My children think I have bizarre ideas. They can’t understand why I prune plants in the garden. We go through that every year.  They accuse me of cutting back strangling branches that are no longer producing blooms and fruit.  Then they thought I was overdoing Awanas by encouraging goal setting to complete the book by the end of the year. A phone call from the director one year to motivate me to get dd to finish her first T&T book, prompted me to ask her if she had talked to my dd about any of this? No, she thought she’d have me communicate all this. I said I’ve been trying to tell dd about these goals all along but she thinks I’m nuts. So the director talked to her herself, and dd got it! She’s since completed every book on time. So has ds.  =)

The most recent issue was Christmas cards. When they first started arriving in the mail, the dc asked me why was I opening them. "To read them," I replied. Well, they didn’t get it but thought Mom was a bit crazy again. Then boxes from my MIL arrived the other day. There were Christmas cards for each of us. I opened the one for my dh and I, dd opened hers, and ds put his under the Christmas tree. He was so proud. He was saving his for Christmas morning. He thought we were nuts to be opening ours so soon. I decided not to make a big deal out of it. After all, I didn’t think the Christmas Card police would be knocking on our door over this incident.

That evening when we shared our Christmas cards over the advent candles, my husband decided to make an issue of the card under the tree. DS tried to defend his position. They kept using their logic against each other. Finally, trying to smooth things over, I said to ds, "You know what? All over the country, people are receiving Christmas cards and opening them now. No one is saving them for Christmas. " I think ds’s jaw hit the floor. "Really?" he asked with big eyes. "Of course, that’s the point of the card, to send a greeting to enjoy today." Oh, well that made all the difference! He went and got his card and opened it up and read it to us.

Last night dh was telling us that he told his mom about this the other day and she said, "Oh I meant for those cards to be opened up." Well this brought on another friendly debate over when to open Christmas cards. So this time I said, "In our country, to open Christmas cards when they arrive is very traditional. Now that doesn’t mean you can’t put them under the tree and save them for Christmas morning. After all the present police won’t come after you. In fact, if you really wanted to, you could open your presents today and save the cards for under the tree….but that would be very non-traditional." DS just gave me a funny look. He thought I was exaggerating a bit.