So, I am so far from perfect-- although I hate to admit that, it's true folks. So I am posting this for those who either 1. Didn't send me their address 2. Got forgotten or 3. live locally. Here's the Barlow Christmas letter extravaganza/memoir/essay. Anyone who has already been bored by this can just read it again- because obviously you weren't in the right mood the first time you read it. I realized later that somehow I managed to write a really long Christmas letter without giving an update in jobs, home, school, etc. Oh well, maybe next year.
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Dear Friends, December 16, 2008
Where does the time go? Suddenly I find myself almost 30 years old with 3 kids and 8 years of marriage tucked under my belt (well, more accurately, hanging like a spare tire over my belt). Our home is filled the sounds of Mia (almost 4) singing “Over the river and through the woods,” loud thumps as Sam (almost 6) jumps like a ninja off the couch, and the sweet laughs of little Eli (9 months) as he absorbs everything—trying his best to join in. Jared comes home from work just in time to rile the kids up for bedtime, and Alyssa tries her hand at juggling.
This Christmas I am so grateful for my family. I wish I could capture each moment… the smells, the tastes, the touches, the smiles, the laughs, the cries, the sounds of my children…and put them each in a little bottle and store them away in a secret treasure chest. I thought for our Christmas letter this year I would try to freeze time by giving you a tour of our home as it appears this very moment.
I’ll start with our front door. Now, the front door might not seem like a very special place, but so many important things happen when that door opens and closes… It swings open happily when Daddy comes home, and closes quietly when he leaves in the wee hours of the morning while the rest of us still sleep. It whines as the children leave to school, and it slams when they return. It rings impatiently when friends want to come in to play and sighs when they leave. But most importantly, when we walk in the front door, we know we are entering the safest place in the world: home.
As you walk into the front room from outside you may think that it’s a pretty standard living room: a couple of couches and a TV. But if you look through the eyes of Sam and Mia’s you’ll discover its alter-egos: it’s in fact a zoo, a pet shop, a jungle, a dance studio, a movie theatre, a jungle gym, a rock monster cave and a snuggle spot. Here is where we read our goodnight stories, have family home evenings, and “veg” after a long day of school or work. On snowy or rainy days or nights we have blanket picnics and card game marathons. We live in our living room.
Attached to the living room by an open doorway is our dining room. Here sits a long table with six chairs. This table welcomes us for meals, invites us for art projects, and greets friends for dinner. On rare occasions it is ornamented with fresh flowers, but most days it sports our computer, a smattering unfinished projects and a pile of unsorted mail. In the corner sits a highchair covered in art work only a 9-month old can create with tasty edible morsels… the debris in and around that highchair seems never ending. On the wall ticks a huge clock. This clock does a very important job—it lets us know exactly how late we are at all times.
In the back of the house is our kitchen. This is Mom’s territory. The cupboards are organized in a way that only she can understand… thus Daddy’s excuse for almost never emptying the dishwasher or cooking a meal (but he’s an excellent sweeper and trash-taker-outer). The kitchen is the place where Mom makes gourmet meals about twice a year and American sausages (hotdogs) and pasta al formaggio (mac and cheese) on the other days. The fridge is our fine art museum. The gallery is refreshed or added to almost daily – and each piece of artwork is a masterpiece in Mom’s eyes.
Just off the kitchen is the mudroom with a door leading to the back yard—here coats are piled so thickly on the coat rack that you wonder if 20 people lived in this house, rather than 5. Shoes are scattered through the mudroom with care, in hopes that their owner soon will be there. Pick a pair to go on a backyard adventure – to perhaps encounter the pirates and princes and crocodiles that lurk there. While the shoes wait patiently – in various stages of drying out or muddiness – the shoe basket remains…empty.
Each night the children are tucked in bed surrounded by their treasures. In Sam’s bed you’ll find dinosaur books, a toy ship, a plastic crocodile, his childhood blankie, and his cherished stuffed animals. Mia surrounds herself on all sides with baby foxes, little kitties, and furry rabbits. She snuggles up under her princess blanket, with her silky-soft pink blankie tucked under her arm and her blonde hair spread across the pillow. Mia’s bedtime soundtrack is “Sound of Music” while Sam prefers Jack Johnson’s Curious George renditions. Each night a debate is held to determine whose turn it is to choose the bedtime music, though for as long as Mom and Dad can remember we have been alternating nights.
