Joy Unknown

Today is Resurrection Sunday and we are staying home from celebrating with the saints because the babies are sick – runny noses, little coughs, sleepy eyes. We rise and have breakfast and soon they are all worn out again, and down for naps they go – and I sit at the table with my husband and my trusty iPad, and read Scriptures and listen to hymns and read blog posts pertaining to our resurrected Savior.

And as one song in particular moves me, it strikes me that even when my inside shouts with joy, my exterior stays rigid. I am the control freak – the perfectionist – the one so concerned about how I appear to others. And to me it had always seemed strange to raise the hands during a song or to stand up to praise or to sway or to dance, no matter how calmly and with self-control it might be done. I sing a song and recognize that the words are doctrinally sound and I say “Amen” and I do not allow myself to be moved. I am firm, immoveable, and no sound of music can sway me from my rigidity.

And for the first time, I have been questioning myself about it, and today brings the questions that have been swirling back to the forefront. Why am I so staid when singing about Christ's resurrection? Why do I sit still in my chair, face barely cracking a smile, and uttering no more than a deeply cultured and profoundly civilized, “Amen?”

What if my children were awake at this moment and watching me? Would my calmness make the love of Christ look like a thing to be sought after and longed for, His Person one to be hotly pursued and passionately loved? Would the resurrection seem miraculous or immaterial? Celebratory or cerebral?

Will it seem real to them, as they see me laugh aloud when watching an old TV show but sit silent and unmoved during the songs of our faith? Is it possible that I have taken the verse, “Let all things be done decently and in order” a little farther than it was intended to go?

What if I have focused so much on doctrine – important as it is – that I have forgotten that doctrine must have feet and hands and breath to fully function? What if I brought myself down from my high place of thinking and knowledge and acknowledged that the doctrine which is known should lead inevitably to joy unknown?

And joy unknown can lead to joy unbridled.

Didn't David dance for joy? Am I more spiritual than he? Am I superior – more mature, more civilized, more...proper?

Perhaps I should be careful lest my propriety makes the Gospel look dead to my children. And perhaps if so-called “impropriety” be the food of joy to make my children hungry, perhaps I should add a little more of it to my life.

I don't mean impropriety in the sense of sin, of course. I mean letting go of my own ideas of what is “proper” and instead turning to child-like faith. If a child receives a gift, does she placidly say, “Thank you, because you are good and you give good gifts and I am thankful,” or does she shout and dance and throw back her head and laugh - arms spread wide to unbridled joy?

What if my children learned to grow mature by seeing a mother unafraid to act childlike for her Father? Will they learn true doctrine if I teach them only true words and live cold and closed to joy? Or will they learn it better if I not only teach it with words, but show by my every action and my readiness to rejoice in Christ that it is real and it has changed me and it is power and life and light and bread and living water?

Will they be better taught by a mama who sits with hands folded quiet in the lap and listens to a hymn and says, “That is lovely,” - by a mama who walks outside into the wild beauty of nature with its devastating color and crushing weight of glory from the Glory-Giver and merely sighs and says, “Isn't God's Creation good?”

Not that this would be bad. But would it be an improvement if that mama, instead, listened to a hymn and when the soul rose in praise and speechless wonder – if she let go of staid propriety, raised her hands, let the tears fall, or laughed, or danced, face turned up to Jesus and basking in the wonder of His grace? Or if, instead, when faced with His glorious Creation, she dared to raise the hands, perhaps to spin in the grass, to use both verbage and body language to show that she loves passionately and gives glory to the Creator for the good things He has given?

I think of these things and I believe that it is time for change. I imagine that it will feel awkward to me at first, but even children must learn to laugh. A baby's first chuckles sound distorted and choked and mangled, but they are precious to her parents' ears. A child's first dance is uncoordinated and often ends in a fall to the ground amidst tangled curls and giggles. But it is beautiful to her daddy and mommy.

Perhaps a little raising of the hands, a little head-thrown-back-for-joy laughter, a little dancing, a little shouting for delight, a little more exuberant wonder...

I am ready. Lord, make me ready. Help me to show a vibrant and real and exuberant faith and joy to our children. Not forced, not foolish – but full of joy unknown.

Growing Pains

We've reached the wee hours of the morning and still we are up, Manly and I – he working on taxes and I keeping him company, huddled close to an outlet holding my charging iPad, reading “One Thousand Gifts.” It is my second time through it, but it has been a year since I read it and I have forgotten much.

