in the hardscape bed. At least it shows us how badly we can goof up if we try hard enough.

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6 – 7 Prairie Dog Poem

Cuteness Overload

Last week, a post by fellow blogger Anita Ferreri gave me an idea: could we possibly use the viral “word of the year” 6-7 to inspire poetry? This random response from students was driving teachers and parents all over the country a little batty at Halloween, when some schools began banning it. Others embraced it and adopted it as a way to dress up, inviting folks to come to school dressed as 6, 7, or 6-7. Our ninth grade academy was one of those schools, and the fun was never more math-y.

All week, I’ve been writing 6-7 poems. Some have six or seven lines, others have six or seven syllables on each line. I haven’t written a concrete poem in the shape of 6-7, but perhaps that will be a challenge for an upcoming snow day.

As I sat in Denver, Colorado last week during an AI Summit, we decided to take a quick walking lap around the building to stretch our legs. One of our colleagues noticed something rolling in the dirt in the empty lot beside our hotel. He stopped in his tracks.

Is that a prairie dog? (I felt a Slice of Life happening…)

Our heads snapped left to get a better look.

Indeed, it was. And once I knew they were there, I couldn’t keep my mind off of them. We keep taking random laps just to bask in their cuteness. My window, not facing the view of the Rockies but facing north toward the Aurora Borealis at night and now these just-discovered prairie dogs, was just the reminder I’d needed to be thankful I hadn’t given in to my first instinct to ask for a room with a better view. The good Lord was working the reasons for this odd room choice far away from the rest of my group. These prairie dogs WERE the view, and, like the Northern Lights, so entertaining to watch. Who needs the Colorado Rockies when there are prairie dogs? It took me back to Amarillo, Texas the morning we were leaving for Cadillac Ranch and I’d have preferred to have stayed and watched the prairie dogs in the vacant lot next to our hotel in that city, much like this deja vu situation.

So today, here is a 6-7 poem about these cute critters.

Colorado Prairie Dogs

took me out of my summit

more playful than AI

popping up here and there

tunnel infrastructure

underground labyrinths

far more captivating

than AI’s mindlessness

Tune in next Tuesday to see where our thinking about the prairie dogs took us during one part of the summit when our minds began drifting……(hint: we rethought the mascot for our new voluntary professional development club that starts in December)!

Just call him Petey…..the squeaky professional development prairie dog
Special thanks to Two Writing Teachers for providing space and inspiration for teachers to write in community
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Open Write Day 2 of 3 November 2025: Traditions Tanka with Mo Daley of Illinois

Mo Daley is our host for today’s Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com. She inspires us to write tanka poems to share our traditions. This may be one you’d like to try today, so I’m including her directions below.

Mo writes, “This time of year always gets me thinking about traditions. There are many my family and I look forward to celebrating with each other. I really love hearing about other peoples’ traditions, too. Hayrides, Oktoberfest, pumpkin patches, bonfires, corn mazes, pumpkin carving, and cooking might be some of the traditions that come to mind when you think of fall. Today’s poem is a way for you to flex your poetic muscles while letting all of us learn a little bit more about you and the traditions you observe.” 

Mo inspires us with these words: “Write a tanka or series of tankas telling us all about a favorite, or maybe least favorite, fall tradition. A tanka is a traditional Japanese poetic form of 31 syllables over 5 lines. The syllable count is 5/7/5/7/7. Usually there is a turn in the third line. Consider focusing on sensory images to help us feel like we are right there with you. “

You can read Mo’s poem at the Open Write today by clicking here. In my poem below, I feel the need to clarify the spelling of the yellow bear. My first grandson could not say yellow, so when my son suggested they go on a bear hunt on our farm in rural Georgia to find the highly-elusive-never-before-seen yellow bear, my grandson couldn’t stop talking about the lellow bear, and none of us have called it anything different ever since. I still have the picture of them setting out to find it, and it warms my heart to think that one simple moment, one slight of the tongue, became a family tradition that remains to this day.

