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February 21, 2018 2 Comments

What Even Is Entertaining?

When my husband and I watch shows like Fixer Upper and House Hunters, we are always struck by the number of times we hear, “Oh! This would be great for entertaining!” I don’t know if it’s just a certain type of super extroverted personality that gets cast for television shows or if we are just seriously out of the norm, but entertaining others is not a regular function of my house. Sure, we have people over every now and again. But “entertaining” is definitely not tops on our list of activities. Maybe that’s actually because my housekeeping skills can be categorized as “disastrous.” But they’d stay that way even if I did have a sweet island in my kitchen perfect for chatting over finger foods while the guys grilled steaks on our stellar deck. (Complete with an outdoor kitchen of course). And that last sentence was a little bit sexist, but also true.

However, I do get the allure of entertaining. I love the sounds of the whole family filling the house. I love spending time with our families and friends, and it always leaves me with a sense of satisfaction knowing people left my house after a good time. It’s always like 100 degrees in my house after a group of visitors leaves, but I truly do enjoy it. Maybe there’s lots of people who are better homemakers than I, or those who are better than me at actually planning and scheduling things, or are just more social. Maybe they truly do entertain frequently, but I don’t feel like I know any of those people. Are y’all out there hosting get-togethers that you don’t even post on Facebook?!

The truth is, I wish I hosted friends and family more often, but I truly “entertain” only four times per year. I have three kids, so 75% of those gatherings are birthday parties. The one other time I fill my home with people is for Springbreaksgiving. My made-up, totally unnecessary, definitely not mandatory, only actually important to me holiday. (In my head right now I’m legit singing “It’s the most wonderful time of the year…” I don’t think that’s what that song’s about!)

The History of Springbreaksgiving

It all started my last year living away at college. My roommate and I decided to host a Thanksgiving meal for our friends before everyone left for actual Thanksgiving break, and I loved it. I loved cooking for everyone, I loved having everyone in our apartment, I loved seeing the empty plates stacked around, and I loved that we were the hostesses of a good day. The only problem (and you may be aware of this if you have friends who celebrate Friendsgiving) is that once you have a Thanksgiving meal, the anticipation of all that delicious food is gone. The food is still awesome even if you eat it back to back to back, but the sheer excitement of tasting those foods we save for the holidays only lasts until the first gathering. And multiple gatherings close together gets exhausting.

I loooooove Thanksgiving food. I wanted to host Thanksgiving. But my husband and I both have family traditions, and those shoes were filled on both sides. So, one year when turkeys were on sale, I bought one and froze it to use later. I ended up hosting a Thanksgiving meal during Spring Break. Springbreaksgiving was born. We have quite a few teachers in the family, so Spring Break is a good time to get everyone together. It’s several months removed from the holidays and not in the middle of summer when travel and activity schedules get crazy. So it’s generally a time where people can make room for an afternoon together. The official celebration occurs on the Thursday of Spring Break week – which has caused issue in the past as different schools try to get cute with what week they are off!

The Big Event

Our Springbreaksgiving menu is basically the same as my family’s Thanksgiving menu, but we try some fun things that are “frowned upon” at the real Thanksgiving. Like instead of pumpkin pie, we can test out a pumpkin pie cheesecake. (I asked once to bring this to Thanksgiving and was shot. down.) Or instead of candied yams we can have the copycat Ruth’s Chris sweet potatoes – if you haven’t tried these, try them! Though now we make BOTH sweet potato dishes as we now have lovers of both types. I can’t bear to disappoint my husband. Candied yams are seriously like the only thing he truly enjoys about Thanksgiving food. I get the joy of having my favorite meal of the year twice, and March really is pretty far from November, so it doesn’t feel like we just ate this stuff.

I never really know who will be at Springbreaksgiving, but I always invite our families first. We have a relatively large family, so if they all come it’s quite a crowd and I don’t think I could accommodate any extra folks. If it looks like several of our family members are busy or out of town, I then invite a few friends or neighbors to join the party! I can’t really describe the looks I get when I invite an outsider to come. It’s kind of a progression from confusion to acceptance to excitement. But I always like it when we get to let somebody else in on our weird little holiday. Part of me hopes they’ll think of it later and want to host their own. A big part of me hopes if anyone reads this that you’ll want to host your own. Or come to mine … maybe I need to have one in the summer for neighbors and friends too!

The Future of Springbreaksgiving

My absolute favorite part about this holiday is that my kids think it is like a real actual thing that people do. My oldest son was born just after the 2nd celebration, so it’s been going on for their whole lives. I will keep hosting this holiday as long as I can forsee, and I hope the tradition sticks with my kids and their families too. How fun is it to think that maybe decades down the road there could be several branches of my family tree getting together for a no longer made-up, totally unnecessary, definitely not mandatory, only actually important to me holiday?

Do you have any “extra” holidays or excuses for entertaining?

One Week Down, 467 To Go

August 29, 2017 1 Comment

My big boy started Kindergarten last week. And thus begins the next 13 years of school. Waking up early, staying up late, making friends, and doing homework. I had a mild breakdown after his meet the teacher night, but so far everything else has been pretty smooth. Except for him vomiting the morning that school started. That wasn’t exactly ‘smooth.’

