A visit from St. Nicholas and other highlights from our week

With St. Nicholas Day, a Gotcha Day, and a birthday, this is always one of the busiest, most wonderful weeks for our family, so I have lots to share in 7 Quick Takes.

~1~

St. Nicholas filled our shoes again this year for St. Nicholas Day on Dec. 6. St. Nicholas Day always puts me in the Christmas mood. And I recognize that he might not bring Spam to others on his list, but he always delivers Spam here, along with canned salmon for Mom because I’m just not a Spam fan.

There was lots of chocolate too, and there were little stuffed tigers to set us up for the Year of the Tiger. After all, I might be caught without enough candles for the Advent wreath, my Christmas cards might never get mailed, and who knows what gifts have been purchased, but it’s never too soon to start preparing for Chinese New Year.

~2~

We celebrated the 12^th anniversary of the day we met our older son this week, and we let him choose dinner. He is so easygoing that he told me I could choose instead. Together, we settled on ordering Chinese, and I let him pick the menu. Then I pulled out the tablecloth we bought on our second adoption trip to China and set the table.

Advent and our first adoption journey are forever intertwined in my mind, this sense of journeying toward our child and the Child Jesus.

The child we traveled to meet 12 years ago is now 14, and he’s phenomenal. So far, parenting tweens and teens has been as amazing and rewarding as any other parenting stage for me—just different. Each stage is challenging and marvelous in its own way.

~3~

Speaking of time flying, we have a newly minted 12-year-old in the house today! Don’t ask me how that happened.

He might not have any of my genes, but he and I definitely have the same approach to birthdays. We believe they should be celebrated long and well. We couldn’t wait until today for him to open his gifts, so he opened everything on his birthday eve, including a surf fishing rod that John braved the Christmas shopping storm to pick up for him.

He’s one happy birthday boy. We are so blessed.

~4~

We are having a cookie contest at work next week. I’m really excited and yet have very little time to bake between now and then. But, of course, I will make time for cookie baking because it’s December, and I love a reason to bake, and cookies say Christmas season to me.

I’m having fun thinking of which cookies to bake and wondering how many dozens of each kind I can pull off before the deadline, which is Wednesday.

I’m also trying to decide whether I have the ability to bake cookies and not post photos of them to Instagram. This is a challenge since the cookies are supposed to be entered into the contest anonymously. Let’s see if I can pull it off.

~5~

How do we feel about white chocolate?

Around here, people treat it like something undigestible and eat all the other chocolates in the box.

I’ll eat it now and then because sometimes you just need a little something sweet and that’s what’s left, but it’s not my first choice.

~6~

One day this week, I met a friend and former colleague for lunch. She left for a new job not long ago, and I’ve been wondering how she is doing. Seeing her was absolutely wonderful, and our time together flew past.

When I arrived to meet my friend and pulled into a parking spot, I spotted a sign that said, “We shine when we have the courage to take the first step.”

It made me smile because it seemed just right for her at this moment—and maybe for all of us during this season of Advent as we begin a new year in the Church and look ahead to 2022. What first step might we take today?

~7~

One day this week I saw a text pop up from our younger son. It was a photo of an honor roll certificate—his honor roll certificate. I got a little choked up.

Getting on the honor roll in sixth grade might not sound like a big deal, and the middle schoolers in my life assure me it’s not. But it’s a big deal to me. it has been a journey to get here—questions, testing, a diagnosis, switching schools, putting supports in place, graduating from them one by one, worrying about whether we learned anything during virtual schooling, starting middle school, and on and on and on.

Here we are with an honor roll certificate. I’ll take it.

Truly, this whole fall, which has been extremely challenging for parents and teachers and everyone in schools, feels like some kind of miracle to me. I marvel at every single day that my children are physically at school.

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