Traditions Tanka

first, the pumpkin bread

that started when they were kids

I tie the apron

sift the flour, mix in the eggs

add sugar, spices, pumpkin

dominoes thunder

onto great granny’s table

the one I redid

while the bread bakes, we play games

we pair with grandkids

we all walk the farm

looking for the “lellow bear”

every eye stays peeled

lellow bear is elusive

someday, we might catch a glimpse

the coffee pot stays

full of fresh brew to help us

keep up with these kids

Scrabble (turntable version)

for adults, post-kids’-bedtime

togetherness fills my soul

I take a deep breath

they were born last week

now here they are, with their own

tears of gratitude well up

Several years ago ~ from the time of his first bear hunt to early teens
The walk that started it all: the first hunt for the elusive lellow bear
Today, the hunts continue
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November 14 – Shoes: 6,7

One Pair Shoe Rule: a 6,7 poem in lined syllables

I have a one-pair shoe rule

whenever I travel

that goes with my direct flight

plan with one small carry-on

a loaded Kindle device

fully charged, ready to read

wear back what I wore there

and every piece of clothing

matches every other piece

and my basic black zip boots

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November 13 – 6,7 in Denver, Colorado

Denver’s Blucifer: a 6,7 poem

they said I’d see Blucifer

outside Denver’s airport

his eyes glowing evil red

I stayed on the lookout

from our Uber’s front seat

and sure enough: there he stood!

Denver has offbeat art

in a Waldo’s Chicken

we saw paintings of Ozzie

(biting at a chicken’s head)

and Reba McEntyre

Prince and Martha Stewart

Jim Carrey (Ace Ventura)

……all featuring chickens

unexpected artwork makes

me want to go exploring……

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November 5

On the first Monday evening of each month at 7 p.m., I meet with a small group of Stafford Challenge poets via Zoom. We’re also members of EthicalEla, and we’ve presented together at NCTE. Periodically, we’ll text each other a poem or prompt. Our evening meetings include time for writing and sharing.

Our group consists of Glenda of Idaho, Denise of California, Barb of Iowa, and me. We weren’t sure whether or not Denise was going to make it this week, but she texted us a prompt in case we wanted to try the writing prior to the meeting and have something to share.

This was her prompt:

Screenshot

Steering clear of adverbs was challenging (I think of Stephen King’s words: the road to hell is paved in adverbs). Writing without them is not easy. I noticed the need for doubling down on adjectives to meet the sensory part of the prompt and also accepting that this would be a major run-on sentence. Here is the poem I shared with my small group on Monday night:

we’re listening to Christmas music, joy

filling our hearts and souls ~ chicken pot pie

piping hot and broiler-top crisped and browned

our three schnozzles snoozing by the fireplace

Sam’s Club Members Mark Old Vine Zinfandel

spilling from a ruby red wine chalice

catching each sparkle of shimmering light

Vermont Flannel blankets warming our toes

in forest green and rich brown earth-tone plaid

on this crisp night here in rural Georgia


I’m so thankful for my writing friends who always inspire me to try new forms and challenges. And Denise showed up – – after a long day of travel, in a Chipotle, still not yet having arrived at her destination for the evening. The four of us each shared a poem and caught up on life, and for that time of fellowship, I am grateful.

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October 27 – Golden Shovel Poems

I worked with two Humanities teachers in our school district to acquaint students in our 9th Grade Academy with way that they can create poetry from prose. Here is one form of writing we used to mark the geography of a place from our writing. I was using my blog post from Tuesday to model how to let prose inspire poetry.

Golden Shovel Poems

A Golden Shovel poem takes a sentence or phrase from prose (or another poem) and writes it vertically, placing those words at the beginning or end of each line.  Ask me about double, triple, quadruple and quintuple shovels…..

Singing Off-Key

We spent the week together having fun and

Can’t wait to 

Leave on our next family trip, singing

Jesus, Take the Wheel with Carrie

In off-key high notes through the back roads of

Tennessee, Comin’ ‘Round the Mountain