An Old Fashioned Christmas Letter

As much as I love to write I have never written an old fashioned Christmas letter.  You know the kind, a recap of the year, a time to share with your loved ones what you are thankful for. Written on an actual piece of paper, maybe with a lovely winter scene in the background, hand addressed and sent along to friends and family in an envelope with a Holiday themed stamp. Well I've never written such a letter.  This year isn't the year that I'm going to start.  Well at least not one on a piece of paper with an aforementioned lovely winter scene.  Here's my version of our old fashioned Christmas letter:


Dear Loved Ones,

I have to admit, it's not feeling 100% Christmas-y in my part of the world.  As with most Decembers in Indiana the temperature hasn't dipped much below 40 degrees and it's actually been quite a bit warmer.  I think we hit the 70's a week or two ago. Not that I'm complaining but where I grew up it was almost always frigid by December and there was most definitely snow on the ground.  A little bit of that is required to get in the full spirit but I'm doing my best.  Our Christmas trees are up and decorated, well the top 3/4ths of our Christmas trees are decorated. The bottoms will remain bare to avoid tempting tiny hands that don't quite understand the difference between a soccer ball and a Christmas ball. My Christmas baking is in full swing and Hollyberry and Evergreen scented candles are being burned around the clock. So we are making do with what we have available to us.  But I admit I'm a bit jealous of the multiple inches of snow that my sisters in Minnesota just received. Only a bit jealous though.

This year, as in years past we have so much to be thankful for. In February we moved into a new house and have spent many months renovating, improving and painting and we are happy to say that our new house is now our new home.  In March Corey and I left Oliver behind for the first time and spent a week in Arizona for a trip with other Federated Insurance employees.  It was tough to be away from our little Tiddlywink for so long but we had a great time enjoying time by the pool, at the spa, enjoying wonderful food and catching up with friends we get to only see once a year.  Grandpa and Grandma Rekers came and stayed with Oliver the first part of the week and Grandpa Lisk and Aunt Desi came for the second part of the week. They all had a great time and I don't think Oliver missed us nearly as much as we missed him.

In April we celebrated Oliver's 1st birthday.  He had his first taste of ice cream and loved his first taste of birthday cake. He definitely has his mom's sweet tooth. We are still in shock at how fast the time passes with a little one in the house.  He is such a joy and we try our best to soak up every minute of his childhood.  Even if some days aren't as joyous as others.

In June my sisters and I along with some of our friends participated in a 5K for Pancreatic Cancer research. We walked and ran in memory of my mom and in the past two years we have raised nearly $7000 all going to help fight to find a cure.  Our family is so humbled by the generosity of all of you that have supported us in the fight for this research since my mom passed away almost two years ago.  We know that money is tight and we want you to know that we appreciate and are so thankful for every single penny.

In July we traveled back to Iowa for our annual camping trip with my side of the family. It was hot as usual but Oliver had a great time playing with all his third cousins and got in lots of time with the aunties. After we went camping in Minnesota we drove down to Iowa and Corey rode in RAGBRAI for the second year. For those of you that don't know what RAGBRAI is it is an annual bicycle ride across Iowa.  They start at the western border and ride approximately 60-80 miles a day stopping in towns along the way and make their way across the state and end up on the eastern border.  RAGBRAI is at the end of July every year and if riding a bike across Iowa doesn't sound brutal enough for you factor in the fact that the temperature in Iowa at the end of July is usually somewhere around 80 to 85 degrees and with about 127% humidity. Oh and they camp along the way. Not my cup of tea but Corey loves it and he rides with good friends and his brother and his dad and they have a great time.

In August I enjoyed a much needed moms weekend away and I went to Destin, Florida with three of my mommy friends.  My friend Irene's parents were kind enough to open up their beach house to us and what a wonderful weekend we had!  We enjoyed the sun and relished the time that we had to relax.