I am realizing that I have been living like a Martha yet again. Busy, busy, busy – much too busy to take time to stop and sit at the feet of Jesus. All week long I scurried to get ready for the weekend and Friday night came and the children came down with colds and all night long was a duet of alternating wails – first one, then the other. I didn't get to sleep until 4:30 and then it was time to get up again at 9:00. And I was grumpy. I had a pleasant interlude when I managed to pull off a pan of perfect scrambled eggs and they didn't even stick to my stainless Belgique. But I was still grumpy. And it showed more and more until I melted into tears when Piper's nap ended all too quickly and I realized I wasn't going to get to nap while she did. My sweet husband commanded me to go to sleep and he would take care of her. 

It was not a glorious night of parenthood, Friday night. Those nights happen.

I do not subscribe to the view that parenting is mostly chronos moments interspersed with rare moments of kairos. But neither do I think that it is only pure ecstasy. There are moments...sometimes even hours...that you wonder if you are going to survive. Last night I wondered, as I dragged myself back to re-insert a pacifier for Piper or peeked in to make sure that Rosie was only wailing in feverish sleep and not in real trouble of some kind, my head splitting with yawning and my eyes struggling to focus from sheer exhaustion.

I felt dry, depleted, and uncertain that I could possibly give any more of myself.

And then I realized, much later than I should have, that I should pray for a better attitude. So I did. And it came to me, groggily, that tonight was Good Friday. That just the night before this, 2000 years ago, Christ had asked His disciples, “Can you not watch with me one hour?” I had just read the passage earlier that day, as I sat in an Indian restaurant waiting for take-out. “Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation.”

It didn't really sink in last night. But I felt convicted enough by the thought that Christ had been up all night alone, deserted by sleeping disciples, praying fervently, sweating blood – and then, without sleep, dragged away to be crucified – and He never once complained about it.

And here I was, up all night because I was watching over two sniffly but otherwise healthy, living children, and wailing about my hard, hard life.

I was silenced for the time.

But today I forgot again, when I still felt groggy and bleary-eyed and aching with exhaustion, and naptime wasn't going well. I forgot. I was grouchy. I was unthankful. All I wanted was sleep. It is important stuff, sleep. But I wanted it so desperately that I forgot Who I should be wanting even more.

Reading “One Thousand Gifts” tonight, I highlighted frantically as every line in Chapter 6 seemed to be aimed right at me. And I was struck by the line, “Looking is the evidence of believing.”

And I paused and wondered when I had last looked for things to give thanks for. Why had I not stopped in the chaos of last night and given thanks for it? Christ was giving thanks in the Garden of Gethsemane. Could I not have given thanks in the sleeplessness of sniffly little noses and feverish little brows?

I looked across the room and noted my gratitude journal, buried under a pile of papers. Sure evidence that I had not been looking.

No, I had spent all week forgetting to look. I did not stand with eyes wide open and weigh down each moment with me all here, and I did not remember to look for God in everything. My days revolved around whipping the house into shape – running, running, running, working, working, working, and I was very productive from Martha Stewart's perspective but I had not done so well from the perspective of Mary of Bethany. I had not paused to look for Christ all week. And if I am not looking for Him, should I wonder when my little ones do not look for Him? When I spoke of His death and resurrection to Rosie, she looked at me a bit blankly and wanted to talk about Kipper the dog instead.

If she does not see me living and breathing a relationship with Him, looking at everything as from His hand and looking, looking, constantly looking for Christ in everything – how is she to learn to want Him, either?

I know that I must want Him more. I must stop starving my soul by obsessing about weight loss to the detriment of spiritual weight gain. I must stop revolving my day around my physical workout if it is to the detriment of my own spiritual muscles. I must step back from frantically organizing my house if it means my soul is falling into shambles, and I must walk away from passionate cleaning if my heart is left gathering cobwebs.

I don't want my children to remember a house that was spotless and a kitchen that never had a dirty dish in it for more than 1.2 seconds or floors that shone if that means they will remember a mother who was spotted dirty with impatience and selfishness and irritability.

