Season of Change

Many things will be changing in our home come the start of the new year, so I've been savoring as much as I can now.

Lindsey will officially be moving back out after a semester at Normandale Community College. After her first year at St. Cloud State she decided that she wasn't loving it there and chose not to return in the fall. So she transferred to Normandale, completed the classes she needed to get her associates, and lived at home while doing do. Now she has transferred to Hamline University and has rented a studio apartment just a block from campus. She's moving there in two days. 

Marissa is officially graduating high school a semester early. She took two college classes through Normandale which completed her year-long requirement for social science classes, and her other classes she only needed one semester credit in them, so she is officially done as of January 25. She is planning on taking a gap year, so she will be around for the next 18 months or so, and then who knows.

Christmas morning chaos, after all the presents have been opened

Construction has started on our new home. We are hoping to move in June so we've got six months of city living to savor before having to drive 20 minutes in any direction to reach...well, anything. We are trying restaurants that we've never been to that are near to us, taking advantage of walking down to 50th & France, meeting friends at local coffee shops. There are a lot of wonderful things that I'm going to love about our new home and wide open spaces, and there are also a lot of wonderful things I will miss about where we live now.

I am six months into my new position at Crescent Cove, a children's respite and hospice home in Brooklyn Center, and I could not be more happy in a job or at a place. It is truly a place of joy and light — I look forward to going in every Monday and miss the place when I'm not working. And I'm finally in a role that I've worked around much of my career but have never been the main person in charge of it, and that's communications. Sure, I've written emails, direct mail, web copy, but have never been the person in charge of ensuring it goes out flawlessly, selecting the photos that represent our mission on our social media and website. I love every aspect of what I do and the mission that I'm working on.

This is the last Christmas in this home that we've lived in for 20 years, likely the last one when both girls will be living at home. We have played all the games, watched all the movies, baked all the cookies, and eaten all the food. It's been an absolute joy to have everyone home this holiday season. I know that this is not the end, but it will always be a little different after this. 

This year's coffee/ugly cake.

Watching "Christmas Vacation" on Christmas Eve.

Our Christmas Day table with family china

Marissa-isms

Marissa's Selfie, December 2016

Our youngest often says things that bring laughter to the family, some of which need to be written down before they disappear into my memory.

The girls were in the midst of opening their gifts when they came across the gift of pajamas. Marissa already had a requested Polaroid camera by her side, an electric blanket and other seemingly more desired items. She opened the box with pajamas and said, "Oh thank goodness -- PAJAMAS!" Apparently both girls were in need of new winter pajamas more than I had thought.

One of the gifts I got for Wayne was a gag gift for "poo-pourri." It came in a box that was called "Master Crapsman" and had two spray bottles of fragrance that you're supposed to spray into the toilet before you use it, and it traps the smell in the toilet.

Later in the day, Marissa and I walked by a bathroom where we could tell the poopourri had been used -- it smelled good, but underneath you could tell...it didn't.

"Well I'm glad Dad's using it" Marissa says, "It's a gag gift, but he really needs to use it. It helps the whole family."

Christmas Eve Birthdays

My dad's birthday is on Christmas Eve; he would have been 72. This is the first birthday that he is celebrating in heaven.

Summer 2015

Growing up, Dad would get a single gift from friends and relatives that would be both his birthday and Christmas gift -- he usually didn't have birthday parties, since everyone was busy with holiday festivities. He felt like he didn't have birthdays like other kids did, and carried this sentiment into his adult life.

When my sister and I were kids, my mom made sure that Dad's birthday gifts were wrapped in birthday paper, Christmas gifts in Christmas paper. Every member of our family got to choose what the dinner was on their birthday, and for years my dad chose lasagna. My mom's homemade lasagna was our family's dinner on December 24th for years. All of his adult life my sister and I got him birthday gifts, even though we had stopped exchanging gifts with each other and my mom years before.

The traditions continue though he is gone.

My cousin Sam and his family live in Minneapolis now, and we invited them to join us Christmas Eve for church service and dinner. His parents drove up from Illinois and joined us as well. These are all relatives on my dad's side of the family, so it was appropriate that we were all together. Plus, they are wonderful people, and we enjoy visiting with them all.

We gathered around the tables set with the china from my childhood, china that my dad had bought for my mother while serving during the Vietnam War. We feasted on homemade stuffed pasta shells (the closest I can come to making lasagna), told stories and went through a few bottles of wine.

