Christmas Tradition

Since Thanksgiving has passed, I think it is only appropriate that everyone give their full attention to the next big holiday about to come through: Christmas. That is after all what the radio will do, my roommates, Temple square, and countrywide hourse decor will all do. It makes sense that this blog also follows the lead. I will do so by addressing the Wazimu (Paul) Christmas.

First, I would have to say that my family is one of many traditions. When I say traditions, I should clarify that is most likely not your idea of tradition. In fact our more popular family tradition is the one year tradition. You can do that math on that one. Having a tradition that you do only one time a year (at Christmas in this case) for only one year means you do the tradition...yes, one time! It is great I must say and has brought a lot of joy and excitement to our family vacations. We hardly spend Christmas in the same place twice. Sometimes we are at home, sometimes we aren't. Sometimes we open gifts before we leave, sometimes after, sometimes during. Sometimes we eat a home cooked meal, sometimes we get Chinese or African buffet.

Nontraditional Paul family traditions:

1. The green pickle. I think it is a German tradition that we might have done a couple of times. It is kind of hard to hide a pickle in a tree every year is you don't always have a tree when you are traveling.

2. We wore silly paper hats that they gave us at the resort during our Christmas dinner.

3. One year we went and helped feed homeless people.

4. One year, this wasn't really a tradition we tried to start but we touched the stone where baby Jesus was born!

You may be asking how this ties to an Oh Lena moment. Well I'll enlighten you. Mom likes traditions. Traditional traditions that is, and is trying to start them for us every year. That is how we get all these traditions started but we are never doing the same thing from year to year so she has to start a new one every year. It gives us all a good laugh...hopefully for her too. If only she's see that we have plenty of traditions that I think are a lot cooler and fit our family a little better. We are a nontraditional family and need nontraditional traditions.

For example: we will always take weird pictures whether it is because of our faces or what we are doing.

We most likely will take a BYU picture if we are in a new place.

If we get in a pool together, we will do backflips and make a totem with as many people as we can.

We will always have fun together. How many families can sit in a car as long as we do together and still love each other when they get out of it.

And finally, we will most likely never have the exact same Christmas twice.

So while mom can try and get us to start all these new traditions, one day she'll see how many we already have. I can honestly say that I love the traditions that we have. We still have them because of you mom too. Think about how many of those family traditions involved taking pictures...dad isn't the one that is camera happy! =) So once again I say that our family is a family of many traditions, nontraditional traditions. Even if you don't believe it, I wouldn't change what we have for any number of traditions.

The Noble Art of Eating French Fries

A few stray french fries (preferably McDonald's) tumble out of their cardboard package onto the tray. Lena sits down on the brightly colored plastic seats and adds three additional packets of ketchup lately procured from the attendant to supplement the two measly packets brought by her slothful servant (husband). Five should be enough for regular size, she surmises. If not, experience suggests slothful servant will not finish off his two packets.

Each ketchup packet is lovingly squeezed into a generous mound. A stray fry is dipped and consumed to confirm by taste what is perceived by texture and color. This true connoisseur hardly needs to validate by taste that the ketchup is true blue American and not some knock-off substitute.

Sandwich and drink are consumed slowly over the next 5-10 minutes while the all important sorting takes place. Three categories is the norm. The short fries, often the crunchy variety, are set into one pile. This pile also includes the bent, broken or other misshapen fries. Occasionally, one of these is consumed to complement the hamburger or chicken sandwich. Next are the straight, golden brown french fries who lack only the length to be perfect. These length-impaired fries are stacked neatly row upon row piled no more than three high. And finally, the select few are lovingly separated into their own neatly-formed stack. The chosen ones set aside as a vintage wine to be opened later in the evening.

Each stack is patiently and methodically worked in its proper order. One tender french fry at a time dipped with a firm flip of the wrist. Only on rare occasions does the temptation of the perfect pile overcome restraint. Patience is finally rewarded in an extended feast of each perfect fry richly dressed in sweet red ketchup.

I will look for an opportunity in the future to take a picture to add to this blog post but for now just this narrative must suffice to highlight another of Lena's endearing quirks.