Perhaps instead of viewing my children as inconveniences to be managed I need to remember that they are souls given to me – me, unworthy – to water and nurture and grow. And a soul can starve while being fed gourmet, gluten-free dinners and living in a perfectly-organized, spotless house – and a soul can be well fed in a home where Mommy leaves the dishes in the sink to stop and point out the window at a bird to tell children of the Creator, or in a home where cobwebs hang from ceiling fans but Mommy is hard at work sweeping cobwebs out of hearts with prayer and thanksgiving and this wild, relentless hunt for Christ's joy.

Of course, so much better to have a clean house and a clean heart. But I speak of my own obsession with one to the neglect of the other. I spent the week frantically preparing the house for the weekend, and working out and eating the correct number of points for the day, and then with the weekend came A Test and I discovered that I had been exercising the wrong muscles all week long and the weight of that Test was crushing me.  I was not ready for the weekend, after all.

That night was not pleasant. Sleeplessness is not a blessing in itself. And yet...what if, instead, I had been “all eye,” as Ann Voskamp said in the chapter I read tonight, like the cherubim who have eyes on their heads, hands, feet, and wings? If, instead of looking selfishly at the inconvenience of it all, I had looked for the place of learning? If I had paused and looked for God in the sleeplessness? But I did not look. My eyes were closed and I lived last night in a spotless house with unbelief in my heart. I had prepared materially for the weekend and left my soul starved, and when the weekend came, I was not ready.

Oh, my husband read Scripture to me all week long. I listened. But as soon as it was over I jumped into my to-do list and the busyness quickly drowned out any still, small voice that might have been speaking to me in the small moments, preparing me for the Test that was coming on Friday night.

If I could only learn that those stretching moments – those times when it hurts and you just want the pain to stop so that you can get back to enjoying yourself – if only I could learn to view them like I view my workouts. When they hurt – when the muscles burn – that's when they are growing. Fat burns off when the muscles scream for relief. And I don't exercise to the point of comfort – I exercise to the point of break down. When I can't do one more press, then I go ahead and do one more and I feel victorious, because I know that I am affecting change in my body.

So, too, when life hurts, isn't the great Refiner of my heart turning up the heat to burn off the dross? Is He not, in an infinitely greater sense, my great Guide and Trainer who ramps up the spiritual exercise in order to help me grow? He pushes me to the point of break down so that my spiritual strength will increase. And my spiritual strength will only increase if He increases in my life. Why don't I feel victorious when faced with spiritual exercise? Probably because I don't push through in His strength. I holler “uncle” and wail that it's not fair and that I deserve some sleep and what are You thinking not letting me get any sleep and how am I supposed to be a Proverbs 31 woman after having a night like this?

I stop mid-exercise and refuse to press on. I refuse to cling to my Help and instead revel in my bad attitude which, at the moment, I always feel that I am completely entitled to having. My living Martha-like all week long left me weak and unprepared where I needed it most. The floors were clean, but my soul was dirty with the slime of self and the grit of ingratitude.

This week, instead of focusing so much on the external, may I put my focus first and foremost on spiritual house-keeping – tending my own soul well so that I may better tend the souls of my children. May I run first to His Word when my attitude slips, rather than pushing more to get more things done – my constant busyness drowning out His voice. May my children see in me a woman who, rather than being desperately in pursuit of a perfectly-groomed home, is desperately in pursuit of God. And if the house gets a little grimy in the process, may it be because our souls are filled with God's Word and sparkling with the joy of Christ.

Piper cries out and I hasten back to her room – and rather than put in the pacifier and race back out again, I put in the pacifier and pause to look, calling this place holy ground and declaring it to be all joy. I stroke her head and arrange the blankets around her chin and watch as her back rises and falls quiet and the pacifier moves in gentle rhythm – her eyelashes falling against her cheeks and little button nose all baby-soft. And she is beautiful.

On Serving Unseen

The following quote applies to many people, but it touched me as a stay-at-home mom...where so much of what you do goes unseen by the world, and not only goes unapplauded, but is usually derided.  Stay faithful, mommies.  It is a noble calling that we pursue.  Let us pursue it heartily.

"I do confess to wondering this –
if the call isn’t so much about carrying your Cross across a lit stage
but down the Via Dolorosa
and if the truth of it is
that the word altar comes from the Latin ‘altus’ meaning high —
because the realest altars burn
where only Heaven sees."