And, just like old times, we celebrated a birthday. This time it was Theodore's, my cousin's son who was born on December 24th last year.

Theodore unwrapping his gift.

A toy like the ones my girls loved when they were his age.

It was wonderful to spend this day with my extended family, making new memories and new traditions.

John and Deb Nemanich, Theodore, me, Marissa and Wayne, Sarah and Sam. Missing: Lindsey, who had a migraine

Never Too Old for Toys

Some weeks ago Lindsey began working on her Christmas list.

She wrote down -- with gusto -- fuzzy socks. Pajamas. Lip balm. Manicure set.

"I don't really want the same things for Christmas I used to want," she observed.

She is 11 going on 12, after all, and this year there truly is no doubt in her mind that her parents are Santa. There were no pretenses of asking me to mail her list to Santa this year, she simply handed it to me with a "here you go."

And because she doesn't believe her little sister, for the most part, doesn't believe. There have been a few times over the past few weeks when I've had to stop one or both of the girls from going into a closet that had gifts stashed in them. "Why can't we go in there?" Marissa would ask, "Presents," Lindsey would reply.

Yet Christmas morning, the magic was still there.

Not-so-little bodies filled with excitement as we prepared for bed on Christmas Eve, squeals and giggles as they imagined what was in the presents under the tree, and what other gifts would magically appear before morning.

We played musical beds in the middle of the night due to excitement which made sleep hard to come by. We awoke early, made kids go back to sleep, and finally got up around 7:30.

We had the special treat of having Kristi join us this year, decked out in fuzzy red pajamas with matching Santa hat. She helped me "play Santa" the night before, wrapping the last of the gifts and even wrapping a forgotten one...at 5:30 a.m. (All communicated via text from two floors away.) She really IS a Secret Santa!

Coffee cake, coffee, presents, and glee.

Lindsey wanted to get something for everyone in the family. She spent her own money and bought Caribou gift cards for her parents (always appreciated), a candle for Kristi and a stuffed toy, movie and "squishy toy" for Marissa.

Over the past few weeks when Marissa saw Lindsey wrapping presents for her, she wanted to get something for Lindsey, too. So she wrapped a piece of pottery she had made over the summer and a book that had been laying around the house. Lindsey expressed great delight and gratitutude as Marissa jumped up and down with excitement. Marissa had purchased a gift for her too, but I think the unwrapping of the "here's what's laying around the house" present was more fun.

Lindsey got a pair of boots from her Aunt Kristi, who cleverly wrapped just one, then hid the other boot in a sweater that had been wrapped separately. Wayne got a "gift" of a plaid shirt and plaid pants (non-matching) from his family to make up for the gifts of clothing he got last year. He got real gifts too, don't feel too sorry for him.

Plaid, anyone?

All the gifts were unwrapped by 8:30. One hour is all it took to unwrap every single item under the tree.

And for as much as Lindsey hadn't put toys on her list, she put enough toys that she spent the rest of the day playing with Magnatiles and her new Disney Sleeping Beauty figurines, while Marissa entertained the family with her new karaoke CDs from the Hoyt cousins and microphone stand.

No one fought. No one asked Marissa to be quiet. Everyone said "please" and "thank you" and were polite to each other.

Now that's the true magic of Christmas.

Runaway Train of a Christmas Eve

Coffee cake, anyone?

We've built a few Christmas traditions for our family, based on carrying on old ones that I grew up with. One of those is having homemade coffee cake while opening gifts on Christmas morning. Another is having a baked pasta dish cook during Christmas Eve service, to be eaten upon the family's return from church. There's nothing like coming home from church, opening the door and having that good garlic-tomatoy smell waft out of the house. Aahhh!

For my family, this means that both dishes need to be prepared on Christmas Eve. My mom -- being the master organizer and planner that she is --  used to prepare them in advance and store them in the freezer until they were needed. Of course, that requires not only chunks of time not taken up by work, family and household chores, but also a nice-sized freezer in which to store the food, neither of which I have.

Christmas Eve morning started out with the highest of hopes and expectations to have everything done by the 4:30 church service. But this was soon derailed when we discovered at 8 o'clock in the morning that the pipe to our dishwasher has frozen. The appliances in our basement, located just under the dishwasher, looked like they had been rained upon, the floor trusses above were saturated and the floor was sopping wet. It was no longer leaking, but clearly had done so while the dishwasher had run overnight. A call was made to a plumber, with a promise of coming out to look at it...after the holiday. In the meantime, no running the dishwasher until we can determine the cause.

