Holiday Wrap Up, Part II: Holiday Pageants.

December brought with it the requisite programs from Sunday School and preschool, all full of wriggly, adorable kids all bright and shiny, and Christmas music sung with great enthusiasm.

Michaela had a small speaking part in the Sunday School pageant- no more dressing up as an angel or shepard for her- and did her usual stellar job.

Jenna sang with the kids choir at the pageant and really belted out her "Rum-a-pum-pums" from the Little Drummer Boy.  I mean, REALLY belted it out.

And then we had the Preschool Christmas program.

I was a little nervous about this one because I wasn't there... I left the morning of the program to go out to MA to be with my mom and dad for my dad's surgery.  I left lots of instructions about his outfit, shoes, alternate outfits, alternate shoes, don't force him to wear a jacket (Alec hates coats of any kind), etc, etc, etc.  Turns out Dan is the Sensory Boy Whisperer and not only got him into his Christmas outfit, he even got Alec to wear his new black Christmas shoes.  Victory for Daddy!

All the three year olds wear "singing crowns" which is fine gold garland wrapped around their heads and only serves to make each and every child look even more like a literal angel and moves most parents to tears.  Having watched Michaela and Jenna both enjoy wearing their singing crowns, and having seen Alec's shoulders shoot up any time anything foreign touches a hair on his head, I was fully prepared to not see the singing crown adorn Alec's head.

So imagine my surprise when our Pastor, who was kind enough to skype the Christmas program to my parents' iPad in the hospital room so I could be part of it, brings the image of the kids up onscreen and there is my little boy, properly dressed, standing in front of the church, AND WEARING HIS SINGING CROWN.  This may not seem like a big deal to most, but this was a true victory in my eyes.  I was so proud of him, I almost cried.  Even his teacher was surprised and happy for this development.

I was proud of all my munchkins this Christmas season!

Holiday Wrap Up, Part I: Thanksgiving.

We kicked off Thanksgiving celebrations with the annual Parent Snack at Alec's preschool.  The kids create the invitations and all the parents show up and share a snack with the kids (on the menu: popcorn, goldfish crackers, applesauce, and apple juice) and are gleefully entertained by their perfectly adorable children wielding sticks.  Rhythm sticks, of course, which, I was very seriously told by Alec, "are not for hitting our friendth."  The kids also can chose to wear their Indian headress if they so choose.  Alec, of course, chose to not wear his.  But he killed it on those sticks... on the beat and really into the performance.  He never ceases to amaze me how he can be so particular about some things but can suck it up and really come through when he knows he's supposed to.

 Love the tongue sticking out with concentration.  His dad does the exact same thing.

 Alec did his headdress on while eating the snack so I was able to grab this picture of him.  I love that kid.

Next in the celebrations was our Thanksgiving Baking Day.  Michaela and Jenna each had a friend over to "help" (definition: hover around until it's time to eat frosting) and we made sugar cookies and cupcakes.

 The girls are really all so sweet that it was fun to spend time with them and watch them decorate the goodies.  Here are Jenna, Nata-lee, Isabel, and Michaela.

 Some of our finished product (can you see the cookie that's been taste-tested?)

Then it was on to the real Big Day: Thanksgiving.  My favorite holiday.

 The kids and I devoured our traditional cinnamon rolls, served on our new Thanksgiving plates. (Mommy does love a theme.)  We drank our hot chocolate and watched the Macy's Parade.

 But not Daddy.  Dan was running his first ever 5K race that morning, the Delmar Turkey Trot.  The weather was cool but fair and he was more than ready to run.  He had a goal of finishing in under 30 minutes... and achieved it!!  We were wicked proud of him.
I was planning on walking it but my plans got seriously sidelined when I told the girls our change of plans for Thanksgiving morning and they both freaked out.  I guess carefully cultivating a Family Tradition for 11 years and then changing it isn't such a hot idea.
A few days before Thanksgiving I told the girls that I was changing my plans and would be staying home in the morning after all.
Michaela's response: "Oh, that's too bad... you should have just told us to suck it up, Mom.  We would have been fine."
Jenna's response: "Good."

We were treated to a visit from my dad on Thanksgiving morning while we were enjoying our cinnamon rolls, and he read to Michaela a beautiful passage called  A Desolate Wilderness, which is excerpted from the journals of the actual real Pilgrims as they describe the difficulties of leaving all that was familiar and comfortable to set off for the New World, and forging a brand new life there out of essentially nothing.  A beautiful lesson of sacrifice, courage, and standing up for your true beliefs.  He reads it every year on Thanksgiving and it is always so moving.