Last month we traveled to Iowa for Thanksgiving/Christmas-palooza with Grandpa and Grandma Rekers and Uncle Ryan.  It has been so hard for us living 8 hours away from family and the holidays are always such a wonderful time to spend time with family.  Because we live so far away it's always difficult to split our time amongst families and so this year we made the tough decision that so many others have made and we started alternating holidays.  We spent Thanksgiving in Cedar Falls and we also celebrated Christmas.  It was so lovely to spend almost an entire week there and not have to pack up the car three times to travel and be sad leaving family behind to go and enjoy time with another part of the family. We spent time laughing and enjoying each others company.  Grandpa and Grandma and Uncle Ryan spent lots of time with Oliver and we even enjoyed a 60 degree day in November in Iowa!! Old toy ride along tractors were taken out of storage and enjoyed by another generation of child and also enjoyed in a whole new way with earlier generations. We bundled up the day after Thanksgiving to go to downtown Cedar Falls for Holiday Hoopla where we got an excellent view of a spectacular fireworks show after Santa made his holiday debut.  Believe it or not this was the first time Oliver had seen fireworks because we've missed the show the past two Fourth of Julys because of crummy weather. He stared in wonder as the rest of us probably spent more time looking at him and his reaction than at the fireworks themselves. The next day we bundled up again and went to visit Santa Claus at his village.  Fortunately there was no crying when Oliver sat on Santa's lap, unfortunately Oliver was more interested in the ladder and slide that served as an exit out of Santa's workshop. Either way we had a successful trip to visit Santa to kick off the Holiday season.  Later in the weekend we got to see the joy in Oliver's eyes as he opened gift after gift around the Christmas tree as we celebrated Christmas with the Rekers'.  This wasn't his first Christmas of course but each year the excitement grows a bit as he starts to understand more and more about the joy of the season.

In a couple of weeks our house will once again be filled with family.  My sisters and all of their boyfriends, which as fate would have it are ALL named Tyler, weird I know, will be coming to celebrate Christmas along with my Dad, my stepmom and my brother.  I already have dinner and snack menus whirling around inside my head and have about 3 shopping lists started and scattered
throughout the house. I'm looking forward to spending nights snuggled on the couch surrounded by family and seeing the joy and wonder again in Oliver's eyes when we open presents around the Christmas tree on Christmas morning.  We hope that this holiday season finds you with many blessings to be thankful for and that the New Year will bring you much happiness and joy.

Love,

The Rekers
Corey, Kinzie, Oliver and Lola

PS I apologize for the lack of pictures in this post. My laptop died a few months ago and I'm trying to figure out the trick to blogging from our iPad. Fingers crossed Santa brings me a new laptop for Christmas.

The Highlight Reel

As a mom and a writer sometimes days and even weeks go by without so much as a glimmer of writing inspiration hitting you.  Whether it be from lack of material or from the fact that days fade into other days and at the end of each one you are just too tired to move a muscle.  Muscles included in that strike are the muscles in my fingers that I haven't been able to make fly across the keys for a while.

Too be honest with you we've gone on many fun adventures, the inspiration is there, so the only culprit left is the exhaustion. Oliver's molars have been trying to come in for about a month now. All of my fellow mommy friends warned me, "the molars are the absolute worst". Its not that I didn't believe them, its just that you are naive to it until it actually happens to you. And oh, are they happening. I'm not sure if the molars are causing tantrums or if it is just the time in toddler-dom that tantrums seem to start and I'm lucky enough to experience both at the same time. It's kind of a chicken and the egg kind of thing.  Either way it's miserable.  However there is light at the end of the tunnel.  Thursday I'm leaving on a child-free, moms only, no whining allowed vacation on the beach.  My friend Irene's parents were kind enough to allow four of us girls to spend a long weekend at their beach house.  There will be lots of trashy magazine reading, cocktail imbibing (except for the pregnant mommy, sorry Kristel), food enjoying and SLEEP, glorious SLEEP!!! I plan on coming back from the Gulf with no more bags under my eyes and a killer tan. (Pipe down Desi, I promise I'll still wear sunscreen.)

As I mentioned before we have been lucky enough to enjoy many great adventures over the past month or so.  Here's the highlight reel.

Camping at The Big Barn Resort, Preston, MN


Camping didn't start out as well as I would have hoped.  It was a very long two days of driving and towards the end there was lots of crying, yelling and whining.  Mostly from Oliver...mostly. About an hour outside of Galena we made a pit stop at a tiny little gas station slash diner.  As in most situations ice cream made things better. We took a little time stretch our legs and fill our bellies with chocolately deliciousness.

After the drive was behind us, the drive that involved an hour of being lost on a gravel road and passing the same herd of cows five times (yes, five) we finally made it.  It was great to catch up with family. Oliver doesn't have any cousins but my cousins kids are so great.  He loved playing ball with them, riding their bikes and in general just following them around and basking in their big kid-ness. It was so wonderful to sit back and watch them all interact with each other, I can't wait until he has little cousins of his own. Hint, hint, sisters.

Sharing a plum with Aunt Edie

The gang.