This means breakfast dishes had to be washed first, and THEN coffee cake started a bit later than initially scheduled, with dishes washed again while the cake was baking.

Coffee cake, or ugly cake?

Coffee cake! (See last year's post. And the year's before. Etc.)

In the meantime, I could feel a sniffle and occasional sneezing creeping up on me. Ignoring it, I told the girls we could go to the mall for lunch and possibly a visit with Santa, since we hadn't seen him yet this year and I was not up to making a lunch and washing those dishes as well.

But first... the eldest had to bathe and wash her hair which was long overdue for a washing.

They both put their new holiday dresses on and off we went to the mall. We lunched, and then got in line to see Santa. The line was relatively short; it didn't look like we were going to wait long. But this was a really good Santa, and he took his time with every child who came to him to tell him their wishes. There was a girl with a disability a few families ahead of us, and he took extra care in talking with her and her family. Seriously, how can you not love that?

Except that I was watching my watch as it crept toward 2:00, then past, then towards 3:00. And all the time I was standing in line I was feeling more and more run-down. I debated even going to the church service, but...really? Isn't that the whole point of Christmas, to hear the Christmas story and celebrate Christ's birth?

When it was finally our turn to see Santa we had been waiting an hour and a half. There goes my cooking time for dinner. Hmmm...how is this going to work?

We arrived home at 3:20 and I shooed everyone out of the kitchen while I got to work, whipping up our traditional pasta dinner of stuffed pasta shells.

I learned that I can cook that dish in 45 minutes. Rock star. By 4:10 I was upstairs changing and we got the family out the door in 10 minutes.

All during the service my nose itched nonstop and dripped endlessly. My head was feeling heavier and heavier. This was now a full-blown cold and I felt like crap.

We arrived home and final preparations began for dinner. My blood boiled briefly when I heard "When's dinner? I'm hungry," from the child playing in the living room, the child who is perfectly capable of filling salad bowls and putting salad dressing out. She was promptly recruited for the job.

While hand-washing the meal's dishes after dinner, I informed my dearly beloved that there was no way I could do all the Christmas prep myself as I had previous years. Thankfully I had done most of the wrapping the weekend before, but there were still a few late gifts that needed to be wrapped, along with stockings to be stuffed and Santa gifts to be found from their hiding places and set under the tree. Of course, only I knew where the stocking gifts were hidden, which presents needed to be wrapped, and where the Santa gifts were hiding.

The two of us got it all done and went straight to bed. Thankfully I slept all the way through the night and was awoken at 6:30 by two excited little girls, which is relatively late for Christmas morning in our house.

It felt like it had been a runaway Christmas Eve, starting out slowly and calmly and eventually ending in a race against the clock and a cold.

I'm thinking that we may invest in a freezer so I can avoid this runaway train next year. Ah-choo.

"My Child's Greed is Killing Santa" -- An Update

Just in case you thought that my eldest was still in her room, sulking...

She is not.

But we did have a good conversation about the value of money. Someone who read my original post suggested that perhaps Lindsey could save up her own money to buy these Uggs that she wants so badly. Actually, she wouldn't have to save, she's already got more than $200 saved up from the last few birthdays and Christmases. If she wanted Uggs, she could go out and buy them right now.

But she won't, of course, because it would use all her money for a single pair of boots she would grow out of in just a year.

My point exactly.

I think she was actually more upset at learning in a roundabout way that Santa is not actually sending her presents, that parents spend the money for the gifts from Santa and that we are not bottomless pits.

She revised her gift list down and said that Uggs are off the list. Whew.

A day later our family was watching the news and a report came on about consumer spending for the holidays. The report said that the average American family was planning on spending around $750 for gifts. Wayne and I both looked over at our formerly greedy girl and said, "That's $750 for the entire family, not one child."

She hid her head in the blanket in embarrassment.

I think she got it.

My Child's Greed Is Killing Santa

For a month or so now my oldest daughter has been mentioning here and there some of the things she'd like for Christmas. A trendy down vest. Acrylic paints and canvas. A Kindle Fire. The Kindle Fire is a bit outside of the norm, but might be doable.