Then we moved onto gifts... the kids each get a little present on Thanksgiving to help kick off the holiday season.  Plus I love to buy them presents.  Jenna got a new Rapunzel ornament and Michaela and Alec both got new DVDs.

After a bit we got dressed and headed over to my parents' for the day.  It was quiet and special and relaxing and wonderful.  We played games, colored tablecloths, watched football, ate tons of food, and generally spent lovely time together.  My mom put together a wonderful traditional feast that we all enjoyed.

A picture-perfect day.

The next morning my mom and I did some shopping and hit awesome sales, and then we put up one of our Christmas trees in the afternoon.  We bought a new taller tree for the family room and moved our old tree into the living room so you can see it from the street.  No real-tree-falling-over fiascos this year!  Here's our decorated living room tree:

And here's my favorite picture of all from Thanksgiving: my three greatest blessings!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Deep Thoughts on the Last Two Months.

I had planned to dedicate the next few posts to Thanksgiving, Christmas and my pretty girls all dressed up and a FANTASTIC picture of what the Aftermath of A 21st Century American Christmas Looks Like (I bought and wrapped each gift and even I was shocked), but it has been weighing on my heart to write about what I feel I have learned as I and my family have journeyed through the last few months.

I can only take that to mean that someone, somewhere needs to hear what I have to say and God wants to use me to make that happen.

And I say that because clearly that is exactly what happened to me.

I was praying and praying and praying that my dad's cancer would be fixed, that I could fix it (Oh, you didn't know that I can cure cancer? Sure I can, if I just pray hard enough and will it to happen.  Yeah. Right.), that I could battle it out for him and I, that somehow my first-born sense of responsibility and love combined with truly incredible human hubris could somehow impact this terrible arc we were on. And I was struggling, struggling and struggling some more with God, seeking Him, looking for guidance, for peace, for a sense of purpose in this journey.

I got to a point where I didn't even know what to pray for anymore.  Do I ask for God's will to be done? What if God's will is that he dies on the operating table? Am I complicit in his leaving us if I have prayed that prayer? But what if I am more pointed in what I ask for? What if I say, God, I want you to heal him and make him all better, and that's not what God has in store?  Am I am "bad" Christian?  Could I deal with the disappointment of God not giving me what I asked for?  I know what I am SUPPOSED to pray- Thy will be done- but I wasn't sure that God's will was what I wanted, and I was so balled up and trying to be in control of a completely out of control situation that was so clearly above my head, I was just like a fish out of water, flopping around and gasping for air. 

Help me.

So I went to church, I went to Bible Study on Sunday mornings, I went to my regular Bible Study on Wednesdays and looked for relief.  The other women in my Bible Study are wonderful, kind, compassionate and empathetic women who have walked this entire journey with me.  After class in the week before my parents left for MA, the leader (who is a towering Christian woman in every sense) took me aside, looked directly at me, and said these profound words to me: "Cheryl, you cannot fix this. You have to just throw it all at Jesus' feet and tell Him you are FURIOUS at Him for letting this happen. Because He already knows." And she gave me a huge hug.

That was the shift for me.  That was the moment when I was able to stop asking for God to help me to fix it and I really put it all on Him.  I prayed to Him and told Him, Well, God, I am furious at you.  I want you to make this better for my dad.  And you are the only one who can do it. I tried and I couldn't, so I am throwing it all on you.  Fix him, Lord, and help him get better.  And I prayed it with such a horrible smart-alecky attitude that I'm pretty sure I heard God roll His eyes at me and smile at my barely-veiled anger.

I kept praying that prayer, each time with less anger and more softness and supplication, and do you know what happened? The anger ebbed.  The peace began to fill my heart.  The pressure I had placed on myself to fix an unfixable situation subsided.  I felt God around me.  And around my family.

Even when my girls cried to me, usually at bedtime, and told me how worried they were about this monster of a surgery we were facing, I was equipped to tell them the exact same thing.  I told them to pray to God that He be with us and PopPop.  I told them to throw it at Jesus's feet and let Him take care of it.  I told them to ask for peace and to soothe their hearts.

Help me.

That was all God wanted to hear from me.  Those two simple words that I was too stubborn, too proud, too angry, too scared and too hurt to say.  And once I said them, all that fell away and I was back in God's arms, being comforted and held.

Seeing this situation now with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, I am amazed at how God has carved a path for my father to get well.  He sent us to this amazing doctor, He blessed her hands during the surgery, He has kept him free of complications so common to others who have gone on this journey before him. 

And after living through this crisis, this other-worldly experience of being plucked out of my comfortable, safe and stable everyday life and plunged into another, I can tell you, my parents, my family, my children, my friends, my Pastor, my church, and anyone who will listen to me that I am beyond certain of these two things:

God is with us. Immanuel.