Little Eli has his own room. He’s a busy little guy who isn’t crawling yet, but magically manages to move from one spot to the next. He loves food way more than a friend, and shovels it in to his mouth like a pro. He watches you so closely that sometimes you can simply feel that he’s downloading information at 100 megabits per second. All this activity tuckers him out and often as soon as his head hits the bed he falls right to sleep. He has chosen a fuzzy blue blanket as his night-time pal. To him, this room means bedtime, so he whimpers every time we go in. Mom softly encourages him to go to sleep, but inside longs to hold his soft little body as long as she can before he’s not her baby anymore.
Mom and Dad’s room is usually a laundry graveyard, with IKEA sacks full of clothes that either need to be washed or wait to be folded. It’s also Mom’s refuge. On her bedside table you’ll find a stack of novels, the Book of Mormon, and a few candy wrappers. Her side of the bed has a little nest made in the down comforter—perfect for cat napping and hiding from kids. Dad’s side always has a stack of work papers, conference talks, and his highlighter. Sometimes he even makes time for “fun” reading (I find a bookmark in chapter 3 of Markets, Hedge Funds, and the Perils of Financial Innovation: A Demon of our Own Design…sounds like a page-turner to me). But Daddy has the same problem as Eli, once his head hits the pillow – he’s in dreamland.
At the top of our house you’ll find the attic. This is the kid’s refuge. The sloped walls make perfect angles for secret hide-outs. You’ll discover tiny masterpieces if you carefully examine the chalkboard on the wall…hieroglyphics depicting a little family, a witch on a broom, a Christmas tree, a crazy mummy. The attic is where the kid’s imaginations come to life with dress-ups and tea parties. Here is the training ground for winning grown-up battles such as sharing, obeying, and treating each other with kindness. The attic is the fountainhead from which all toys emanate...and somehow get scattered all over the rest of the house. The trek up 2 or 3 flights of stairs to put the toys back is long and arduous.
It is from this home that we send the very warmest and best wishes for a Merry Christmas, A Joyful New Year, and a 10,000 point rise in the Dow.
With love,
The Barlow Five
Jared (Jer-bear), Alyssa (New Mexican Chow Hound), Sam (Sammer), Mia (Angel fish) and Eli (Chubbers)
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Dear Friends, December 16, 2008
Where does the time go? Suddenly I find myself almost 30 years old with 3 kids and 8 years of marriage tucked under my belt (well, more accurately, hanging like a spare tire over my belt). Our home is filled the sounds of Mia (almost 4) singing “Over the river and through the woods,” loud thumps as Sam (almost 6) jumps like a ninja off the couch, and the sweet laughs of little Eli (9 months) as he absorbs everything—trying his best to join in. Jared comes home from work just in time to rile the kids up for bedtime, and Alyssa tries her hand at juggling.
This Christmas I am so grateful for my family. I wish I could capture each moment… the smells, the tastes, the touches, the smiles, the laughs, the cries, the sounds of my children…and put them each in a little bottle and store them away in a secret treasure chest. I thought for our Christmas letter this year I would try to freeze time by giving you a tour of our home as it appears this very moment.
I’ll start with our front door. Now, the front door might not seem like a very special place, but so many important things happen when that door opens and closes… It swings open happily when Daddy comes home, and closes quietly when he leaves in the wee hours of the morning while the rest of us still sleep. It whines as the children leave to school, and it slams when they return. It rings impatiently when friends want to come in to play and sighs when they leave. But most importantly, when we walk in the front door, we know we are entering the safest place in the world: home.
As you walk into the front room from outside you may think that it’s a pretty standard living room: a couple of couches and a TV. But if you look through the eyes of Sam and Mia’s you’ll discover its alter-egos: it’s in fact a zoo, a pet shop, a jungle, a dance studio, a movie theatre, a jungle gym, a rock monster cave and a snuggle spot. Here is where we read our goodnight stories, have family home evenings, and “veg” after a long day of school or work. On snowy or rainy days or nights we have blanket picnics and card game marathons. We live in our living room.
Attached to the living room by an open doorway is our dining room. Here sits a long table with six chairs. This table welcomes us for meals, invites us for art projects, and greets friends for dinner. On rare occasions it is ornamented with fresh flowers, but most days it sports our computer, a smattering unfinished projects and a pile of unsorted mail. In the corner sits a highchair covered in art work only a 9-month old can create with tasty edible morsels… the debris in and around that highchair seems never ending. On the wall ticks a huge clock. This clock does a very important job—it lets us know exactly how late we are at all times.