Then she mentioned the Uggs. The same Uggs she asked for last Christmas but didn't get.

Well, it's not that she didn't get them, she got "F'Uggs," or fake Uggs. She knew they weren't "real" Uggs, so authentic Uggs are back on her list at $200 for the style she wants.

I have a real problem with paying $200 for a pair of shoes. I have never in my life spent $200 for shoewear for myself. Ever. And I'm not growing, I've been the same shoe size for almost 30 years now. Our daughter is currently growing about a shoe size a year. We buy her new winter boots every year, and she's going through athletic shoes at a pace of 2 per year because she wears those year-round.

Of course we won't buy her a pair of $200 boots at age 10.

But she says "Well, Santa will bring them."

Now, we are 90% confident that she knows Santa doesn't exist. None of her friends believe anymore, and I think she just says "Santa will bring it" knowing that we won't break the news to her that Santa isn't real.

She started adding up her wish list, computer in front of her so she could look up the prices. $150 for a Kindle Fire. $200 for Ugg boots. $30 for paints and canvas. $65 for a Furby, all the way through her entire wish list.

She added up the list and came up with $285. I corrected her math, and she came up with $485.

"See? It's not even $500," she says.

Who is this child? When is the dollar amount "$500" ever preceded by the words "not even" unless you're talking about a house repair or medical bill?

Santa reviews my daughter's wish list with skepticism. So do I.

She got moody when I told her Santa would NOT be bringing her everything on her list, and that mom and dad couldn't possibly afford to buy all those things for her.

She is currently up in her room, sulking.

So we will have to break it to her that mom and dad ARE Santa, and that's why what things cost DOES matter. And then I think we're going to go volunteer at Feed My Starving Children and have her dad tell her stories of his Christmases growing up, when each child was given one gift. And they liked it.

I Believe

Lindsey has been testing us all season, wondering if we will give away whether or not Santa is real. 

"Do YOU believe, Mommy?" she asks. "How can he get to all the kids in the world in one night? My friends say their parents are Santa, but I still believe he's real."

You can practically feel her still wanting to believe. She wishes so much for it to be true. When she stumbled across our special Santa wrapping paper a couple of weeks ago, she seemed to believe Wayne's explanation that Santa magically wraps gifts while here if the elves couldn't get it done before the big trip. 

Lindsey wrote her letter to Santa several weeks ago. She put a few drawings of her and Santa on it, then gave it to me and asked me to mail it from work, after promising not to read it. Which, of course, I did. But I did keep my word and mailed her letter. Put a stamp on it and everything. 

I showed her this photo, as proof to her that I had mailed it. She was satisfied.

Imagine my surprise when today in the mail she receives a letter from Santa. The return envelope says "Santa Claus, North Pole."

And this letter was enclosed.

Lindsey's eyes grew wide as she read it. She walked around in silence, reading it to herself. Then she looked at me and smiled. 

"He really IS real!" she says. 

Whether or not Santa is a real person, he is real in spirit, embodied in kind and amazing people all over this world, who have no idea how incredibly happy they made one little girl tonight.

Thank you, Santa.

Reflections on Christmas

The gifts become a blur.
The wrappings are stripped away in a flurry of activity.

The boxes are tossed aside and trappings of the toys are hastily removed and discarded.

What will we remember?

Smiles.

Snuggles.

Sharing.

Playing.

Family.

The Season of Giving

I had an interesting discussion with my co-worker yesterday about teaching our children about the spirit of Christmas giving. Her kids, ages 13 and 15, were spending the 23rd out shopping with their dad, looking for the perfect gift for each other and for their mom (my co-worker).

My kids, ages 6 and 8, do not shop for each other or for us. I remember being a child and buying presents for my parents and my sister, but don't remember at what age we started doing that. I distinctly remember the year I bought my dad a hammer. I wrapped the box so carefully and it turned out gorgeous, with perfectly angled corners and a ribbon tied just so. I couldn't wait to give it to him, but as I carried it to the tree I realized it was lighter than it should be. I had forgotten to put the hammer in the box! And I didn't want to ruin my wrapping job and re-wrap it.

No worries.

On Christmas morning, I handed Dad the box to open -- he joked about how light it felt and wondered if there was a gift inside. Little did he know there wasn't! He opened it, searched in the tissue paper for a while, and then I ran upstairs and got the present out from under my bed while the family laughed. It was the most memorable gift he received that morning. (At least to me it was.)