- Ann Voskamp

The Exercise Conundrum

Here I sit, embodying the conundrum that many mommies struggle with these days: why is it that I do my workout and reward myself by sitting down on Pinterest and pinning dozens of fat-laden, carb-infested meals? They look so amazing that they make me hungry. I want to eat some s'more pie right now. Or one of those 25 Best-Ever-Chocolate-Chip-Cookie recipes that I have now accumulated. All different, by the way. Or even that taco pasta I just found. Something. Anything that is loaded with white flour, and from there it must contain cheese if it's savory, or chocolate if it's sweet. Oh, and butter all around.

And then I bend over to scratch my ankle and my stomach gets in the way. So I sigh deeply and go and eat a cheesestick.

That or I guzzle water and try pinning a few things on my weight-loss inspiration board.

I actually don't have one of those. I just hide them in the one where I put all of the quotes I like. I like to pretend that I'm not actually trying to lose weight that way, even though one of my boards is called something like “Weight Watchers Friendly.”

I'm not sure how a foodie is supposed to lose weight. I'm really not reconciled to the prospect of going through my entire life eating Lean Cuisine while cooking gourmet meals for the rest of my family. I mean, remember what happened in “Last Holiday?” (*See note at bottom*)  But Queen Latifah showed us what can happen if you eat Lean Cuisines. You might live a boring life until you find out you're dying. At which time you will finally bust out of your shell and travel to Croatia and eat every item on the menu and go dam-diving and ski and otherwise live it up. I love that movie. So inspiring. I really do love it.  

In fact, it inspired me so much that I promptly went out and bought a bunch of Lean Cuisines as soon as I finished watching it.

Wait. Did I miss the point of the whole movie? I guess I'll just have to watch it again.

Oh, and just in the interest of keeping it real: that workout I mentioned? It was Jillian Michael's 30-Day-Shred. I'm on day 2. It only takes 20 minutes. It's tough, but it is much more do-able to me than the last workout I tried. Which was an excellent workout, by the way: ChaLean Extreme from Beachbody. It's amazing and I learned a lot from doing it, and I will probably try it again someday. Chalene is an incredible trainer. I've seen people get jaw-dropping results from the program. My problems with it were two-fold. 1. I got stronger, but didn't lose any fat whatsoever until I got the flu and had to STOP doing the workout, and 2. Because it took 45 minutes to complete each day. Maybe 35 on the shorter days. That's enough time to clean the whole kitchen or vacuum the whole house or fold a couple of loads of laundry. Or just spend some incredible quality time cuddling and reading to and playing with my precious little girls. Some people can fit all of the above in, including the 45-minute workout. For me, things were sliding that were really too important to be sliding.

So I'm re-evaluating the way I approach exercise. I'm questioning the way our whole society approaches it. I like to question things. I like to ask “why?” And I have a lot of questions. I'm trying some different methods for exercise and for achieving my weight-loss goals. I can't report success yet, because I have only just started. But I'm hoping that if I write about it, I will stay inspired to keep it up. And maybe some of you will gain some benefit from reading about my attempts to make exercise – not just a 45-minute slot of my day – but to fit it in all day, every day.

Trust me, it's better than it sounds. Stay tuned.

*"Last Holiday" is an excellent movie if you watch it with a filter (e.g. Clearplay) - it has some language and apparently a couple of unnecessary scenes.  I'm not sure what kinds of unnecessary scenes, because I watched it with the filter and I only know that it skipped a couple of scenes.

Tan Bellies

And no, the title is nothing like what you're thinking.  Just keep reading and all will become clear shortly.  ;)

This morning, Rosie watched closely as I sat down to eat my Lean Cuisine breakfast. She was very concerned. Not because I was evidencing such a complete lack of culinary discernment, I fear, but because my plate contained green beans littered with almonds and...ladybugs.

She was sure they were ladybugs. And Rosie adores ladybugs. There they were, plump and red, all over Mommy's plate, and she watched in alarm as Mommy raised the fork to her mouth, two helpless ladybugs perched on top, hastening towards certain doom.

“Mommy?” she said softly, but with a distinctly alarmed edge to her voice. “You...eat...ladybugs???”

I stopped with my fork in mid-air. For a moment it was my turn to be alarmed as I checked to make sure I wasn't about to consume some undesirably-packaged extra protein. But no, there were no ladybugs in sight. Only turkey, green beans, almonds...and cranberries.

The poor child saw the round, red cranberries and was convinced that I was a ladybug-killer. I set her mind at ease immediately, and she sighed with relief. “Oooooh,” she said. “TAN-bellies.”