A makeshift water table....a cooler filled with water

Looking groovy in Aunt Desi's shower cap

Visiting Friends and Family Across Iowa

Corey rode in RAGBRAI again this year (riding your bike across Iowa? No thank you.)  While he was riding his bike on pavement that was reading 126 degrees Fahrenheit the little guy and I made our way across Iowa visiting family and friends. We visited my dad, stepmom and brother in Des Moines. Then we were back to Cedar Falls to visit Grandpa and Grandma Rekers and Corey's brother Ryan.

Enjoying some fruit with Grandma Stacey

He loves himself some Uncle Carson, the feeling me thinks, is mutual

Grandpa and Grandma Rekers have the best tractor collection, circa the 1980s

But nothing compares to the real thing at Grandpa's work

Maybe one of my favorite pictures, my heart melts. With Uncle Ryan

Catching up with old friends, we didn't have much time but the amount we had was cherished

The Indiana State Fair

Last weekend we took advantage of a day that was finally below 90 degrees, it was actually in the 70s, gasp!  We packed up and went to visit the Indiana State Fair.  I have to preface this with saying we come from Iowa, home of the superior state fair. No other state fair and can compare.  Not even the Minnesota State Fair, which I hear is nice but based off of my HORRIBLE experience there I will never believe it.  I won't go into the gory details but it involved eating chocolate chip cookies and drinking milk when it was 100 plus degrees out and a line at the bathroom that was nearly unbearable. I didn't embarrass myself but it was touch and go there for a while. Anyway, I digress, basically I went into the Indiana State Fair knowing that it would never compare to the Iowa Fair and it didn't. But it was still a lovely day.  I ate delicious corn on the cob, had a yummy corn dog, a mediocre lemonade and some decent salt water taffy. Oliver got to see cows, horses, goats and pigs.  The swine flu has been sweeping through Indiana so there weren't many pigs to be seen but we got to see piglets and they were magical.  The goats were by far his favorite, probably because they are pint sized just like him.  So the Indiana State Fair, worth the trip, we came we saw we conquered.

He's making plans for a break into the cage, the goat is making plans for a breakout

The temperatures are becoming more bearable around these parts.  Halloween candy has made it's debut in our grocery store and the Hobby Lobby shelves are filled with pumpkins, leaves and all things Autumn.  I haven't broken out my fall scented candles yet, I have rules about these things, September 1st is when they are allowed to start burning.  I'm starting to see fall on the horizon though and after the dry and HOT summer we have had I say "bring it on".   I'm going to send this summer off in style with my Girls Trip to the Gulf, the Real Housewives of Bloomington if you will.  If you need me I'll be sipping Mai Tais and getting to the bottom of this Robert Pattinson-Kristin Stewart debacle. Cheers!

A New Day

When I started blogging a year ago I was a new mom who had just lost her own mom. I was constantly vacillating between extreme sadness and extreme happiness.  I began blogging as a way to offload some of those overwhelming thoughts and to share my journey of grief and joy. If you've been following me on A Year on Pins thank you so much for reading and for making the transition over to my new blog.  If you're new here feel free to check out my old blog to get caught up.

We've burned to the end of one of those great weekends where things fall seamlessly into place.  Oliver slept in until 9 both Saturday and Sunday.  Things like that happen about once every 79 years, much like the Haley's Comet or a lunar eclipse. He woke up both mornings in a great mood despite the fact that he's still teething.  

We finally got some much needed rain on Saturday.  Not enough to get us caught up and out of the drought we're in but at least I didn't have to water my flowers for a day. We worked on our never ending list of DIY projects and actually managed to finish up a few that have been sitting in limbo for months. I made this artwork out of Oliver's first drawing.

I got a start on my wall of vintage pictures.  It's not quite done yet, there are still a lot more old timey pictures I'd like to collect from family members but I love how it is started.  It has taken me a while to be able to hang pictures of my mom, at first I didn't need the constant reminder of her absence in our lives but now I'm welcoming her constant presence.

Our walls are slowly becoming filled with pictures that hold stories and love.

We did a little swimming on Sunday afternoon.  I love that Oliver is in love with the water. He loves splashing and kicking.  He also loves "jumping" from the side.  Corey sits on the side with him and throws him into the water to me. Before he can even wipe the dripping water from his face he is giving us the sign for "more, more, more". But his favorite part about swimming? Watching the big kids do cannonballs and dives.

We've got our big camping adventure/Iowa trip coming up.  We leave on Thursday and there is much to do. The tables and counters in my house are covered in To-Do lists and post-it note reminders.  I'm certain I will forget to pack something important but as long as it's not food or fun that we forget the trip will still be a success.

It's going to be another scorcher today and the rest of the week so we're going to go fit in a little outdoor time while the driveway and yard are still somewhat shaded from the morning sun. Happy Monday!