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Traditions are made to be broken, started, altered and passed down. And this Christmas was definitely hit on all of those this year. And all of my best plans for Christmas Eve, failed quickly, but taught me a really valuable life lesson.

Growing up, Christmas Eve was my favorite day of the year. It represented a time of anticipation and innocence. Normally, I give my staff at work the day off and I man the office, but this year, I took the day off and planned on grabbing wings and a cold beverage, grabbing a few last minute things for my wife’s stocking and as a family, going to church and then getting baking cookies and putting out luminaries and watching It’s A Wonderful Life. Each of these things, minus going for wings and beer, were things that I did as a kid growing up and something that have and still mean the most to me about Christmas. But this year, things didn’t really work out like I had expected or even thought that it would.

On Christmas Eve eve, my wife was at work and called to say that she was going to the local urgent care and that she was pretty sure that she had strep throat. Great! Two years in a row of her being sick, last year was pink eye. BUT, that wasn’t the real concern, the real concern was the boys and it was quickly appearing that they too were sick with strep and that this was becoming a tradition of them being sick at Christmas.

So, my plans for Christmas Eve went from going out and having some downtime, to taking the boys to the urgent care center, only to have it confirmed that they too had strep throat. The problem, Boy B HATES medicine and oh right, he didn’t just have strep, he also had Scarlet Fever. After getting home and trying for a few hours to get medicine into Boy B, it was quickly apparent that he wasn’t going to take it. After a quick call with a friend of mine that is a Doctor, he advised us to take him to the ER and that Scarlet Fever wasn’t something to mess around with.

So, there goes my lunch of wings and a beer, shopping, and now Christmas Eve service, because my wife and son headed straight to the ER for our first ever visit. The medical staff was awesome! They not only took care of him immediately, got a dose of medicine, they were able to break his fever. And not only did they take care of him, the ER Doctor, took his hand and lead him down the hall to a toy closet, were he could pick out any toy that he wanted! How awesome is that (this will be a future blog story about the toy closet)! So what toy did he pick out? A Star Wars Storm Trooper helmet, not because he loves Star Wars, but because his brother does and he knew that his brother would want to help him color it.

RELIEF! He was on the mends.  Peace and a deep sigh of relief for a moment.

After a few hours in the ER, my wife and son arrive back home and within 30 minutes of being back he ate more in just those few minutes than he had in the previous 24 hours. He was back to being a little boy, that was smiling and excited at the arrival of Santa coming in a few hours. So, in a few hours before their bed, we still had time to bake and decorate cookies, we watched the Charlie Brown and then we put out cookies and Reindeer food. And as we were putting out the food for the reindeer, I remembered the luminaries.

Luminaries for me growing up, were the start of Christmas. I didn’t always have the best Christmas mornings, often time there was uncertainty if this was my families last Christmas together or if there was going to be a lot of arguing? But luminaries represented calm and peace in a sometimes difficult time in my life. And as I got the luminaries together to put out in front of the house, I had the boys to come over and I told them how this was one of the many traditions that I wanted to pass down to them and they really seemed to love the way that the luminaries lite up the walk way out front as a way to give Santa a landing strip for their house.

After the boys settled down for the night and Santa had come and gone, I realized that I was still able to keep some of my traditions and even pass some down to the boys. I was able to run out for a few minutes and get candy for my wife’s stocking and found her a few other little gifts. I was able to watch our Christmas Eve church service online (Love technology and that our church really leverages it and a cool way to stream church services) and I was able to have a glass of wine while wrapping gifts and watching It’s A Wonderful Life. But most importantly, my kids were feeling better and they got to for the first time, help me put out luminaries and got to see their expressions as I talked about the candles and how peaceful it was before Santa came.

Traditions are important. Traditions are made to be broken, expanded upon, altered, started and most importantly, passed down.  I most certainly hope that the tradition of being sick at Christmas is broken, but I really look forward to seeing how next years traditions grow and stick with the boys.

 

 

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It always seems to happen when you least expect it, because families are not able to really plan for a rainy day fund. And lord knows, if they have to replace a car, it makes it even harder.
Well, we are now in that situation. My wife’s SUV is done. The transmission is slipping and the cost to replace the transmission doesn’t warrant putting the money back into it, as the return wouldn’t pay off.
So, we are bitting the bullet and have been looking at, lord help me, mini vans.

I have to state for the record that I’m an SUV guy. I like them, the way that they drive, the storage, etc. I realize that a mini van makes sense with kids, but let’s be honest, most guys would chose an SUV any day over a mini van. I’ve spent a lot of time this week emailing car salesmen about a new car and talking pricing, mileage, safety, etc.  And I think that I’ve narrowed the search down to two mini vans.  They are literally the same, except some features and one has 19,000 more miles than the other. The price is also obviously higher for the lower mileage mini van too. But, I learning that I have to not have much say in the car, other than how much we can spend.

And at the end of the day, it is my wife’s mini van, and she will be the one driving it the most and really the most important thing is that she and the boys are safe.

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Today marked one of the busiest shopping days of the year, Black Friday. And then Monday is Cyber Monday and at some time soon there is the Shop Small, which encourages shoppers to shop local.

Shopping has gotten out of hand. It use to be that Black Friday started in the morning, usually around 9 or 10am for stores to open. Now, we have stores opening up at 10pm on Thanksgiving night, just to get the leg up on other stores that are opening at Midnight. Here is an idea, let’s put the focus back on the family and not on shopping.

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In a day and time where families are trying to really stretch a dollar, coupons are becoming more and more important.  That being said, I ran across this great website Hip2Save a while back and have been able to really save a lot of money since using it.   They have done a great job aggregating coupons from multiple major stores and presenting them to their audience. You can grab the coupons from Hip2Save both on their site, their Facebook page, and I am pulling some of their coupons and placed them on my site.

So where do you find your coupons?  And more importantly, how much are you saving each week?

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I love the looks that I get when walking through the grocery store with the boys. What people don’t realize is that yes, I  am fully capable of taking both of the boys shopping at the grocery store at the same time. Is it hard, sure. I am limited in what I can buy. But usually I can get the essentials.

Normally, I put the boys in their stroller that puts the boys in a front and real position. Then I grab 2 of the hand carts and hook them to the gigantic Mommy Hook that my wife purchased from Bed, Bath and Beyond.  Normally, I am able to get everything that I need in a grocery trip and fill both baskets and in and out in 30 minutes. Is it hard shopping with both boys, sure, but what are my options?

Just remember that when you see Dad’s out shopping with their kids, they are doing the best that they can.

 

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