Yes. Tan-bellies, cranberries – it's all much better than eating ladybugs.

.morning snapshots.

- When Rosie, my 2-year-old, wants to read "Guess How Much I Love You," she does not even try to say the title.  She tries to ask to read "Nutbrown Hare."  But it comes out like this: "Mommy, wead Bwown Haven?"  I love it.  Brown Haven.

- Rosie is the type to wake up as the little butterfly that she is, and immediately start socializing.  My 1-year-old, Piper, on the other hand...well.  She wakes up and, after her initial ear-piercing shrieks to let us know she's ready to be retrieved from her room...she goes silent.  Until after she's had several cups of juice and breakfast.  She will smile and be happy to see us...but only Daddy rates any squeals before breakfast.  The only word she will say before breakfast is "Uh-oh," and this is only employed if she drops her baby doll or her pacifier.  No words, no games, no giggles - until after breakfast.  A girl's gotta have some priorities.

- Note: Rosie and Piper are not their real names.  I've changed them for privacy's sake.  But I liked the idea of doing bird names for our kiddos on the blog, so Rosie and Piper are short for "Rosefinch" and "Sandpiper."  And they really fit the personalities surprisingly well.  ;)

In Which I Am Disorganized, Shop, Stress, and Laugh

So the sun came out and it's not a cloudy day after all. It's actually warm and glorious and spring came back again. I'm sure that's why the birds were singing so much – they knew winter was faking us out. Again.

It's actually been a rather disappointing winter, in that it's been entirely too warm even to light a fire on the long winter's nights. But the days are getting longer now and the weather is only getting warmer, so I'm giving up on winter and going ahead and getting in the spirit of springtime.

Of course, we could still have a blizzard in March. It wouldn't really be surprising, and definitely not unheard of. You just never know around here.

But as for my list of things-to-do. Well. We went shopping. And that is all we've done so far. The kitchen is a mess, and the kitchen table is absolutely covered with...stuff. I don't know where Stuff comes from, but it is always showing back up just when I think I'd conquered it. I have trouble believing the sheer amount of Stuff that ends up piled on the table.

All of you organized people out there...my hat is off to you. Except that I never wear hats. But really...I admire you. Immensely. When I get hit with Stuff, I can never seem to figure out what to do with it in just seconds, because there isn't a really satisfactory Place to put most of it. So I put it in piles that are as neat as possible. Because, really, if I file away coupons for free dishes at restaurants, I will never remember that I have them. Of course, when they get buried under new magazines, catalogs, and ads for Events that I want to Remember...well...they kind of get forgotten anyway. Until three weeks later when I get sick of the piles and go on a cleaning frenzy and discover – oh, yeah – I could have gotten two free dishes at the new Mexican restaurant. Too bad they expired yesterday.

That's life as a disorganized person who desperately wants to be organized, because I'm not good at being disorganized. It doesn't seem to inconvenience some people. It really flummoxes me. But my brain is surprisingly not wired when it comes to simple concepts like: where is the best place to put this flier about the new nature center that I want to remember to go visit soon, and what to do with journals that I'm wanting to remember to actually write in...because for me, if it's out of sight, it's out of mind.

Perhaps I should convert one entire wall into a giant bulletin board. That might do the trick. And it would be really, really ugly. But I still couldn't pin a journal to a pinboard. I would probably stick it in a basket, and of course we all know how that would turn out. I'd never see it again. At least, not until the basket overflowed with Things To Be Sorted and I had to clean it out again.

But, disorganization aside, we had a lovely time. In spite of the fact that, invariably, when I am in the middle of loading or unloading the two littles from their carseats, the cars parked on either side of me immediately begin to buzz with activity. Seriously. I came out of a store with my one little find – yes, I talked myself out of some over-priced Easter dresses for the girls and was feeling victorious – and began to load up my eldest. Immediately, the people belonging to the cars on either side of me showed up. The parking lot was not that busy. Just the two cars on either side of me. Yes. I think the odds are curious, too and was pretty sure I was flunking some kind of Stress Test. The Lord sends me a lot of those and I continually flunk them. When will I ever figure out to just calm down? Breathe, honey. It's okay. Really.