I don't remember the shopping excursions, and in most cases I don't remember the gifts I gave others. But I remember the stories like that one which fills the years with fond memories of Christmas.

Are we depriving our children of this same joy by not teaching them yet to give to others?

Yet I feel like they already have that spirit.

Every day for the past week and a half they've been coming home from school with various "treasures." Usually these treasures are of the paper kind, little love notes and drawings that they made especially for us. Marissa made a photo frame with a picture of her in it that she could not WAIT for me to open, so we didn't.

I've always told the kids that the best things they could give us are the homemade things, not something that comes from a store.

On Black Friday this year consumers spent $52.4 billion to kick off the holiday season. That's billion with a "b." Imagine the good that money could have done if we had spent it on something other than ourselves.

I think I'm okay that they aren't buying presents for others yet.

How Disney Saved Christmas

Lindsey wanted a wristwatch for Christmas this year, and not just any old wristwatch. She wanted one that had Rapunzel on it from Disney's movie Tangled that we had seen Thanksgiving Day. She wanted it to be digital, but her teacher told her she would be "very disappointed" if Santa brought her a digital one, because she needed practice reading the time the old-fashioned way.

I dutifully go to the Disney store website and use their tools to design the watch. I pick the watch face, the color of the band, even personalize it with her name. Each watch is custom-made for each order, depending on color and design selected.

I finish personalizing the watch, including putting Lindsey's name on it, and order it on December 13th. That should be in plenty of time, I've got two weeks until Christmas and I live in the internet age when things get delivered in 24 hours from the click of a mouse. I receive an email confirmation of the order.

By December 21st I haven't seen a shipping notification, so I check on my order. The only message is  "not shipped." So I call the customer service number to find out when they expect to ship it.

Okay, so perhaps I was a bit cynical. It's one thing to call all the staff members working in a Disney park a "cast member," but a service rep on the phone? It seems a bit much.

I finally got a live person and found out that because I had personalized it with her name, I should've ordered it by Dec 9th to guarantee Christmas delivery. Apparently there was a little disclaimer that said that once I landed on that page, but of course I didn't see it. The "cast member" was apologetic but said that it probably wouldn't make it in time, especially since I hadn't paid for express delivery...because I didn't think I needed to.

My fault for being the bad customer, I figure I'll be printing a picture of the watch off their site and putting it in a card for her. The problem is, she truly, deeply believes in Santa Claus, and this was supposed to be her gift from Santa. How do I explain this?

Do I tell her the elves didn't finish it in time? That it fell from Santa's sleigh? Or do I let the cat out of the bag that the gift was from her parents, who ordered it late from an actual company, not from the North Pole?

Then I get an email on December 23rd informing me that my order shipped, and a call from the husband who saw the credit card get charged. It shipped? Is it going to make it? No, I said sadly, I didn't pay for express shipping, it won't make it.

Then, suddenly, the unexpected on Christmas Eve.

And then the incredible:

Yes, Disney express delivered my package to me without telling me they were doing so, to ensure that the gift arrived in time. Talk about underpromise and overdeliver.

I could've hugged the FedEx guy. He looked tired and cold and probably could've used it, but instead I gave him a huge smile and said "Thank you, you have no idea what this will mean to a little girl." I think that helped brighten his day.

When a company already has an exceptional reputation and incredible customer service, how do you improve upon it? By going to infinity and beyond. Disney has redeemed itself in my eyes.

By the way, Lindsey loves her watch.

I Love Your More Than Presents

Lindsey awoke at 4:20 am this morning and never really went back to sleep. I laid in her bed with her trying to snooze to be awoken every 20 minutes or so by a little one informing me of the time.

"It's 5 o'clock, Mommy. Mommy, it's 5:30. Can we get up at 6:00? Can we get up at 6:30? It's 6:15, Mommy, when is Marissa going to get up?"

Try sleeping through that.

I was able to hold her off until 6:45 when we finally woke Marissa up and everyone traipsed downstairs to rip into the gifts. Presents from grandparents, aunts and uncles, Santa and parents were opened and set aside to be played with at more length after all the gifts were opened.

We'd had several gifts under the tree for several weeks, homemade presents from Marissa and Lindsey. They consisted of drawings, poems and pictures to various family members.