Neat piles of Fatburger Fries

Attempted Night Life

So I have this theory about my mom which I have to consciously surpress to not have it expressed in myself. It goes something like this. Mom is so afraid of missing any kind of 'fun' that she would rather stay around people asleep (usually in a not so comfortable position) rather than retire to the comfort of her own bed. To demonstrate I have the following examples:

Example 1: Sunday mornings=Video chat with the family (mostly just mom and dad since Cory is too dang busy for his older sister!)
Most recent experience talking to mom and dad goes something as follows:
Me: Mom, are you sitting with your head out of the screen so that you can fall asleep?
Mom: No I'm not (as she scoots into the frame).
Conversation continues with reduced input from mom. Me and dad are talking about something of extreme importance probably.
Me: Mom are you asleep?
Silence
Me: She's a gonner!
Mom: I'm awake. I heard everything you said. You are talking about (fill in with one word that we mentioned 3 minutes previous).
Okay mom! =)

Example 2: Several Years ago back when we would read books together as a family:
Mom is reading aloud and all of a sudden cuts out mid-sentence. I'll never understand how one falls asleep mid-sentence while reading aloud but from what I have heard, it is a common phenomenon that occurs at night with my Aunt Linda as well!

I'm sure that all of us has had an experience that has been cut short due to the falling asleep of one member of the conversation so feel free to share with the rest of us. I find myself trying to convince myself that I really would rather fall asleep comfortably over falling asleep in the company of people I love spending time with. Either way you seem to miss the action! In the later I guess you add to everyone else's action so for that mom, I thank you!

Why we move so much?

I have a theory on why we move about every 3 to 4 years. It is all Lena's fault. She has a warped sense of friendship. Pretty much every place we go, she usually laments that she does not have many "good" friends. I think her definition of a good friend is someone who, like her twin sister, calls her at 3 AM to talk about anything and pretty much can know what she is thinking 15,000 miles away.

Anyway, Lena shows up in a town and within 6 months, she has at least a dozen people who if you asked would call Lena a good friend. A couple of people might even consider her a best friend. She has the uncanny ability to get people (sometimes even perfect strangers) to open up to her. I do not know how many times she has relayed a converstation she has had where the person told her "I can't believe I am telling you this. You are one of the only people who know." Those are the ones she is comfortable revealing to me. I imagine there are a many others whose secrets I do not even know she has heard.

As an example, we spent Christmas 2009 in Spain and went to he Alhabra palace in Granada. I had dropped her off to get in line at 6:30 AM (on line tickets were sold out). By the time I walked back to the line, Lena was engaged in a long conversation with a couple (probably in their 60s). By the time the line opened up for tickets, the man apologized for telling us his life story. We knew about kids, dogs, and his jobs working as a house painter.

By the time we have spent a couple of years in one place, I always have to add the "Lena" factor when leaving the house with her shopping or going on a errand. If we are going to the local grocery store, I have to add 20-30 minutes for the 2-3 people that she will run into while there.

At year three, the shear number of friends vying for time on Lena's busy schedule can be overwhelming. So the easiest thing to do is move to the other side of the world.

Breakfast

According to the heading of this blog, the purpose of its creation is to "highlight [the] wonderful characteristics, loving acts of kindness, example of faith and wisdom, and above all......the quirky things [Lena and Linda] do that make us laugh!" I was immediately inspired to write about Mom's dedicated kindness and service basically every morning of my life. It's called breakfast.... or shall I say "breafkast".

For any of our unfamiliar readers- if you listen closely to my mother's pronunciation of "breakfast", you will find that she actually demonstrates a singular instance of dyslexia and switches the "k" and "f" sounds in the word. To be honest, I don't think I myself ever actually noticed the oddity until it was pointed out to me by my ore observant cousins.

But whether you pronounce it breakfast, breafkast, makan pagi, desayuno, micul dejun, فطور or anything else, one thing is for sure: my mom makes some awesome breafkast meals. Even if you (the reader) can get by in the morning with just a piece of toast, or a glass of milk, or nothing at all- you would either have to (1) be crazy, (2) have burned off all of your taste buds recently by drinking hot chocolate before it cools down, or (3) not have a tongue at all (maybe it was chopped off for lying or you bit it off in a boxing match?) in order to not like my mom's cooking. French toast is one dish that I may consider one of her breafkast masterpieces (especially when combined with peanut butter and syrup). But her breafkast skills are not limited to just that- pancakes, waffles, egg burritos, bacon, egg sandwiches, quiche, omelet, sausage, hash browns, potato cubes, .... and the list goes on! Which list reminds me- I haven't had her orange julius in a number of years! So Mom, be prepared to dust off that old skill of yours for next time we're together!