But there I was, panicking a bit inside as I realized that I was surrounded by people wanting to leave and who were probably not a bit happy to find me there holding up the works. The man on the left side just looked at me like, “You do realize that I am about to back this car out whether you are finished getting her in or not.” And I did, in fact, realize that, and was already clearing out of his way to go put my youngest in on the other side.

At which opportune moment the lady parked on that very side showed up. She was trying to be polite and waited quietly. This made me even more nervous so I just halfway buckled Baby and backed out of the way, telling her to go ahead.

“Oh, no,” she said very sweetly, “That is fine.”

It was nice and all, but I knew that I still had to finish buckling, tighten the straps (which never goes as quickly as it ought to) and unclip and reclip the pacifier holder. This is fine when no one is waiting on you, but it was stressing me out having to do it with someone standing there waiting for me to finish so they could get on with their Entire Day. Oh, and I never love having someone standing there staring at me while I'm bent over. It's just not the most dignified position to be caught in for extended periods of time.

I was very rattled by the whole thing when I was finally out of everyone's way. But then, of course, at our next store – wouldn't you know it? Right when I came out and started loading my baby up in her carseat, someone pulled up and decided that, of the 20 empty parking spaces surrounding us, they wanted That One. The one right next to me, where I stood trying to load my baby up.

So I frantically got out of the way again, this time to avoid having me or my babies run over by the person in question. I was angry. I probably showed it. But thankfully, since I'm shy, I didn't have enough nerve to say anything. In this case, this was a good thing. I usually mutter to myself when I'm upset, but I am learning that this is Not Okay. It's not okay whether anyone's listening or not, but it's especially Not Okay when you have children listening to you sharing your bad attitude with them. It's excellent accountability. Had I muttered, “That person is selfish and rude,” my 2-year-old would have shrieked, “That puhson SALFISH? WOOD??? Dat BAD lady!!!” And it would have been extremely awkward. I am learning a great deal about self control already, and that's a good thing. If only I could learn how to control my facial expressions a bit more. I'm pretty sure I looked like a thundercloud. I tried to hide my face so the offending woman would not see. It wouldn't have accomplished anything.

Anyway, those kinds of things stress me out, but it was otherwise a very nice shopping trip. I found a few springish things to wear. I am never the same size for more than a few weeks at a time, these days. I'll take it. It's for an excellent cause. And no, in case you're wondering, I'm not growing. I am still shrinking. ;)

I melted when I put on a very pretty cardigan with a very pretty skirt, and my 2-year-old looked at me in the mirror and froze, smiling. “Oooooooh,” she whispered. “Pretty Mommy.” I was so touched, even though the skirt actually looked absolutely dreadful on me. It was a beautiful skirt, and she was appreciating that. So I kept the cardigan and got rid of the skirt.

A few minutes later, I tried on a shirt that I was not quite sure about. Jokingly, I asked my big girl about it.

She crinkled up her nose and cocked her head to one side. “Ummmmm...” she had a very definite Now-How-Do-I-Put-This-Delicately look on her face. “Ummm...it's not very bad, Mommy.”

“What?” I squealed, trying not to laugh.

She looked sorrowfully at me, with eyes insisting that I-Cannot-Tell-A-Lie, and whispered sadly, “Umm...it not very bad, Mommy. I no like it.”

This from a two-year-old. I started howling with laughter and she looked extremely relieved that I was taking the bad news so well. I assured her that I didn't much like it either, and put it away. I love the honesty. I love that we're starting to have these little conversations. It is all so. Stinkin'. Sweet.

:)

What else I love:

Standing outside the shop looking at the $2 rack and watching my big girl out of the corner of my eye as she stomped up to a springish-clad dress form and shouted, “Whatcha doin' there, you boy?”

Me: Trying not to snort too loudly

She: “Come on, boy! Dat's a BAD thing ta do. You never not never not do dat AGAIN. Now. Dat's bettah. You ah such a clevah boy.”

She sighed deeply.

“Buzz Lightyear...” she still seemed to be addressing the dress form, her volume rising with each word. “You. Ah. A. TOY!!!!”

I'm lovin' it. Only a 2-year-old could pull quotes from Winnie-the-Pooh, Toy Story 2, and Veggie Tales, and weave it all into one surprisingly entertaining monologue.

So many gifts, my friends, so many gifts. If I'd stopped to count them while I was stressing about being parked around, perhaps I would have stressed less?

Beautiful afternoon. Blue skies, glorious warmth.

Dishes to wash. I'd better go.