But the best one had to be the one from Lindsey to her daddy.

Here's what it said:

Dear Dad,

I know that you didn't get much presents when you were little. Please don't cry when I tell you this. I don't care that you get presents. I care that you are my dad and I love you. You are the only one that I can call dad so I love you more than presents.

Love,

Lindsey

Perhaps her dad didn't tear up, but her mom did.

I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas.

Wordless Wednesday: Making Memories

We decorated our mish mash tree this weekend. We got a smaller than usual tree this year, so the girls decorated the entire tree with just their ornaments. None of our "couple" ornaments from before the girls came along are hung up, though I think later on I'll dig through that box and pull out some special ones to add to it.

It was so sweet watching my young ones reminisce on their short lives to memories of the ornaments they already own.

Each girl opens their box of their own ornaments.



Marissa shows Lindsey one that's special to her.



Adding memories to the tree.

My Favorite Ornaments

Decorating the tree is an event our family looks forward to every year. It's when we pull out the beat up box of ornaments and sort through our memories, picking and choosing which ones go towards the front and which ones are relegated the back of the tree.

When I was growing up my parents had a tradition of giving us an ornament every year, something to commemorate the past year. This meant that when I finally left home and began my own Christmas traditions I had enough ornaments to decorate a small tree. This also meant that once Wayne and I got married that my ornaments dominated our tree, something that was remedied by our doing this very same tradition for ourselves.

These are just a few of my favorites that bring back pleasant memories.

The music stand and the Coca-Cola ornaments. The first was from one of my high school years when I finally took a Class A saxophone solo to state competition and brought home a gold medal, along with a sundry of other medals. I was a first-class music geek, what can I say.

The Coca-Cola ornament was from the year I decided to get a degree in advertising. Mom couldn't think of an ornament that would be appropriate for advertising, and at the time the Coke/Pepsi war was big, with slogans and products everywhere. Her solution was to get a Coca-Cola ornament, because that represented advertising to her. I think of how hard she thought about and looked for these special ornaments throughout the years and I have a great appreciation for the effort she put into finding just the right one.

The moose ornaments are just a couple of many that I've gotten over the years from my dad. My dad's nickname for me is "Tootermoose," a name he made up that he started calling me when I was a kid. Nearly every year I can count on a moose making an appearance in a large box of gifts for my family from my dad. They make us all laugh every time.

And then there's the hand crafted ornament commemorating the fact that Lindsey was on her way. We had already been through two miscarriages and didn't tell my family we were expecting until Christmas when I was nearly 5 months along. Wayne bought the ornament and had it personalized long before Christmas so I could open it at my folks' house on Christmas Day. The purchase of this ornament was a leap of faith for both of us; it was a symbol of hope that perhaps this time we really would become parents. And miraculously enough, we did.

When I was a kid I used to look at the decked out trees at the store, the ones with every ornament being a part of a theme, matching in their design or colors. I used to tell myself that when I grew up I would have one of those pretty, matching trees, because our own was so junky looking, with a jumble of colors, shapes and sizes donning the branches.


The matching retail trees



The Floria-Horsman non-matching tree


Now, our tree is the hodgepodge tree, with ornaments in an array of colors: red or burgundy, green or white, porcelain or wood, golds or silvers.

I wouldn't have it any other way.

Do you have a story about your favorite ornaments? Link up here to share!

Update: Ugly Cake Again

It just wouldn't be Christmas if I didn't attempt my mom's infamous sour cream coffee cake in a bundt pan, would it?

And it REALLY wouldn't be Christmas if I got the damn thing to turn out, would it?

No, it wouldn't.

I was telling my new co-workers about my various failed attempts to make this coffee cake year after year. One asked, "You aren't going to try it again this year, are you?" Are you kidding? By this time it's tradition! Of COURSE I'm going to try to make it, that's half the fun!

And it did look beautiful. Truly beautiful! Unfortunately the filling on one half of the cake had sunk to the bottom of the pan and stuck again, so it did not come out of the pan as planned. But it did still taste delicious -- we ate it all in about 3 days.

When I finally went to take it out of the pan, the girls both accompanied me to the kitchen for the unveiling. When I was having a hard time getting it out, Lindsey watched in anticipation for a while, then she abruptly turned and left, saying, "I can't watch this."

Like I said, it's tradition by this point, it will be a shame the day I finally get it to work.