In the back of the house is our kitchen. This is Mom’s territory. The cupboards are organized in a way that only she can understand… thus Daddy’s excuse for almost never emptying the dishwasher or cooking a meal (but he’s an excellent sweeper and trash-taker-outer). The kitchen is the place where Mom makes gourmet meals about twice a year and American sausages (hotdogs) and pasta al formaggio (mac and cheese) on the other days. The fridge is our fine art museum. The gallery is refreshed or added to almost daily – and each piece of artwork is a masterpiece in Mom’s eyes.
Just off the kitchen is the mudroom with a door leading to the back yard—here coats are piled so thickly on the coat rack that you wonder if 20 people lived in this house, rather than 5. Shoes are scattered through the mudroom with care, in hopes that their owner soon will be there. Pick a pair to go on a backyard adventure – to perhaps encounter the pirates and princes and crocodiles that lurk there. While the shoes wait patiently – in various stages of drying out or muddiness – the shoe basket remains…empty.
Each night the children are tucked in bed surrounded by their treasures. In Sam’s bed you’ll find dinosaur books, a toy ship, a plastic crocodile, his childhood blankie, and his cherished stuffed animals. Mia surrounds herself on all sides with baby foxes, little kitties, and furry rabbits. She snuggles up under her princess blanket, with her silky-soft pink blankie tucked under her arm and her blonde hair spread across the pillow. Mia’s bedtime soundtrack is “Sound of Music” while Sam prefers Jack Johnson’s Curious George renditions. Each night a debate is held to determine whose turn it is to choose the bedtime music, though for as long as Mom and Dad can remember we have been alternating nights.
Little Eli has his own room. He’s a busy little guy who isn’t crawling yet, but magically manages to move from one spot to the next. He loves food way more than a friend, and shovels it in to his mouth like a pro. He watches you so closely that sometimes you can simply feel that he’s downloading information at 100 megabits per second. All this activity tuckers him out and often as soon as his head hits the bed he falls right to sleep. He has chosen a fuzzy blue blanket as his night-time pal. To him, this room means bedtime, so he whimpers every time we go in. Mom softly encourages him to go to sleep, but inside longs to hold his soft little body as long as she can before he’s not her baby anymore.
Mom and Dad’s room is usually a laundry graveyard, with IKEA sacks full of clothes that either need to be washed or wait to be folded. It’s also Mom’s refuge. On her bedside table you’ll find a stack of novels, the Book of Mormon, and a few candy wrappers. Her side of the bed has a little nest made in the down comforter—perfect for cat napping and hiding from kids. Dad’s side always has a stack of work papers, conference talks, and his highlighter. Sometimes he even makes time for “fun” reading (I find a bookmark in chapter 3 of Markets, Hedge Funds, and the Perils of Financial Innovation: A Demon of our Own Design…sounds like a page-turner to me). But Daddy has the same problem as Eli, once his head hits the pillow – he’s in dreamland.
At the top of our house you’ll find the attic. This is the kid’s refuge. The sloped walls make perfect angles for secret hide-outs. You’ll discover tiny masterpieces if you carefully examine the chalkboard on the wall…hieroglyphics depicting a little family, a witch on a broom, a Christmas tree, a crazy mummy. The attic is where the kid’s imaginations come to life with dress-ups and tea parties. Here is the training ground for winning grown-up battles such as sharing, obeying, and treating each other with kindness. The attic is the fountainhead from which all toys emanate...and somehow get scattered all over the rest of the house. The trek up 2 or 3 flights of stairs to put the toys back is long and arduous.
It is from this home that we send the very warmest and best wishes for a Merry Christmas, A Joyful New Year, and a 10,000 point rise in the Dow.
With love,
The Barlow Five
Jared (Jer-bear), Alyssa (New Mexican Chow Hound), Sam (Sammer), Mia (Angel fish) and Eli (Chubbers)
6 comments:
You are so dang creative! I loved reading your letter, I was very intrigued!
Hope you had a great holiday!
Sill love it. I could picture everything your wrote about.
Your letter was the best.
Yay! That was super cute. Haven't I told you that you need to write a book? Thanks for hanging up on me this morning. :) j/k Kiss the kiddos.
I have no babies....but I must admit, I choked up a bit with the 'until he is not my baby anymore' line. So sweet!
(And as a sidenote, my sister took pictures of how the kitchen cabinets should look and taped them inside each door. Pretty much took care of the 'I don't know where anything goes!' problem.)
Jillian,
You are brilliant. Thanks for the tip. Those hubbies. I just recently found out that they have a little husband secret... do it bad the first time and the wife never asks you to do it again. Like... get low sodium tomato soup instead of regular, get bleach on her favorite shirt "by accident" while doing laundry...
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