Here are a few things we’ve learned about in our first week.

The Temptation of Free Breakfast. Our school district offers a free breakfast for any student who wants to eat it. Pretty awesome right? Except – there’s only 15 minutes between the school door opening and teachers picking up in the cafeteria. My super hungry growing boy wanted to do a pattern. “Eat at home, eat at school, eat at home, eat at school, and continue the pattern,” he said. But then it turned into eat at home and again at school, eat at home, eat at home and again at school, eat at school. Free Cinnamon Toast Crunch was just too much for his little body to resist. This would’ve been fine with me, until 3 days in he tells me that he walks himself to class. Which should be false since the teachers pick the students up in the morning. After some questioning, he is insistent that his teacher does not walk him to class, he just knows where his room is. Ugh. I emailed his teacher, and she confirmed that he’d been rollin’ on to class at about 7:55 (10 minutes after everyone else). We have since discontinued the “eat at school” parts of the pattern, and now it’s eat at home and get to class on time, eat at home and get to class on time.
Pete the Cat, the Optimist. Pete the Cat is pretty entertaining. And after Day 1, I was being taught a song about a happy cat who steps in all kinds of crud, seemingly ruining his shoes, but just takes it all in stride. It went something like this. “Pete stepped in a big pile of strawberries. Did he cry? Goodness no! He just sang his song, ‘I love my red shoes, I love my red shoes…'” I feel for poor Pete’s mama. She went out and bought some brand new white shoes, and Pete can’t help but step in every pile of everything he sees. She now has to decide whether to be mad about some shoes or be happy that her kid is so darn easy going. A true conundrum. I’m a little bit like Pete’s mom. As a back to school gift from my mom, we were gifted a brand new pair of Puma shoes. He loooooves them. On the first day, he got them caked in mud putting his bike on the bike rack. But did he cry? Goodness no… he just sang “I love my brown shoes, I love my brown shoes…”
No Amount of Tired Will Make My Kid Nap. It’s true. Both of my older boys stopped napping between 18 months and 2 years. Which is kind of the pits. I hear about 3 and 4 year olds who still take a 1-2 hour snooze every day, and I can’t help but wonder what is up with those kids. Are they running laps every morning? Staying up until midnight? I know it’s likely they’re just nappers, but I can’t help but think I should start some kind of training regimen to wear my boys out each morning (kidding.) In any case, my oldest has never been as tired as he is right now in his first week ever of starting at 6:45 am and going all day every day. I saw some first day pictures of kids passed out in the car on the 5 minute drive from school to home, and I thought maybe he would be so tired he’d need a nap one day. Nope. Not here! But it’s just as well, because lately I’ve been feeling like I am missing out on so much time with him that I’d actually be a little bummed if he came straight home and went to bed.
If I want to know what happens at school, I will need to go there. It’s official. I have an, “I don’t remember,” kid. The kind that you know has never forgotten anything in his life, but suddenly you want to know what went down in P.E. and all he can muster is, “Something with handshakes.” Um, what? I’ll never know what the first day of P.E. activity that was his absolute favorite part of the whole day was. I just have visions of kids running around shaking hands willy-nilly. It has gotten better, another day I got that they threw a scarf in the air and had to clap twice before they caught it. And still another day I learned that when on the track one whistle means walk and two means run. But then there’s been conversations like this one:
KP: Me and Emma were the 1st ones to move up on the (behavior) chart!
M: Oh buddy that’s awesome! What did you do to move up?
KP: I answered the question!
M: What question?
KP: Who was it?
M: Who was what?
KP: Me!
M: No, why did she ask who was it?
KP: Because she couldn’t remember who it was!
M: Who it was that did what?
(More confusion and “Who was it?” talk)
KP: She couldn’t remember who answered the question, and it was me, so I raised my hand!
M: What question did you answer?
KP: huh? I told her it was me!
M: No, what did you know that she couldn’t remember that you knew?
KP: Oh. I don’t know what I knew.
School Is HARD. On everyone. Mom, dad, brothers… nobody is immune. I kept telling my son this summer how much his life was about to change forever. I knew he’d have a big adjustment coming – getting up early, being away from the house all day for the first time, homework, and being on his best behavior and alert all day. I did not think about the adjustments we’d all be enduring. My 3 and 5 year olds share a room, and this has meant that my 3 year old now wakes up at 6:45 or shortly after on most days. He’s also a no-napper, so he’s been a little (okay a lot) on the grumpy/needy/whiny side this week. He’s also lost his best playmate, which changes up my day considerably! The baby does still nap, but I will rejoice when I can figure out how not to have to wake him up each day for pickup. We’ve had a few days of 15 minute naps before it’s time to head out to get big brother.

Overall we’ve had a good first week, and are starting to see just how busy we’ll be this year between school, homework, soccer, and life. There’ve been a few emotional breakdowns (from a mix of kids and parents!) but we are getting it figured out. There haven’t been any notes home, and we are pretty sure our boy is telling the truth about winning a ‘super student’ award for his class this week! (I’ll know for sure when I see it in the newsletter.) It’s a relief to send a kid off to school and at least know they’re behaving like a respectable human while they’re there. How is your crew holding up after the first week?