And all He really wants, more than anything else, is for us to seek Him out and talk to Him and lean on Him. And ask for His help.

All the other stuff is just additional layers.  All the study, the praise, the worship, the liturgy, the Church, the history, the piousness, the conflict, and the structure- all of that can be stripped away and this truth remains: God is with us and He wants to be in a relationship with us. 

He wants to comfort us and love us.

I had an amazing dream about a week after I got home and started processing all that had happened.  In my dream, I was staring at a beautiful castle, and every so often, in a shimmering radiance, more layers of the castle would appear and then disappear.  I had the sense in the dream that this castle was something someone had told me about, but I had resisted, but here it was and I was seeing it with my own eyes.  It was the most beautiful castle I have ever seen.  Along came an older man, who looked like a kindly old professor, and he smiled at me and took my hand.  I had an overwhelming sense of warmth, love and safety with him that I can still feel.  He had been trying to convince me of something, and seeing the shimmering castle was the proof I needed to go with him. So I did and it felt wonderful. And then I woke up.

You can choose to think that having that dream was just my brain firing electrical currents while I slept.  You can choose to say it was random and our dreams don't mean anything anyway.  And that's fine. 

But I know what that dream was about and I know what God was telling me.

Immanuel.

Happy New Year!

(A few days late.)

I am not much of a resolution girl, but I do love me some goals, so I always like to set a few targets to reach for the New Year.  But first, I like to look back and see what was accomplished in the year previous.  This was made into a game we played at the dinner table on New Year's Eve where we made up the 2012 Libutti Family Year in Review Trivia Challenge and asked the kids to recall some big and some small things that happened over the year (Name the address of our vacation house on Cape Cod.  What National Park did we go to and see a reenactment of the Revolutionary War?).

So here are my biggest accomplishments of 2012:
1.  I was part of a miracle and saw God working through me as clearly as if He had been standing right next to me. 
2.  I worked really hard with Alec and his therapists to help him get better.  And he did.
3.  I lost about 20 pounds.
4.  I rode my bike again for the first time in three years.
5.  I went kayaking for the first time.
6.  Our family enjoyed a week long vacation to Cape Cod.
7.  We did a few really satisfying home improvement projects.
8.  I helped Michaela successfully transition to Middle School.
9.  I helped Alec successfully transition to preschool.
10.  I dedicated another year of my life to raising my children to be loving, kind, and well-adjusted human beings.

And here are some goals for 2013:
1. Lose another 20 pounds.
2. Finish at least THREE of the DOZENS of projects I have bought supplies for and have great desire to do but have not followed through on.
3.  Clean out our basement.
4.  Enjoy another Cape Cod vacation.
5.  Be the best mom I can be to my three greatest blessings: Michaela, Jenna and Alec.
6.  Pay more attention to my blog.
7.  Take more yoga classes.
8.  Reduce the amount of sugar coming into our house, being baked with in our house, and being consumed by every member of our household.
9.  Reorganize and redecorate our home office.
10. Hike at least one of the Adirondack High Peaks, and start our family on the road to hiking all 46.

Happy New Year, and here's to fresh starts!!

Coming Up for Air.

I apologize, dear blog and dear readers, for my utter lack of attention to you... December was a bit of a blur and things are finally, one by one, settling down into their correct places and now I can actually think and process. And breathe.  When I'm not coughing.

So here's the short version: we get the name of a surgeon for my dad, an appointment is scheduled, a surgery date is set, Christmas preparations go into overdrive, we celebrate Christmas in early December with my parents, they leave for MA, my brother flew in from Chicago, we drove out to MA, my dad had his surgery, Brian leaves, I leave, I come home to a husband who has just contracted the flu, Christmas baking ensues, wrapping is done at a breakneck pace, last minute gifts are bought, I develop a horrific chest cold and cough, Christmas Eve arrives, hair and makeup and clothes are styled, pictures are taken, hubby is still down for the count, Christmas Morning!!  SANTA comes! My cough gets worse, trips to see my parents are delayed, my dad is discharged from the hospital but can't leave MA yet, Dan and I lie on the couch and try not to breathe on each other, New Year's Eve finds us home asleep in our jammies, I sound like I am coughing up at least a few lungs, maybe more, Dan and I take naps to try to recoup, the kids go back to school, my dad has an awesome followup appointment with the surgeon and gets the green light to come home, I start to feel a smidgen better, and today my mom and dad returned home.

Phew.

Intermingled with all of that is lots of pretty pictures of my dolled up babies and lots of insights I gained about myself, prayer, community of believers, what God wants from us, and miracles.

Lots of posts to follow. 
Stay tuned.