A couple months ago I said something rude to my sister. It didn’t even really make sense, but it was definitely potentially rude.

There we were, planning Thanksgiving, who would bring the sweet potatoes (me) and who would make the rolls (her) and who would cook the turkey (mom), and Marcy said that we didn’t really need cranberry bread because last year no one ate it, probably because there were too many carb-y side dishes, what with the stuffing (mom) and the mashed potatoes (me) and the even more rolls (her).

Now, I don’t think it’s technically possible to have too many carb-y side dishes, but I’m willing to suppose that people like to save their desert-type appetites for the pies.

Still, I was reluctant to skip the cranberry bread: it’s a tradition. In fact, here’s a picture of me at seven-ish, making cranberry bread with Dad. Dad wasn’t exactly a big presence in the kitchen, so baking with him every year was special.

Real men zest their oranges.

So Marcy pulled out her notes from last year. That’s right. After our Thanksgiving feast at her fancy house last year, she sat down and wrote notes about what worked and what didn’t. And there, in black-and-white, was proof that no one eats the cranberry bread, at least, not in the kind of quantities that justify valuable oven space.

Marcy is a little bit organized. Whenever she makes a dish, she makes notes on the recipe: how it turned out, any modifications she made, and how her kids liked it. Whenever her kids get sick, she keeps track of symptoms (date and time they appear) and medicines (doses and times) in a little notebook. She even keeps her digital photos in labeled computer folders so she knows which she’s printed out so far.

I only know which photos I haven’t printed out yet because I haven’t printed any in approximately two and a half years.

But as part of my resolutions this year, I hope that taking notes will work for me.

To get me started, here’s what worked and didn’t for Christmas this year. All I have to do is read this list in early November, and our next Christmas season will be even better. Which, if we don’t get the by-now-traditional stomach bug, will not be hard to do.

Notes on Christmas 2008:

1. You want to do Christmas cards. Even if you think you really don’t, you do, so buy the stamps, order a photo card from Costco, write the letter. Start canvassing for addresses December 1st; mail by the 15th.

2. You always buy too many small presents from Dollar Tree and Wal-Mart and the dollar spot at Target. Remember the “Something they want, something they need, something to wear, something to read” idea for gifts. Or, buy each kid a 25-ish gift and then only a few smaller ones to open. Chapstick, Pez, fun toothbrushes, gum, and slinkies are big hits in the stockings.

3. Presents that brought the biggest smiles: kids fingernail polish from Grampa, plastic beads for making bracelets and necklaces, and the ponies. But you knew that. The stocking swap at Well-Rounded Woman was definitely worth it; thanks Robyn!

4. Sally, Susan, and Spot loved the Jesse Tree. You need to add to the ornaments/scripture stories. This year there were only 15 days of prophets/foreshadowings of Christ. (In addition to some of the traditional devotions, I added Moses and the brass serpent, Samuel the Lamanite, Alma, the Brother of Jared, Jacob, Micah, King Benjamin, and Lehi and the liahona).

Mormon Jesse Tree. (Yes, we believe in David's father Jesse.)

5. When Dick says we shouldn’t get each other gifts, what he really means is that he’s too preoccupied to get you anything. So get yourself something and tell him thanks. Also, he really likes it if you let the kids think that some of the gifts you spend hours finding, buying, and wrapping are from him.

6. The neighbor gifts of clementine oranges (”Orange you glad it’s Christmas?”) were good. The girls loved delivering them. Great family activity the first few Mondays in December.

7. People may not appreciate cranberry bread at Thanksgiving, but they do still love the Christmas Danish Pastry. Now is not the time to cut back on exercise.

I think that’s about it. Oh, one more: If you do want to get a family picture for the card, think about this when the weather is still nice. Because kids and pictures? Hard. Kids and pictures and sub-zero temperatures? INSANE, where insane means “streaming snot” and “red noses” and “hypothermic crankiness.”

Speaking of photos, it’s entirely likely that I’ll never get around to organizing them. At this point, it would be easier to get the kids to age backwards and take more photos. But next Christmas? Is going to rock.

What works for you?

Jane

p.s. There’s one more day to enter the Walking With Dinosaurs giveaway.

I may have mentioned that my girls would be happy on a deserted island with only a few princesses dolls and ponies to play with. Throw in some macaroni and cheese, the orange kind, a few books and a large carton of strawberry milk, and they wouldn’t care if rescue never came.

But they also like dinosaurs. At the risk of sounding horrifically gender-biased, dinosaurs are basically the only thing they love that doesn’t come accessorized in pink sequins and a matching plastic purse.

So far I’ve held out on Dick showing them Jurassic Park, even though that sentences me to endless viewings of the seventeen Land Before Time movies. And now that we have a pass to the Thanksgiving Point dinosaur museum here in Utah, the kids are getting just about enough of bones and fossils and playing in the erosion table.

Only, you can never get enough dinosaurs. Not really.

