Holiday Complements

Do you have any left-over candy canes from your Christmas celebrations?
Valentine's Day is coming, one month from today.
Here's a fun way to create a sweet treat with those candy canes as you get ready to celebrate Valentine's Day: just use a little glue to join two (wrapped) candy canes in a heart shape, or use a little stiff, sugary frosting to “glue” unwrapped candy canes. Let them dry to hold the shape, then share them with someone you love who has a sweet tooth.

Three Ways to Welcome . . .

Kathleen Norris writes about the importance of welcoming children into the family of faith.
How can we do that?
Here are three suggestions:
* Open your heart to the children around you. Let them see your pleasure in their company. Show your interest in what they are thinking and doing. Share your life with them by letting them join in your activities. Make room for them in your everyday life.
* Let them catch you doing good, and doing well. When you are helping someone else in Christ's name, invite the children around you to help. Find some way for them to contribute in a meaningful way. Include them, and let them see the care you take to do things well, to help with excellence.
* Make sure they know you are paying attention to how they are doing. Be sensitive to their wants and needs. Listen to their stories. Pray for their projects and efforts to do what is right and good.
Be present in the moment when you are with them.
Welcoming children into the family of faith is a natural extension of Jesus's taking the little children around Himself onto His lap.

Wise Investment

Encouragement is a kind of investment in your family, whether you're encouraging your own child or your grandchildren. The Art of Encouragement on the Hearts at Home website talks about how you can encourage family members, and why it's so important.

Grandparents as Investors

A grandparent is an investor.
We invest in the lives of our children and grandchildren, hoping for a return we may not even live to see, although there are more immediate rewards.
Like any good investor, we need to study what we're investing in.
What are the strengths? Where are the weaknesses? How is management doing? How can we maximize the effect of our investment?
The difference, of course, is that we're investing something more than mere money. We're investing time, thought, and other kinds of resources in the lives of these ones we love. Bottom line -- we're really investing our own selves.
How are your investments looking?

One Fun Way to Stay in Touch

Here's a fun way to lift your family's spirits in January: send them your favorite comic strip.
You can actually cut it out and mail it to a child or grandchild, or send them a comic (or a link to a comic strip you've enjoyed) via e-mail. (You can google the specific comic you're looking for, or just google “comics” and see what you can find. Or check out a site like King Features.)
If someone in your family is interested in politics, share an editorial cartoon.
It's a fun way to stay in touch with the people you love.

Cartoons and a Merry Heart

When the morning newspaper comes, I like to read the comics first.
Why is it so hard to admit that?
On Sundays, it's Prince Valiant, Crankshaft, and Blondie. For Better or Worse, I want to know what is happening to Beetle Bailey and the Wizard of Id. Zits, Baby Blues, Cathy, Charlie Brown. I invite them all into my morning, first thing, along with Doonsbury and Frank and Ernest.
They all get first billing, over the front page, over Home and Gardens, over the book section and the editorials -- because they make me laugh, and sigh, and smile, and because those things help get the day started right.
Sometimes I clip a particularly great cartoon and tape it to the cabinet or closet door, where it keeps on making me smile. Or I fix it to the refrigerator door with a magnet, or put it in an album I pull out sometimes when I'm feeling discouraged. Cartoons make me laugh, especially the ones I've clipped myself.
Why do we take ourselves so seriously sometimes? “A merry heart doeth good, like medicine,” says the Proverb, and Jesus was known to slyly insinuate humor into some of his comments, even if the Pharisees didn't get it.
Come to think of it, maybe that's where Pharisee-ism begins -- with an inability to smile, to take ourselves and our lives lightly.
Go ahead -- clip a cartoon and start your own gallery. Smile a little. Laugh a lot.
Keep your heart merry, for Christ's sake.

Start the Year with a Laugh . . .

There's nothing like a good laugh to start out the new year:

When I stopped the school bus to pick up Shannon for kindergarten, I noticed an older woman waving at the window as she came down the sidewalk. "Is that your grandma?" I asked.
"Yes," Shannon said. "She's come to visit for Christmas."
"That's wonderful," I said. "Where does she live?"
"At the airport," Shannon replied. "Whenever we want her, we just go out there and get her."

Three Resolutions for 2009

The last day of 2008 -- are you making New Year's resolutions?
Here are three resolutions you might want to consider:
* Resolve to stay in touch. Use snail mail for letters and post-cards, e-mail, Skype phone calls, a family blog -- just promise yourself you'll contact your children and grandchildren regularly to show your interest in them and express your love for them.
* Resolve to give them the gift of your own self. Share your family stories with them. Copy and pass on those family photographs tucked away in an album or drawer. Get those old family films transferred to a DVD and give a copy to your family. Be sure to add an explanation of what the stories and photographs are about and why they matter to you.
* Resolve to grow in understanding of how your children and grandchildren perceive the world. Listen as much as you talk. Learn more about how things are changing. Stay in touch with what's happening, and ask them about it.
Resolve to keep growing!

Making a List, Checking it Twice . . .

What's on your Christmas list this year? Have you thought yet about what you really want?
Making a List on the Hearts at Home website has some suggestions for things you might want to consider!

Crazy at Christmas?

Has Christmas frenzy hit your family?
As a grandma, I remember all too well what it was like to have a houseful of excited children during the Christmas season -- they would get more and more wound up as my husband and I would get more and more tired.
Now I watch as those very children parent their own children, and wrestle with the same excitement and fatigue.
In Taming the Christmas Crazies on the Hearts at Home website, I've offered practical ideas for making the Christmas season a little more sane for everyone. Hope you'll check it out and find some new ways to enjoy the celebration!