In addition to her spectacular breafkast making skills- Mom is also a champion when it comes to consistancy. I have recently learned that many mothers don't make their children breafkast ever (or sometimes any other meal for that matter). My amazing mother however, would make at least something- as simple as a bowl of oatmeal or cream cheese bagel to a superior version of the Denny's Grand Slam Breakfast Meal- basically every day of my life at home. It didn't matter whether I slept in til 10 or 11 after a long Friday night with friends, woke up at 5:30 for seminary, or even earlier for a special scouting camp trip or other activity- we had something to fill our bellies til lunch time.

So, while we may chuckle and get a kick out of Mom's unique pronunciation of breafkast... we will never forget the thousands of meals she has so generously provided to her husband and children over the past decades and the many more still to come. Perhaps we, in honor of the master provider of that great morning meal, should follow her example and call it breafkast as well.

Mind the Gap

One of the necessary skills that I learned within my home was to 'mind the gap'. Most people will probably associate the phrase with London subways. While standing on the platform, the repetitive reminder to not get stuck in the hole between the platform and the train is constantly ringing in your ears. Obviously, in my home we don't have a train cruising through, but there certainly is a gap to be minded: a gap between the spoken word and the completed action. Before you jump to harsh conclusions thinking that my mother never goes through with her word, let me illustrate through story the harmless, loving quirk that she lovingly shares with those who mean the most to her. I was working alongside my mother in the kitchen performing a list of tasks that had been given to me. I turned to her for her approval on a mixing job that I had completed. She took one look at it and responded "yeah that looks good." As she finished off her sentence, she simultaneously picked up the spoon and continued stirring! Oh Lena! It seems like her mind is like the London subway. She says to herself that she will get on the next train but in reality she remains planted on the platform as the train takes its departure. Carrying into the darkness those who bridged the gap but didn't mind her gap.

The Waving Weep

As the instigator of the blog I will take the opportunity to open this blog with its first entry. Unfortunately, words cannot accurately express each detail of this endearing quirk of our mother, but I have chosen to coin it "the waving weep." You see my mother is very senstive to the spirit, it has always been astonishing to me how clearly it speaks to her and gives her guidance and strength. Unfortunately, for her, this also makes her rather prone to uncontrollable tears. As children this gave us a wonderful opportunity. Each chance to speak in church, to bear testimony or to share personal feelings was an opportunity to try to get our mother to cry... it might be embarrassing to admit but it kind of became a game, trying to get mom to cry. The reason is the quirk...it just gives us a kick. When our mother starts to cry, especially when it is associated with joy and happiness, with warm fuzzies, with the growth and success of her children she performs the "waving weep." This consists of a cute little face that is trying to laugh and frown at the same time, it causes her mouth in the middle to smile but the corners to bend down in an attempt to frown. You can see joy in her eyes, but it looks like it kind of hurts...in a good way. As the tears begin to peak she tries to hide them. If at the right moment you look over at her and she sees you looking she will pull her hand up to her face and flick her wrist to signify to you to stop looking, this is in fact the "weeping wave." It is cute and most endearing but at the same time absolutely hilarious.
If you might permit me to share a short story that she told us. She was on a plane ride and was watching Marley and Me. To be honest I don't remember much about the movie except that the dog dies eventually (sorry if that is a spoiler for any of you). Once again our mother's tender side began to show. She began to sniffle but at the same time noticed that the lady next to her began to sniffle. As she turned to look their eyes met and both were in fact weeping. In an attempt to turn the other away, both women performed the "weeping wave" and proceeded to burst into laughter which only led to additional weeping.Oh Lena! As the stewardess walked by she noticed, recieved a couple "weeping waves" and returned with a few tissues for the marvelous women!
This is just an example of our mother's ability to connect with other people on an intimate level, even if they are strangers! The joy and love that is spread by a simple "weeping wave."
Thank you Mom for making this world a better place!