So I’m excited that the BBC’s Walking With Dinosaurs tour is coming to Salt Lake City next week. The friendly people there asked if I’d like to give away a family four-pack of tickets to opening night, which is Wednesday, January 14th, 7 pm, at the Energy Solutions Arena (where the Utah Jazz play).

Would I?

H-E-Double-Hockey sticks, YEAH!

Walking With Dinosaurs is supposed to be pretty darn cool. I mean, if those smarty BBC people are involved it’s gotta be good, right? It runs January 14th-18th, with matinees on Saturday and Sunday. (Not that I’d go on a Sunday, but then, if I were Jewish I wouldn’t go on a Saturday, and if I were Muslim, not on a Friday, so basically, we’re pretty much covered).

If you don’t win the giveaway or you need more tickets (because, hello? Utah? family FOUR-pack?), use the code RAPTOR to get $10 off each ticket.

To enter the Walking With Dinosaurs giveaway, simply leave a comment telling me who the dinosaur lover is at your house before January 7th, and I’ll use the random number gizmo-thingie. If you’re too far away from Utah to use the tickets yourself, enter anyway and give someone you love a surprise after-Christmas present. If you don’t know anyone within an hour of Salt Lake City, enter anyway still. I can recommend several deserving dinosaur-philes to you.

Jane

I recently found my list of goals for the year 2003. Hoo-boy! was it old news: Lose 20 pounds, be more patient, organize the finances, meal planning, and laundry, pray with greater intent, write something.

DANG am I glad I reached those goals and can now focus on planting a garden, finishing my basement single-handedly (because I don’t like to use my left hand for construction projects), and learning Farsi for the Foreign Service.

Everybody is resolution writing and year in review-ing. I’m scared to check if I posted my goals last January. And despite often thinking that my latest post is the best thing I’ve written up until five minutes after I hit publish, I won’t be listing my favorite posts of the year. Because six minutes after I hit publish, I want to go snivel in bed, covers pulled tight over the lower half of my face.

Two of my favorite bloggers, one as secular and brazenly-career-minded as possible and the other as devoutly on fire as only the recently-converted can be have led me to think on my resolutions in new ways.

Surprisingly, what Penelope Trunk and Jennifer at Conversion Diary have to say about goals and potential is compatible enough to convince me:

Penelope says:

Living up to your potential is not crossing off everything on your to do list on time, under budget. Or canonizing your ideas in a book deal. Really, no one cares. You are not on this earth to do that. Trust me. No one is. You are on this earth to be kind. That is your only potential.

Jennifer says:

Any list of New Year’s resolutions should having growing closer to God as the ultimate goal. I need to remember this and ask myself with each one, “Is my true desire with this goal to better conform myself to Christ?” This is true not only of the goal itself but the way I approach it (e.g. you could approach a budgeting goal in a God-centered way or a greed-centered way).

I do have goals for this year. I’d like to lose 20 pounds, be more patient, organize the finances, meal planning, and laundry, pray with greater intent, write something. Oh, and plant a garden.

But I want to chose one overall goal, one goal that’ll bring me closer to God and bless my children. One goal that has a hundred applications every day and would correct something that I have rationalized and defended as my right as an overwhelmed mother.

I want to go an entire year without yelling.

Probably I am delirious about the possibility of even approaching this, but I want it. I want it so bad I can taste it. I want to believe in the grace of Christ, the tender mercies of our Lord, that if I try really, really hard, and pray really hard, I can change what is all too often the fundamental dynamic of my interaction with my children.

I would never yell at a friend the way I do my four year old when she won’t put her boots back on. Right. Now.

I would never yell at my boss the way I do my seven-year old when she touches something I’ve told her thirteen times not to touch. (If I had a boss.)

I would never yell at my two-year old in front of my Savior. (I think.) (Unless I somehow forgot He was standing there.) (Like, say, if my two-year old threw her syrup-drenched pancake squares on the floor. Repeatedly.)

So that’s it. The goal I am going to resolute over all others:

No Yelling.

Can I do it?

Yes and no.

Beth at Blog O’Beth has a family tradition of writing predictions rather than resolutions. This makes a lot of sense to me. I could predict, for example, that I will lose 20 pounds but gain back 15 or that I will organize the finances only to give up on meal planning altogether. But I’m too young for that sort of realism.

Instead, I predict that:

1) My kids will disobey, and annoy, and irritate beyond all hope of bearing.

2) I’ll backslide on the yelling. In fact, one day in early February, I will snap in the middle of a crowded grocery store and implore at the top of my lungs “Why, oh everything holy in heaven and in earth, WHY?”

3) I’ll feel bad about this yelling, which means that my goal is working. Because:

4) I’ll learn for sure that it is possible to interact with minors who share my DNA without resorting to threats of violence, and:

5) Just the act of trying, really, really hard, and praying, really hard, will improve the spirit of our home.

Jane

What do you predict or resolute?