Some Holiday Pie, then Some Serious Ramble

Hope everyone had a large dose of joy and rest this holiday season! Here are some of our highlights:

-Mr. Pie talking to his little brother after the birth of our new niece, the siblings have all officially joined the ranks of parenthood now. Welcome to the club.

-the eating of clementines and pistachios (so against my attempts to eat local, organic, sustainable, etc.),and yet so addictively delicious!

-Mr. Pie and I both chose just one gift for one another - a book. And both are great selections.

-Youngest kidlet's refusal to take off his new Batman Lego outfit for 3 days straight. His superhero dreams were worth the stinky laundry.

-The yumminess below that went into this winter fruit pie, found here.


-a pared down, new-tradition-filled holiday, which, though exhausting, felt right and good.

-And last, but never least, the kidlets enjoying it all.


Now onto 2010. I've been debating and desparately ignoring this post since the clock struck midnight. Instead of looking ahead and reflecting on the past, I'd rather tell you about ridiculously fun and useless iPhone apps I'm in love with (like the Kindle for iPhone, which I'm giddy about, even though I'm disgusted by my part in the demise of the printed page). Or it might also be fun to wax on about my book selections for the Parenting from Different Faith Perspectives for church, or just all the books I have hanging on my "To Read List".It might also be entertaining to get your opinions on organizing posts and weeding out the useless. However, what keeps churning in my mind are the things which really impacted me this year and where it will all settle out in 2010.

This year, just when I had hit my weight loss goal, Mr. Pie had found his long sought after new job, and we finally felt settled and happy back in the midwest, our oldest kidlet had a lump removed from his foot. All went well and he recuperated with nothing more than a scar. When I say all went well, I mean we dodged the cancer bullet. For a couple of weeks, we weren't sure what that lump on his foot was, or what ordeal our son might endure to rid his body of it. Those are the kind of moments which freeze time -when you wait to hear whether your flesh and blood, your first born, your joy made real, will be yanked into a "new normal" of tests and medicines, needles and nurses, hospital walls. We steeled ourselves for a war which luckily we won in the first battle. I don't want to imagine what the fight would have been, but I know our family had the strength to bare it. I know because of the outpouring of love, love from family, friends and even acquaintances. Those nightmares which bring you to your knees, also keep you on bended knee in gratitude for all you've been given.

So where to put all that gratitude? How to keep up with the weight loss and lifestyle changes I've maintained, even with a big scare thrown in? How to keep living in the moment, instead of in my head, as I promised I would do when we heard his tumor was benign? How to give back to the universe the love we felt? How did that experience change my thoughts on God?

See? It's all a bit too f***ing serious isn't it??

Maybe an iPhone apps list and a good book club selection are all that's needed. I'll save it for next time when the mind stops regurgitating '09. Hope you all have entered 2010 in a less churnful manner than I. Thanks for the listen.